MYSTERY GUEST Hopper
(Photo: Getty Images)

It was Wednesday evening. I had been putting away oysters, lobsters, and langoustines in a soft-pink tent outside the Raleigh Hotel. In a couple of hours, Kembra Pfahler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black would be performing at the beach's edge outside the hotel, courtesy of the Manhattan gallerist Jeffrey Deitch. Iggy and the Stooges would be someplace else. Supposedly. Gossip had Dennis Hopper just about everywhere.

But right now I was standing outside the Blue Door, a space in Ian Schrager's Delano, waiting to go into a fancy dinner. I looked around the giddy scene.

Then it hit me.

First, my take on how art fairs have been developing: Each of the good ones has developed its own specific microclimate. Art Basel, the granddaddy, is a growth in a fusty provincial town that only becomes a cosmopolis twice a year—during Art Basel and (even more so) when the world's jewelers come home. That's when the place is aswarm with glamour, glitter, and glitz and when the grandees of art and gems expect their usual tables at the Three Kings. A few days later Basel sinks back into provincial slumber.

Frieze is totally different. "It's about London being young and exuberant," says Amy Cappellazzo of Christie's. "It makes me feel quite old." Outside its Regent's Park enclave, though, Frieze generates little urban electricity. London is a giant metropolis and for most Londoners, even though Damien and Tracey are boldface names in the tabs and Charles Saatchi is a perennial in the broadsheets, the fair is a non-event. And this is even truer of the New York Armory, which most New York cabbies can't even find. Not so Miami Basel.

It wasn't just the size of the sleek crowd I was watching, even though it seemed to equal the population of a small town. It was the extraordinary choreography of the event—or rather events, as there were at least six energy centers just in this single hotel. The event was one of several, to say nothing of the spillage onto the sidewalks and out into the roads, the ebb and flow, the fluid purposefulness of these human units. Then to realize that this was part of a broader scene, encompassing an artful network of Art Deco hotels, the Design District and Wynwood.

I don't believe there's been a metropolitan scene quite like this. Ever.

Most cities began as trading stations. But this is an instant city created by and for art traffic. Miami Basel has done for Miami what Frank Gehry's Guggenheim has done for Bilbao.

There are also the actual artworks, of which there are so many. Finding the good stuff depends on shoe leather, gossip, and luck.

For instance, I was lunching with an old girlfriend in La Piaggia, a private club on the South Miami waterfront frequented by local toffs, some of whom have driven up from Palm Beach. Here you can usually spot a famous face and a bevy of hotties. The food is great. Art Basel Miami takes place in the stone crab season and I prefer La Piaggia's to those at the famous Joe's Stone Crab a couple of blocks away.

An old friend, the Russian artist Sergei Bugaev Afrika walked over. Afrika—his self-bestowed "artist" name—lives in St. Petersburg and was wearing a T-shirt lettered PETROGRAD, his hometown's Communist era name, but the swells in their preppy pinks and greens at the nearby tables didn't give him a second glance.

I first met Afrika in Manhattan during the art boom of the '80s. I remember sitting across from him at a dinner at the Odeon, the "art restaurant" of that time. The table was dominated by a bunch of successful American artists discussing the vaulting market. I asked Afrika how it felt to hear artists talk about money.

"It's wonderful," he said. Not ironically.

I had recently been to Moscow and met with "unofficial" artists, who until recently had been under the constant scrutiny of the KGB. But along came perestroika, and a Sotheby's sale in Moscow launched a boom in Russian art amongst European and American collectors. Galleries sprung up. Eduard Nahamkin, a professor from Latvia, opened a colossal one just down the street from me on 80th and Madison.

Most of the work was banal, dire, and forgettable. And now forgotten. The Nahamkin Gallery on 80th Street was turned into a clothing store.

Afrika insisted I come to a show of Russian art at a space in the Design District. I hadn't been planning to go, but I went. The show was tremendous. (Afrika had built a sledge chariot, mostly out of found stuff). It was as if Russian art had come of age.

Which brings me to the current boom in Chinese art, much of which strikes me as every bit as unconvincing as the Russian work had been 20 years before. Will the same oblivion claim them?

But there's an important difference. The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived the Russian art world of Great Power support. But it's the Chinese nouveau riche who are buying up much of the art. There's a venerable saying in China: You never step in the same river twice.

The after-party for the Russian show was thrown by Hugo Boss at the Oasis in the Raleigh Hotel. There was abundant smoked salmon, caviar, and vodka. It was thronged. Then we moved on to a party given by Visionaire magazine at The Delano. I was told that Dennis Hopper was there but never saw him.

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