Where Billionaires Wait in Line | Pierce Brosnan Exclusive Interview | Art Basel Miami Article

A DAY AT ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

BY KEVIN BERLIN

It’s 11 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and I’m standing in the only place in Miami where the billionaires are waiting in line: It’s for the VIP private view of the 22nd edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, at the Miami Beach Convention Center, across the street from the historical botanical gardens. This is the cornerstone of what started as a dream to expand the legendary Art Basel from Basel, Switzerland. The 90 people in line and myself are about to experience 286 galleries from 38 countries, including 34 first-time exhibitors, and thousands of artists and artworks. ABMB is the easily the largest and most important art fair in the Americas. It is said that more private planes arrive in Miami this week than at any other moment in any place around the world.

But first, let’s go back in time. How did Miami become so popular as an art destination? At first glance: It’s the weather, stupid. Yet in the early 1900s, Miami was hardly a luxury destination. Three things made for a transformation: new technology for getting rid of mosquitoes, the invention of the air conditioner, and a railroad system that finally linked Miami to the rest of the country. All this, for you history buffs, occurred in the only major city in the U.S. founded by a woman, Julia Tuttle.

Let’s get back to the fair and take a stroll. What do we see? An endless labyrinth of illuminated booths featuring paintings, sculptures, installations rising to enormous heights, and a sea of very well-dressed people, some of them impossibly fit. How to even start? Here are the latest presentations of artworks represented by many of the most influential galleries and gallerists in the world: Hauser & Wirth, Perrotin, Larry Gagosian, Pearl Lam—the list goes on. There are also unique areas like Meridians, which feature large-scale projects that push the boundaries of the traditional art-fair layout. Those in the know might recognize Matthew Marks by his signature eyeglasses. I see women Insta-posing next to sparkly, multi- faceted sculptures. Nearby, a guy chatting in a corner with a baseball cap on turns out to be Leonardo DiCaprio.

Unbeknownst to me, Fredric Snitzer Gallery has just sold all 13 paintings by Hernan Bas, at prices ranging from $23,000 to $400,000. There are also works in the secondary market, including by Josef Albers, Tom Wesselmann, and Andy Warhol, ones I never saw before. I admire monumental new works by figurative giants like the 97-year-old Alex Katz, and the ever irreverent Ai Weiwei.

If a work has made it onto a wall at ABMB, it is an achievement, the dream of many young artists. What’s different this year? Surprisingly very little politics, almost no religion, lots of flowers, and for the first time in recent memory, lots of nudes. A crowd is gathering around an enormous white marble sculpture of a hand with truncated fingers, except the middle one. It’s another surprise from Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, who is perhaps best known for Comedian, a work that consists of an

actual banana duct-taped to the wall that recently resold at an auction for $6.2 million.

It’s almost 6 p.m., and I’m standing in the Collectors Lounge drinking espresso martinis with the usual suspects. Samsung is sponsoring a small reception to unveil its new collection of digital screens to display artwork. I chat with close friends from New York and London that I haven’t seen since last year. I make the acquaintance of a whole family from Medellín, Colombia. We chat about who’s doing what later tonight. The Pérez Museum’s not-to-miss reception opens in two hours. I haven’t yet been to the other 20-plus art fairs, including Design Miami, Art Miami, Red Dot, NADA, Pulse, Scope, Untitled, Wynwood Walls, and the Graffiti Museum. The entire city is wide awake. I just realized that it’s only the first day, four more to go. Oops. I’m not a car, but I do run out of gas.

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PIERCE BROSNAN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

BY KEVIN BERLIN

You have been a painter your whole life, yet your first solo exhibition, So Many Dreams, just debuted in Los Angeles. What was the turning point that led you to reach out to a wider audience?

I’m a self-taught artist and have been painting since 1987. I left school at 16 with nothing more than a handmade artist’s folder of paintings and drawings. It was my passport out to an artistic life. So my practice as a painter took hold in 1987 and culminated in my first solo show, in Los Angeles last year. It was an accumulation of the work I had made over that period of time. Thanks to my wife, Keely, together we curated the show — 50 paintings, 100 drawings — and found a gallery in L.A. at 434 North La Brea in Hollywood

To move forward with my practice as a painter it was necessary for me to show the work: to let go, to redefine the possibilities of what I had already created. To find a way onto the stage of my dream to be an artist. To start again at 70.

Your works are deeply personal. Could you share something about your process?

The work comes from a need to create and nourish the emotions that I feel at the moment in time. They can be born of a sorrow and end up in joy. Many of the paintings have been made over long periods of time. There are a few that have been rendered without hesitation, which was an unexpected surprise for me, but there are ones that are left to ferment for months, years. In the end they all come from a need to nourish my soul, my inner life, and to make work that gives pleasure and has some story of time. As Keely said to me one day as I was prevaricating over showing the work for the first time, “You will only paint so many paintings.” To which I replied, “If not now, when?”

Everybody wants to know: How do acting and painting overlap?

The work of a painter and the work of an actor are one and the same, and that is of the imagination and the need to be loved, to give love, to share the love of being human. To have the courage to make a mark, to find yourself in the thorny weeds of exploration and the glory of reinvention. Both come from a solitude of constructing and destroying to create beauty.

Quid tum . . . What’s next?

From the show in Art Basel Miami last year I have had the good fortune and the great joy of making two collaborations. One is with the iconic artist Shepherd Fairey, from one of my paintings called Fishhook, which will now hang in the Irish consulate in New York. The other is with Stefanie Hering, a porcelain ceramist. This will be a series of plates and vases with my line-drawing work. I have also started a series of lino and woodcut prints from my line-work drawings.

Kevin Berlin is an international artist best known for painting, sculpture, and performance. As featured in The New York Times Magazine, Shanghai Daily, The Miami Herald, Tokyo Television, USA Today and BBC Radio. Berlin, a Yale University Alumnus, studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and received a gold medal from President Reagan at The White House. Recent solo exhibitions include shows in Miami, Palm Beach, New York, London, and The Hague.

Berlin's artworks are found in collections of Luciano Pavarotti, Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, HRH Princesse Antonella de Orleans-Bourbon, David Letterman, Quincy Jones, Ron Rice, Henry Buhl, Resistol/Stetson Hats, Carnival Cruise Lines, YoungArts Foundation and General Motors. www.kevinberlin.com | @kevinberlin