The art fair Art Basel Miami Beach, and the satellite events that have emerged around it, collectively known as Miami Art Week, have been held the first week of December every year since 2002, except in 2020 because of the pandemic. But even that year, Libbie Mugrabi, the ex-wife of the art dealer David Mugrabi, riding high from an enormous divorce settlement, threw a lavish dinner at the Faena Hotel. (“I can do whatever I want with it,” she told The New York Times of the payout. “And this is what I want to do.”) Last week, one gallery owner from New York summed up the purpose of the fair to me succinctly: “I need to make money,” he said. Miami is especially good for gauging the mood of the art business, and the direction it might be heading in. Prices at art auctions have been declining over the past two years, but a lot of people did indeed make money. And there was some evocative art on view, too. Below are a few takeaways.

ImageAl Freeman’s “Soft Camels” (2020).Credit...Courtesy of the artist and 56 Henry, New YorkImagePiero Penizzotto’s “Buen Provecho” (2024).Credit...Courtesy of the artist and White Columns, New YorkSculpture depicting everyday items is in

At NADA, a smaller art fair held at Ice Palace Studios, over the bay from Miami Beach, I was impressed by an abundance of quirky sculptures of commonplace objects. There was a ceramic piece by Piero Penizzotto on a table at the booth of the New York-based nonprofit White Columns that lovingly depicts a Styrofoam takeout container of chicken, fries and a dipping sauce. At Milwaukee’s Green Gallery, Michelle Grabner installed a blue floor sculpture in the shape of a metal book end. At the booth of the New York gallery 56 Henry, Al Freeman’s “Soft Camels” — a vinyl sculpture of a pack of nonfilter Camel cigarettes — hung on the wall. When Ellie Rines, the gallery’s owner, placed a clementine in my hand, I had seen enough simulacra that I stared at the fruit and asked her, sincerely, “What’s this?”

ImageLee Moriarty’s “Grill Maestro” (2024), center, and “Portrait of the Demon” (2024), right.Credit...Courtesy of All Elite Wrestling and Orange CrushFigurative painting is still dominant, for now

Throughout Miami there was a surplus of unremarkable abstraction on view, perhaps a sign that figurative painting — one of contemporary art’s most popular modes over the last decade — is falling out of favor with curators and collectors. But some of my favorite works were portraits. At NADA, Adam Abdalla, a publicist whose firm was doing P.R. for the fair, had a booth for the art and wrestling magazine that he co-founded, Orange Crush. He was showing works by Lee Moriarty, a professional wrestler for AEW, the sport’s second largest promoter in the United States, who painted humorous scenes of Lucha Libre wrestlers engaged in mundane tasks, like manning a barbecue grill. (Moriarty himself was at the booth, carrying his championship belt.)

ImageJana Euler’s “Whitney” (2013).Credit...Collection of Pérez Art Museum Miami

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