Our colleague Patricia Cohen has a warm-weather assignment this week reporting from Miami Beach, where Art Basel Miami Beach stretches out through Sunday.
She reports on our sister blog ArtsBeat about her lesson in how to look at art as if she were a newly minted multimillionaire, from an art adviser, Liz Klein, and a curator, Lily Siegel of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. After perusing work by the pedigreed, pricey Gerhard Richter and Anish Kapoor, here's what she learned about considering an up-and-coming artist:
With time running out, we made one final stop, at the Friedrich Petzel gallery to look at Dana Schutz's painting “Getting Dressed All at Once.†Ms. Schutz, who is in her mid-30s, currently has a show at the Denver Art Museum. Figurative painting has been out of fashion, Ms. Klein said, bu t Ms. Schutz offers something fresh. The idea of getting dressed all at once communicates a sense of the frenetic pace of contemporary life. “You get a sense of movement, with the figure butting up against the edges of the canvas,†Ms. Klein said. The artist also employs weird sculptural forms that make the limbs look as if they have no musculature, she said.
My advisers noted that her work referenced Picasso's portraits of his mistress Marie-Thérèse from the 1930s and de Kooning's undone women. “There is a very contemporary sensibility and use of color that successfully bridges the past and present,†Ms. Siegel said. It was priced at $125,000.
Read more of Ms. Cohen's report here.
And enjoy the party photos in this slide show, assembled by our colleagues in the Styles department.
