Let’s talk about sex Do you need to go into therapy? If you have “issues”, confront them at Design Miami, where a psychotherapist’s studio, kitted out in luscious pink furniture and Kama Sutra wallpaper, is prompting visitors to reveal their innermost thoughts and desires. Designers Alberto Biagetti and Laura Baldassari have even hung a saucy mirror in the space—called No Sex in Miami, it looks like an optician’s alphabet chart. But the main draw is a pair of bewitching analysts, bedecked in pink, who just so happen to be twins. “We are Giulia and Elena,” they say, alluringly. But there is more to the sisters than meets the eye. The sultry Sella siblings are design specialists, having established their own company, DesignByGemini, in 2015. “Giulia graduated in interior design from Politecnico di Milano in 2012 and is a [certified] real-estate broker,” according to their website. Now tell them where it hurts.
Welcome to the pleasure dome “I know you’re all wearing new clothes and have new haircuts,” the rapper Kendrick Lamar said at the beginning of his concert in the Faena Art Dome on Thursday. Then he used a string of profanities to encourage partygoers to let themselves go, leading by example through a sweaty, energetic performance. The intimate show was packed with diehard fans, who between songs passed Lamar things to sign: hats, phones… anything, really. “Can I keep this?” he asked one devotee, who’d passed him a Sharpie marker. Various movie and television clips rendered in black and white were projected on the dome above the rapper, featuring Ronald Reagan, Michael Jordan and, during Lamar’s hit Swimming Pools, Prince. Although the song is about alcohol—of which there was plenty—it ended up being relevant for another reason: the dome is essentially a heat trap, and by the end of the performance, nearly everyone was soaked.
Hockney is the write stuff It’s impossible to miss the David Hockney Sumo book on the publisher Taschen’s stand at Art Basel. Every one of the 10,000 limited-edition mega-volumes is signed by the artist. Respect! Not least because when Benedikt Taschen asked Hockney to autograph each copy, the artist didn’t think it would be possible. The book features six decades of Hockney’s art, and fairgoers can thumb through a copy wearing white gloves. The collectors’ edition is a snip at $2,500, but a special edition with an inkjet print of an iPad drawing, priced at $5,000, has sold out. On Monday, the artist enjoyed a launch party in Taschen’s Los Angeles store, which, like the Miami stand, is wallpapered with pages from the tome.
Madonna’s Miami mission Madonna is in town raising funds for her Raising Malawi charity. As we went to press, the Material Girl swept into Miami for a benefit auction at the Faena Forum on Friday, hosted by the UK chat show host James Corden. Star lots included works by Tamara de Lempicka and Tracey Emin from Madonna’s personal art collection, as well as Herb Ritts’s photographs of the pop star’s 1985 wedding to Sean Penn, who is due to make an appearance at the event along with the comedian Chris Rock and the singer Ariana Grande. Also up for grabs (for the right price) is a chance for 12 of your closest friends to spend a week in Leonardo DiCaprio’s Palm Springs home and play a private game of Texas Hold ‘Em with stars Edward Norton and Jonah Hill. Madonna has been plugging the event all week on Instagram, giving sneak previews of her special Tears of a Clown auction performance. A particularly fetching picture shows the singer sporting a clown’s nose, with the caption: “A clown can save your life.”
Mad habit If you’re heading to the Nada art fair on Saturday, expect to see a protest march featuring a raft of angry nuns. But fear not: this is not a radical reinterpretation of The Sound of Music, but a “happening” inspired by Sister Corita Kent (1918-86), the Pop art nun who praised the Almighty by making art. (Her 1964 screenprint The Juiciest Tomato of All is a tribute to the Virgin Mary.) The Berlin-based project space the Conversation, which is showing a series of 1970s serigraphs by Kent at Nada, has organised the divine demonstration and invited students from the local DesignLab college to shake it up like Corita. “There are sewing machines available so that marchers can put together their habits,” says a spokesman for gallery. The maverick nun would have been so proud.
Gucci takes the rap
The rapper Gucci Mane, who was released from federal prison this past summer after serving a three-year stint for gun charges, wasted no time in immersing himself in the HBO series Game of Thrones and getting into the Billboard charts, through his verse on Rae Sremmurd's hit song Black Beatles, which begins: "Came in with two girls, look like strippers in their real clothes." Mane began his DJ set at The Wall on Thursday night by asking the crowd "What it do?". The Dom Pérignon party, hosted by the collector Aby Rosen and art dealer Vito Schnabel, serves as something of a closing for the VIP portion of Art Basel. "Black Beatles," Mane reminded the crowd, "[is the] number-one song in the country right now." He did a curtailed version of the song from the DJ booth, although nobody in the room seemed to be more impressed than Harmony Korine—the screenwriter of the 1995 film Kids, who stood next to him, aghast. Mane’s set lasted a whole six minutes. Shortly afterwards, reality TV star turned DJ, Paris Hilton, took his place, but mainly just to take a selfie in the booth.
The Kinsey effect Jeffrey Deitch and Larry Gagosian's show Desire in the Design District may be popular but the two dealers certainly do not have a monopoly on interesting smut in Miami this year. If you are coming back to the fair from La Sandwicherie, you might want to swing by the World Erotic Art Museum (WEAM), which has a show of works from Indiana University's Kinsey Institute, named for Alfred Kinsey, who founded his Institute for Sex Research there in 1947. The institute happens to have a collection of 110,000 works, collected for research purposes, and the show of gay male artists offers a fascinating glimpse at attraction in the mid-20th century. Consider Michael Miksche, a commercial illustrator for department store clothing advertisements who, in his spare time, liked to draw men wearing, well, fewer clothes. George Platt Lynes’s photographs on view could compete with Richard Avedon or Robert Mapplethorpe, to whom he is a clear precursor. “This show is the museum’s artistic and political statement at a time when intolerance and state repressions grow all over the world,” says the WEAM director and show co-curator Helmut Schuster. It is also a reminder of how certain movements can never be completely repressed.
Steel yourself Sculptures showing the actor Johnny Depp and model Kate Moss in a saucy embrace, on show at Rod Bianco Gallery at Nada fair in Miami Beach, are causing a stir. The artist Yves Scherer’s sexed-up works certainly caught the eye of the artist and singer Chantal Chamandy, who bought a version in stainless steel. “This is for my Miami home,” she says. “But instead of Johnny and Kate, this is Chantal and Greg, my husband.” Chantal was so enamoured with the alluring sculpture, she agreed to lie alongside the frolicking couple. We think she looks just as beguiling as the celebrity lovers.
Baseman eschews the tattoo The artist Gary Baseman's work is probably most recognisable from the box of the board game Cranium, but at a Thursday evening event at The Webster to promote his collaboration with the luxury leather goods company Coach and the vodka brand VDKA 6100, the Los Angeles artist demonstrated his range, taking a break from creating a painting on a leather jacket to discuss his influences. These vary from the earliest political cartoons (perusing his sketchbook revealed his election-day doodle: Donald Trump braining the Statue of Liberty like the baddie on the hit TV series The Walking Dead) to the late illustrator and custom car designer Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Tattoo culture is also an influence, although Baseman admits he is tattoo free. "I'm not an ideal canvas," he said. "Excuse me," interrupted a woman displaying untold amounts of plastic surgery. "My friend was wondering if you could maybe paint her T-shirt?" Baseman mulled the logistics and seemed doubtful that it would be possible without her removing her shirt. Later on the woman could be seen rocking a fresh new Baseman on her back: a devil creature labelled Wild Beast.
Leave your hat on
Miami has gone all Sex and the City (or SATC to devotees of the hit TV series) this week. The actress Sarah Jessica Parker dropped in to the immersive performance art piece L’Eden by Perrier-Jouët at Casa Faena, while the headline-hitting fashion designer Patricia Field, the woman behind the SATC look, presents “an art bazaar of painted clothing and original works of art by a talented group of artists” at White Dot gallery in Wynwood (until 31 December). Clothing, photography, sculpture and paintings created by artists and designers such as Tom Knight and Suzan Pitt were shown in a lavish runway show at the gallery. Field gave some style tips to local press, saying: “I love hats. The first thing you often see is a person's face and head. A hat is a perfect piece that can really define who you are if you wear the right hat, and it goes with your outfit.” Hats off to Patricia!