by Gary Eleinko

It numbers over 600 galleries, 5 museums, 2 private collections, 2 garden installations, art spaces and studios, from 4 continents, plus performances, parties, and more. All in all, it’s an art endurance test for the stalwart, physically, and impossible to see it all time wise. What the North American Auto Show is to Detroit, Art/Basel is to Miami Beach. Now in its 5th season it has become the premier art event in North America, its scope encompassing convention centers, neighborhoods, museums, temporary tent exhibition halls, hotels, and the beach front. With a crowd numbering 36,000, it is a nonstop gluttonous feast on art for 4-6 days.

Detroit Connections include: Dana Schutz’s canvas of a large naked man ; Several small Ray Johnson collages - $10,000 to $20,000: Barcelona’s Galerie Senda showed Bernado Jordi’s photo of a crumbling brick home, titled “Detroit series 01”; In London’s Trent Gallery, Chunie Reed’s photo blowup of a rock article “ Detroit Grand Pubahs” duct taped to the wall,; numerous works by Mike Kelly; Michele Oka Doner’s works in Fairchild Gardens, and Detroit’s only official representation, paulkotulaprojects at the Bridge Art Fair, showing Heather McGill, object orange photos, and Christian Tedeschi’s foot high, 90 lb. egg shaped, luminescent object made entirely of saran wrap. Socially, print collector Mark Schwartz’ cocktail reception at the Sagamore hotel for all visiting Detroit collectors, artists, and gallerists was a respite. The Sagamore, an official Art Bar/hotel, sponsored a video lounge featuring Yoko Ono, and art hung extensively through its white marble lobby, halls, restaurants, and video screens at the outdoor tables leading to pool area and beach front.

Some observations, thoughts, and images, all colliding together in a kaleidoscopic bombardment of culture, money, egos, images, senses, business, fashion, and status:

~The Miami Herald featured front page articles on Basel, alternative papers had 15 to 20 pages devoted to it, tv and radio coverage daily - while in Detroit our major daily papers barely acknowledge the existence of the visual arts
~ Traffic jams of art destined charter buses, yellow cabs, limos, autos, and bicycle rickshaws, clogging the Wynwood art district
~ differences between mediums and style are all blurring, whether it be photography and computers, computers and painting, realism and surrealism / fantasy
~ Stylistic differences between artists from the different nations here, likewise, are minimal
~ Art made from every conceivable material from toilet brushes to toilet fixtures, diamond dust and glitter to astro turf, and shopping carts, found objects to the technologically sleek and slick - (so far no MWD’s , e -coli or polonium art)

~Eyes – Eyes on video, eye videos as components of pieces, eyes and mouths projected on sculptural pieces
~ Disembodied limbs, floating arms and legs or limbless torsos
~ Video and film was pervasive, from Ipod screens to 20 feet – in DIVA, a train container show on the Beach, digital and video art was the focus. One container’s interior was swathed in gauzy fabric, plaster buttocks mounted on the wall, with one viewing the video through an appropriately placed hole - Miguel Angel Rios’s stunning video of tops was going for $26,000
~ Celebrity sighting - Eva and Adele, two bald performance artists, of some gender, dressed in pink patterned frocks , from Germany, but known as the hermaphrodite twins from the future
~ “LoBrow art” using imagery from x-box games, comics, hello kitty, Japanese anime, stuffed toys, lots of kids with big eyes, (time for a Margaret Keane revival?)
~ Overheard conversations between dealers and clients. Generally private, deals were quite open, with prices quoted freely, from the $1000 dollar range to the 5.5 million Basquiat sold on the first evening - Some prices baffled logic, a 16 x 20 photo $1500 unframed, $3000 framed
~ Gallerist is the au current term for gallery owner, dealer, art monger
~ Martha Rosler’s photo collages contrasting American live style and the Vietnam War are as pertinent today
~ Lots of Warhols and other dead guys
~An extravagant installation by Richard Jackson “Ducks in the Mens Room” consisted of 4 full size and equipped lavatory stalls, occupied by 7 foot plastic duck with breasts for eye, and metal tubing inserted and extruding from their lower regions that then sprayed the site with vivid coats of paint
~ And the list goes on.

Of particular note, day long excursions in themselves, were two private collections in warehouses. The Rubell collection- featured “Red Eye L.A. Artists”, Baldesarri, Mike Kelly, Sterling Ruby, and others, with ample nudity, soft porn, and art pushing the envelope, such as Paul McCarthy, a cause celebre, with his videos and life size installation, “Cultural Gothic”, of a proud wasp father, watching his young prepubescent son bugger a goat. The Margulies collection, at 45,000 sq. feet, emphasizes sculpture and their extensive holdings in photography, often political or environmental, from 1910 to contemporary video from around the world.

If only Miami Beach could be an inspiration to the money, the collectors, and the media here. With added support for our local galleries, artists, and museums, perhaps a healthier and more interactive scene could exist in Detroit.

After a long career in education, Gary Eleinko is now enjoying a life solely devoted to hedonistic pleasures and art. He is currently serving on the exhibition committee for the Detroit Artists Market, and also volunteers on the "Art for Life" artists committee for MAPP. He maintains his studio at the Alternative Worksite, 2000 Brooklyn, Detroit. He has his B.F.A. and M. A. in painting from Wayne State.