Saturday is the third day of Art Basel Miami Beach 2012 and so far, it has been the day that is the least focused on art.
The who’s-who in the creative fields have already seen the art that interests them and have either made purchases or are waiting for the last day to attempt finding a good deal. Most attendees are seeking to explore beyond the walls of the convention center and resting up for the storied nightlife of Saturday night at ABMB 2012.
Miami is a 24-hour city where businesses become after-hour clubs, stopping the party only to become businesses again in the morning. The night events range from Spin’s Galactic Ping-Pong tournament at the Standard Hotel, to music from “Twin Shadow” and “Purity Ring” at the Basel Castle in Miami’s Wynwood Art District.
Corporate sponsorship is the key to these large-scale events and the global brands heavily invested in the arts are essential to the success of this international event. Sponsors such as Champagne Ruinart, Davidoff and Herman Miller add an additional facet of glamour and prestige.
Swiss global financial services company UBS is a main sponsor of ABMB and has been since its inception in 2002. A major player in global cultural sponsorship, UBS provides funding for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. It is a collaboration between UBS and Guggenheim that charts, catalyzes and expands contemporary art around the globe.
In the spirit of partnerships between corporations and artists, vodka manufacturer Absolut established their Art Bureau to encourage openness and experimentation in visual media.
The dynamic relationship between the Absolut Art Bureau and artists helped to create the global brand, starting in 1986 with their first commissioned piece using the distinct shape of the Absolut bottle and the talents of Andy Warhol. This year corporate sponsors Absolut Vodka have created an art bar installation in Collins Park in collaboration with Havana based duo Los Carpinteros.
Another artist working with Absolut is international art sensation Andre Saraiva (Monsieur A). Saraiva has gone from Parisian graffiti personality to art world tastemaker.
Famous for his distinctive graffiti stick figures on the world’s streets, this year he hosted two celebrity packed parties. The first party was a pop-up karaoke bar at his Chez Andre in the downstairs of The Standard Hotel; the second was his ABSOLUT Block Party at which he unveiled his new murals titled “Love Graffiti.” The murals covered two large walls in the city’s Design District and were made up of many different names.
The VIP transportation for celebrities and important artists between hotels and events such as these was sponsored by BMW in conjunction with their Art Cars. The luxury car manufacturer has made their presence known at ABMB with a display of their Art Car series in a special pavilion in the botanical gardens across the street from the convention center. On display was the artist Alexander Calder ‘s original Art Car, commissioned in 1975. Since then artists such as Frank Stella, David Hockney and Jeff Koons have created unique and sensational works on automobiles to show that BMW has traction in the art world.
While BMWs carried appreciators down the streets of Miami, planes carried the words of famous artists through the sky.
The PLANE TEXT public art project is an innovative aerial art project sponsored by the Morgans Hotel Group featuring text-based art. Groups of airplanes pull work from a hand-selected group of artists including Ed Ruscha and Hank Willis Thomas. Thomas’ “ADS IMITATE ART. ART IMITATES LIFE. LIFE IMITATES ADS” is particularly critical to the corporate sponsorship of ABMB 2012. Thomas uses the uniform nature of the project to comment on the saturation of art during the event and its intimate relationship with celebrity and money.
As Thomas spoke about the cyclic nature of creation and its effect on popular culture through corporate adoption in his PLANE TEXT piece, I thought about what it would be like to have my own work collected and used by corporate sponsors.
I understand that as an artist I will never capture the divine spark of creation, but to have the power to affect the masses with my work, who wouldn’t want that?
