Like Pigs in a Sausage Factory....

David Amsden has a great piece in the NYTimes on taking global field trips to art fairs. A nice summation of Art Bazz Miami Beach:
Ever since its inception, in 2002, Miami Basel has had this reputation: a carnival of excess for anyone seeking a vaguely highbrow justification to head somewhere warm in winter. And what about the art? In the morning, I made my way to the juggernaut of the fair, the Miami Beach Convention Center, where the museum-quality work is bought and sold with alarming, garage-sale efficiency. Ostensibly only a minority of the 40,000 attendees had the means and connections necessary to actually purchase art, but those who were there to shop, like Steve Martin and Martha Stewart, had a way of dominating the mood. “Oh, my God, this would look so great in my friend’s bedroom!” I overheard a polished blonde yelp as she stared at a $40,000 abstract painting from a Japanese gallery. “I need to text her right now!” Fifty feet away, a middle-aged man was hollering into the cellphone embedded in his ear: “Look, they say the price is $500,000 and they’re just not budging.” Frustrated pause. “But Dad!”

You encounter a lot of this sort of thing in the convention center — fleetingly comical exchanges that quickly leave you feeling hollow, eager to send some money to the Red Cross. Walking around, I started to understand why some artists who come to the fair describe it as a pummeling few days necessary for career advancement. (John Currin reportedly compared artists at Miami Basel to pigs in a sausage factory.)