For most of us, much of what's on sale right now at Art Basel Miami Beach, the country's biggest art fair, is pretty much untouchable. Even the cappuccinos are $6. Takashi Murakami's "Troll's Umbrella" in LM Arts' booth caught my eye, but for $875,000? Maybe in another life. Incidentally, Murakami's all the rage right now--justifiably so, I say. Still, (imagine Carrie Bradshaw's voice) I couldn't help but wonder, weren't some of his early works commentaries on the evils of consumerism? I'm guessing that was before the deal with Louis Vuitton.
Ah, success.
Although the extraordinarily well-coiffed women and the men donning seersucker at Wednesday's VIP opening appeared to think nothing of such price tags, one installation is considerably more accessible.
Thirty-one-year-old Shanghai-born artist Xu Zhen's "ShanghART Supermarket", arranged to look like your average corner store, is selling empty containers of brand name consumer products as fine art, for around $3 apiece. Customers lined up at the cash register, peeling back twenties to buy empty containers of Crest toothpaste, Herbal Essences shampoo, Vaseline Intensive Care body lotion, Dole juice, Coca Cola, Chips Ahoy cookies, Halls cough drops, Extra chewing gum, Energizer batteries, and Gillette razors, with Chinese and English writing on the packaging.
Renée Vara, a bubbly brunette who works as a curator and art advisor in New York, handed over $15 for three empty bottles of baby lotion, an empty container of kitty snacks, and an empty box of o.b. tampons.
"I love it. I think it's like the rampant consumerism within both of our cultures," she explained. "The baby cream is gonna be the first art piece for my baby that's arriving soon. It will be the first one we give to them, to start them collecting, and the others I will probably display. I love kitsch."
She took her receipt, and the plastic bag filled with her purchases, and disappeared back into the fair.
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