At Art Basel, the writing was on the wall this year…

After days of tepid sales, guarded optimism, thinly veiled terror, and defiantly happening parties, ART BASEL 2008 was still a good year for, well, art. Spread over dozens of fairs were epic pieces by Barry McGee, Tomoo Gokita, Friends With You, Chiho Aoshima, Richard Prince, Mark Ryden, Barbara Kruger, Hyungkoo Lee, Josh Keyes, Robert Williams, Colin Christian, Todd James, Ron English, KAWS, Dearraindrop, Tony Oursler, Raymond Pettibon, , Eric White, Usugrow, Chris Mars, Fafi, Dash Snow, Aurel Schmidt, Scott Campbell, Phil Frost, Shepard Fairey, The Clayton Brothers, Takashi Murakami, and Kehinde Wiley, to name but a scant few, and celebrity buyers like Brad Pitt, Pharrell, Sofia Coppola, Jay-Z, and Dennis Hopper were still out shopping—though not necessarily buying—in full effect. Even Paris Hilton made her usual appearance. All in all, it was a good year to look at art, just not necessarily a great one to buy a lot of it. Following is a flashback of some of the cool stuff. HAVE A LOOK:

Additional photos by our homegirl The Toy Baroness, Manuel Peralta, and Jason Nolan…

Pharrell explains the dopness of his “Perspectives” chair…

Paris contends “art is, like, totally cool.” Pam agrees. The two hug in celebration…

Takashi Murakami with dealer Emmanuel Perrotin…

Jay-Z inquires as to whether he can get the frame encrusted with diamonds…

Retina’s massive outdoor wall piece…

The Toy Baroness cops a plea..

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Art & Commerce, Art Basel, Feature, Miami, News, art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.