Please bear with me. This is not going to be easy. I just got back from Art Basel Miami Beach, which has become much, much more than a very large art fair. It is now a sort of a mega-convention in the classic, berserk, hog-wild, industry-wide sense. A convention, of course, is a place where people in the same line of work go ostensibly to do business, and then wind up doing everything else. But the art world consists of so many lines of work—imagine a convention that combines the qualities of the Raccoon Lodge, Trekkies, Tailhook, the Democrats, and the Republicans, and then embellish from there.

In old Hollywood movies, conventions were where married businessmen went to go wild with booze and babes. And there is a lot of going wild in Miami. Sometimes you can't tell the art dealers from the hookers without a business card. But A.B.M.B. is even more than a convention because the general public has taken it up like a spectator sport or a festival. It even partakes of pilgrimage in a sort of anti-Burning Man way. The dealers come to enrich themselves and the bourgeois come to improve their status, while yet others come more or less to rub against one another and get sticky in a validated context.

Me? I'm there to combine the opportunity to do a year's worth of gallery hopping in three days with the chance to get over the cough I've had for three weeks. I was also delighted to take Oscar, my seven-year-old son, to look at art and see what struck his fancy. And to do some laps in the pool at The Raleigh.

Here is a seven-year-old looking at art.

Every year that I have attended Art Basel Miami Beach I have come to a new realization. The year before last, it was that the art world is the ultimate consumer of fashion. Last year it was the idea that the art fair had surpassed the biennials, Documenta, and all of the other highbrow institutional conclaves, becoming the organizing model of the art world. Art is no longer run by philosophy but money.

This year I began to see the art world as something much bigger than I'd ever suspected. The art fairs are now various things to various people. They are, yes, the Big Convention. The big culture convention. And this year it seemed that the partying had reached a frenzied, non-stop, almost desperate level. But the art world has clearly moved into a larger place in our society. And it has to do with money. Which everyone was talking about.

I was talking about it officially, having been recruited to moderate a panel discussion on "The Worth of Art," which, coincidentally, is the title of a book by Judith Benhamou-Huet published by Assouline. She possessed the prettiest face and best French accent of the group, which also included David Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum and now curator of the Artist Pension Trust; Jeffrey Deitch, the P.T. Barnum of art dealers; and auctioneer Simon de Pury of Phillips de Pury.

There has been much talk about price, since Jeff Koons's heart sculpture sold at auction for more than $24 million, and since a Warhol quadrupled the previous record at $71 million this year. Here's an art work about big money—a wood burning by Tom Sachs:

Some have greeted the high prices with indignation or consternation. Jerry Saltz, the art critic of New York magazine, has argued that high prices become part of art's content, disrupting its meaning. Critic Dave Hickey, often a chiding voice of reason, claims that that the market has become a bubble, fed by "greedy artists and stupid collectors." And it is true that art buying has been so frenzied that people have compared the action to the Tulip Bubble of 1637. But while everyone on our panel agreed that prices are extraordinary, no one predicted that the bubble, if there is one, might burst.

Jeffrey Deitch sees the tremendous growth of the market as a natural byproduct of the transition to an "information culture." Mr. de Pury pointed out that there is unprecedented liquidity in the market and that it may be that things are just getting warmed up, as more and more players enter the market. Mr. Ross and I pointed out that the art market enjoys many advantages over other financial markets in that is opaque and essentially beyond regulation.

The art market cannot be regulated in the way that the SEC regulates the financial markets, I suggested, because the determinants of prices are inherently ephemeral, even inscrutable. You can't be accused of insider trading in the art market because the market is predicated on insiderism. Everyone feels like an insider, and the struggle is to see who emerges as one in dollars and cents.

Sure, there might be a mortgage crisis, but there now seem to be markets that are relatively immune to the strife besetting the benighted middle classes. The luxury businesses are still hot. And what's more of a luxury business than art? There are almost five hundred billionaires in the U.S. alone, and almost nine million millionaires. That constitutes a pretty healthy collector class. As one waggish auctioneer has put it, after you've got your fourth home, a yacht, and a G5, what are you going to spend your money on? It would seem that as long as there is "hyperliquidity," there will be an art market.

And so it grows. Today Art Basel Miami Beach is not just one art fair. There are now twenty different fairs taking place in Miami at the same time, selling art, photography, and design. It is now quite impossible to see everything, so aesthetic triage happens. I intended to do more, but after seeing everything at Art Basel Miami Beach in the main convention center, then visiting NADA (the New Art Dealers Alliance), and then SCOPE, I was exhausted. I guess I had visited about five hundred dealer's booths.

Doing the fairs is interesting in terms of seeing what artists are doing. You really do spot trends. Last year there were many, many artists making very large, hyper-detailed color photographs of what might be considered tedious subject matter, in the manner of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth—I think Dave Hickey refers to these as "Large Cibachromes of three Germans standing around a mailbox." (They are still at it, but the subject matter seems more focused on strip mining and other industrial unpleasantness. I doubt those will go in the dining room.) Last year there were many small sculptures on the floors—I noticed because I was looking at the high heels of the female gallery directors and assistants. This year there was a lot of deliberately bad abstract painting in shades of mustard, ketchup, and relish. There was a lot of paint-can trompe l'oeuil where what appears to be liquid is actually solid. (Perhaps symbolic of the "hyperliquid" market.) Oscar was fascinated by these faux liquids, as he was with the profusion of large scary monsters at SCOPE, many made out of old tires, which may or may not have some allusive petrochemical significance.

Absolutely peaking at the moment is Asian cuteness, mostly Japanese otaku, but the Chinese are getting in on the act, too, with Buddha- and Mao-related pop art and post-modern porcelains. What began with Hello Kitty has become a tidal wave of unbearable anime and manga. Eventually the cuteness began to aggravate me, to the point where I began to feel much the way Edmonton Oilers coach Harvey McTavish must have before pulling the tongue out of the mouth of Calgary Flames mascot Harvey the Hound.

The hardest part of looking at the art at an art fair is the fact that it is surrounded by people who are often more bizarre, startling, intriguing, or complicated. The first day of Art Basel Miami Beach features a preview for the press and VIPs, and so generally you have to be an early bird to catch a glimpse of the high rollers who are making the pot bubble. After that the hordes descend, those who make any market interesting by trying to get in on it. I noticed many graying moneyed couples who strongly resembled Thurston and Eunice Howell of Gilligan's Island, closely inspecting the strange products on display at SCOPE and NADA. Perhaps this is the real story: the attempted apprehension of art by a new class of consumers.

I found myself not analyzing the work on display as much as guessing what line of work had enriched the art fair buyers inspecting the merchandise. I was more interested in what they saw in the art than what I saw in it myself. And just as one sometimes perversely imagines what strangers might look like making love or even sitting on the toilet, I found myself trying to picture these artworks installed in the homes of swimming pool contractors, hazardous waste tycoons, swampland developers…

I couldn't help but wonder what revelations Art Basel Miami Beach might bring next year. Too bad I have to wait. But wait…that gave me an idea.

Maybe Art Basel Miami Beach is too good a thing to happen only once a year. Even though it actually happens twice (in the summer in Basel, where it all started). Maybe art deserves its own theme park. Florida has Disneyworld, Epcot, Universal Studios, Marineland, Busch Gardens, Seaworld, the Holyland Experience. Why not The Art World Experience? Once you glimpse the breadth and plumbed the depths of Art Basel Miami Beach you know that there's much more here than can be absorbed in a three hour tour…a three hour tour…

My idol, the great comedian B.S. Pully, had a terrific expression that he used often in his stage show: "I'm too smart for the room." How many times have I used that line myself when faced with a deafening silence after a particularly sparkling bon mot?

It's a fact of modern life that we are often disappointed by generally low standards of drollery, especially when we have trained for the Algonquin Round Table. I know many entire careers that have had a tendency to be too smart for the room. One of my favorites is that of the wonderful Ann Magnuson, a comedian, actress, writer, and musician who has perhaps erred on the side of intelligence throughout her distinguished, though clearly under-recognized career. Born too late? Too early? Perhaps we shall see…

In the heyday of the "new wave," Ann was New York's ruling-elite comedic performance artist (along with Eric Bogosian). She not only created many extraordinary one-person shows while serving as genius-in-residence at the legendary Club 57, but she would also launch entire bands based on her satiric vision, from the feminist-primitivist collective Pulsallama, to the psycho-psychedelia of Bongwater (which released five albums), to the remarkable heavy-metal extravaganza Vulcan Death Grip.

As one would expect of someone so brimming with genius (and foxiness), Ann left the threadbare, hardscrabble art world and went off to Hollywood where she was clearly too smart for the universe. And yet she succeeded, first with small roles in big films, then starring in considerable films such as Susan Seidelman's Making Mr. Right, opposite John Malkovich, and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, opposite River Phoenix.

In 1989, Ann crossed over to TV as a regular on Jamie Lee Curtis's situation comedy Anything But Love, but we weren't getting the full blast of Magnusonic satire. Still, Ann's enormous talent took her along the usual road to All-American success, with appearances on Caroline in the City, The Drew Carey Show, Wanda at Large, Frasier, and even CSI: Miami. And she was in big films like Jodie Foster's Panic Room, and not-so-big ones like Mariah's Glitter. But Ann Magnuson is a top banana, not a second banana, and diehard fans longed for the full effect. One of the reasons I hate Hollywood is that they have never given Ann Magnuson her own Carol Burnett Show. Of course, compared to the great Carol Burnett, Ann is a little…how do we put it…too smart for the room?

(Photo by Rocky Schenck)

Well, she's not too smart for my room, where her new album is in heavy rotation. The delightful new Ann Magnuson compact disc is called Pretty Songs and Ugly Stories and it was produced and arranged by Ann's sometime collaborator (they had a faux fake folk band together, Bleaker Street Incident) and genius in his own right/write/rite Kristian Hoffman. All dressed up in spiritualist Victoriana photographs, it harks back to various gentler, smarter times, to the delightful sensibilities of music hall and tin pan alley or at least the darker corners of the Brill Building. Ann has a lithe, crystalline, lilting voice, and at times she sounds like a sweet girl group like Angels or the Murmaids produced, perhaps, by Kim Fowley, or like Ruth Etting produced by Devo. Each song is a little gem, with the form embracing the content, like a Harry Winston setting embraces a three-carat diamond. You must buy this record if you have any hope for the advancement of comic literacy, or if you have high standards rubbing up against the calloused elbows of society. Why not buy this marvelous entertainment directly from the artist?: http://annmagnuson.com/index.html. It comes autographed, for $13.98 plus shipping and handling.

Speaking of rooms that Ann Magnuson is not too smart for, Joe's Pub is one of them, and Ann is playing two shows there on May 18th. I'll be the guy in the pink carnation.

Free Arts is a wonderful charity that helps kids with problems by giving them a chance to make art. Artists are always being asked to donate to this cause and that cause, and they give again and again, sometimes grumbling about why non-artists don't do more to make it a better world. But Free Arts is particularly beloved by the artists who give to it. Maybe they identify with troubled kids.

Anyway, Free Arts supports itself in part with an annual auction. In the last few years much of the art auctioned has been in the form of large-format (20 x 24 inch) Polaroid photographs. Since Polaroid is likely to discontinue the film for their giant camera, not only are these unique works, but they're also probably the end of an era. The format will soon be as extinct as the Louisiana Vole or the Wooly Mammoth and thus these works are bound to appreciate significantly, not to mention that the lineup of contributing artists is particularly stellar, featuring Chris Burden, Chuck Close, Adam Fuss, Alex Katz, Barbara Kruger, John Lurie, Catherine Opie, and Tom Sachs, among others.

This year's auction is April 23rd from 6PM to 9PM at Milk Studios (450 W. 15th Street). For tickets visit www.freeartsnyc.org or call 212-974-9092. The work will be great and, if this year is anything like years past, there will be some amazing bargains, all, of course, for a super cause.

Here's a Christopher Wool piece.

And John Lurie's piece, called "Lion Juggling Fish."

And Chris Burden's.

A while back I alerted readers of this ephemeral space that Supreme, the superlative haberdasher for youth and the likeminded, was continuing its series of artists' skateboard decks with several offerings from Jeff Koons. I have them hanging in my son Oscar's room. They are the only Koons work we can readily afford, and they are very good.

The latest Supreme boards are the work of my amigo Richard Prince. There's a classic bunny-skull board that resembles his bunny-skull surfboard, and there's a "hippie punk" board similar to the drawings in his recent book Hippie Punk, and to the shirts Marni showed this season for guys and gals. They're so cheap I hesitate to list the prices here, and they're going fast.

Jack Spade is the store that's most like what you'd want your living room to be. It's got nice, comfily-fucked-up modernist furniture, good books, cool art, kooky collectibles, and crazy shit happening. It certainly did the other night, when I went down to 56 Greene Street for the opening of its motorcycle helmet show. Andy Spade runs the Jack store kind of like a gallery (and a library and a crash pad). There are three sort-of shows going on there concurrently. The motorcycle helmet one is a collection of vintage sixties motorcycle helmets, many metal-flake, all evocative of the Easy Rider-Wild Angels-Born Losers era of incipient compulsory-safety measures.

I had a drink or two before I heard the story, but apparently these helmets have something to do with a famous motorcycle tournament involving hot dogs. The idea was that bike riders, together with old ladies, competed in a hot-dog-biting competition. Each team had to ride by, and the old lady on the back, who was allowed to support herself by standing on the pegs or on the driver of the m.c., would take a bite of a stationary hot dog as they drove by. The winner was the mama who took the biggest bite out of the dog while underway.

The second exhibition is a collection of nine hats formerly owned by Marlon Brando. This collection was owned by Ricky Clifton, the interior design artist and famous bohemian personality, until it was sold to Jack Spade. Apparently the hats are available to the public. Warning: Marlon had a big head.

Thirdly, there's a fantastic show of drawings-on-blackboard by design maven and modernism connoisseur/retailer Steven Sclaroff. The concept is radical stores for children, such as Lane Bryant Baby ("Lane Bryant" is what my grandma called the fat-lady store), Agent Provocateur Enfant, and more. Hilarious.

There was a nice opening for the motorcycle helmet show, even better than a conventional gallery opening because of the small, freshly-grilled burgers and the wine and beer choices. And there was a crowd of distinguished bohemians on hand. For example (below, left to right), Shawn Mortensen, whose extraordinary new book of photographs, Out of Mind, was just released by Harry Abrams; Rachel Williams, a reformed supermodel soon to receive a masters degree in landscape architecture from Columbia University; and Jim Walrod, the notorious interior designer and raconteur:

Mr. Mortensen, just returned from Ethiopia, was wearing a Russian Army tank commander's helmet with his Ethiopian silver jewelry and the boiled-wool valenki boots he discovered on this very "web log."

Here's the globe-trotting photographer again, with decorator-to-the-artists Ricky Clifton wearing a polka-dot railroad engineer cap which was never owned by Marlon Brando.

This morning, as I was running off to Pilates, I put on my sweats and reached for a T-shirt, and this is what I grabbed. It was made by Gerard Basquiat, the father of my old pal Jean-Michel Basquiat, the painter, musician, and adventurer.

When Julian Schnabel made that film Basquiat—which I called "a pre-emptive strike on art history," in that it depicted Schnabel, played by the thin and distinguished looking Gary Oldman, as a mentor to Basquiat, a state of affairs I would classify as entirely fictional—Gerard's droll response was to manufacture this shirt. The artwork was taken from a series of plates designed by Jean-Michel in 1983-84. They were owned by Andy Warhol and were the subject of a small book published by the Bischofberger Gallery. The series also includes Grandma Moses, Leroy Neiman, and Cimabue.

My next film project, after my Edie Sedgwick vampire movie Factory Ghoul, and the shoemaking comedy/drama I Shod Andy Warhol, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, is Schnabel. I'm hoping to get Steven Seagal to take the title role, with Christian Bale as Gary Oldman and Vincent Gallo as Basquiat.

Las Vegas magnate Steve Wynn was just about to sell his Picasso, "Le Rêve," to financier Steven Cohen for $139 million, when he accidentally poked his elbow through it. These things happen. A cleaning woman in my employ once used a lot of elbow grease and Windex to get the signature off a Pruitt and Early that belonged to me. But at least in my case Nora Ephron wasn't there to write about it—scotching a megabucks art deal. I still have the work, and once I get Rob and Jack in the same place I'm getting it resigned, in case it ever gets up to nine figures.

But it's too bad about that wild elbow. I think Steve was right to sell that Picasso. He's just too active to own a painting that valuable and fragile. And now poor Steve is suing poor insurer Lloyd's of London over what he says is $54 million dollars damage to the painting, which is now worth a paltry $85 mil.

I've decided that until my kid is grown up I'm not buying any more Picassos or ceramics. But there are plenty of alternatives. Hotelier Ian Schrager has lots of Picasso-type paintings in his swank Gramercy Park Hotel, and unlike the Warhols and the Twombly they aren't behind plexi, because they were painted by Julian Schnabel.

If you can find a Picasso by Schnabel, I guarantee it will run you a lot less than a penny on the dollar Mr. Cohen was ready to fork over for "The Dream." In fact, if you act fast and head on over to Sotheby's on February 26th for the Contemporary Art sale, you can bid on Mike Bidlo's "The Dream," which is estimated at only $20,000 to $30,000. A steal! Here is Bidlo's painting:

Mike Bidlo's version, which I guarantee you looks a lot better than the above photo, is dated 1932 and 1987 (two dates for the price of one), and according to Sotheby's it's in good overall condition. Mike's work is really excellent. When he was doing Pollocks he really got into character and re-enacted the maestro pissing in Peggy Guggenheim's fireplace. And he did his Warhol oxidation paintings with real urine. When you're going for appropriation you want an appropriate appropriator, and Mr. Bidlo is the best of them. If I had the kind of money Mr. Cohen is throwing around I'd pick up the more recent "dream," and spend the leftover $138,970,000 on young artists and some signed first editions of Nora Ephron. What with terrorism and cocktail parties I'd pretty much rather have a Bidlo. If Wynn had the Bidlo and the Picasso, he could have poked his elbow through the Bidlo and avoided all that financial agony.

I used to be very jealous of the large Jackson Pollock by Mike Bidlo that Richard Marshall used to have in his office. It was stunning, a good enough painting to fool all but the most expert viewers, and if somebody started shooting you wouldn't be tempted to throw yourself in front of it.

My pal Richard Prince had a large exhibition at Oslo's Astrup Fearnley Museum, the best contemporary collection in Norway. The night we arrived we dined at Mr. Fearnley's country house, a fantastic old farmhouse about a half-hour from the center of Oslo. This eighteenth-century wooden house was painted-wood, inside and out, in the traditional manner, and is furnished with wonderful painted antiques, oriental rugs, beautiful paintings, stucco fireplaces burning birch logs, and not a few hunting trophies collected by Mr. Fearnley, including a very large moosehead and a big polar bear who is now a rug. One of our party was heard to mutter, "Ralph Lauren, eat your heart out."

It is certainly a very appealing and beautifully decorated residence. We had dinner in a sixteenth-century cottage that had been brought down from the mountains. It was decorated inside with elaborate paintings, including depictions, probably based on hearsay, of elephants, giraffes, and rhinos. An utterly charming dining room. When you enter and leave you must duck down, as the door is about four-feet high. I was told this was a defensive measure. Invaders would have to bend down to enter, enabling the resident to chop their heads off with ease. The next day I admired some replica Viking axes in a souvenir shop and thought about making short screen doors for my country house.

Richard's opening was a roaring success, attended by hundreds of Oslo art lovers as well as some friends from London and New York. It was Mr.Prince's first show devoted only to painting (there were thirty-one in the show) and sculpture (hoods and book plinths), and it was stunning. I noticed the public spent considerable time examining the new "De Kooning" paintings.

We did lots of fun things in Oslo, including devouring reindeer and moose and Swedish caviar, drinking local beer and Italian and French wine, and hanging out at the Theater Café in the National Theater, an old hangout of Ibsen's. It feels like Vienna but the art on the walls is all from Norwegian artists who have been habitués of the place over the last hundred years or so.

A Prince "De Kooning."

At the Theater Café, where the steak tartare would please even the most discriminating Tartar, London art dealer Sadie Coles and photography Johnny Shand-Kydd:

Glenn and Richard:

New York art dealers Per Skarstedt and Barbara Gladstone (she's the pretty one):

New York dealer Stellan Holm with mega-collector Pauline Karpidas, who operates the very important Hydra Workshop on that modest-sized Greek island.

The gent in orange with Max Falkenstein of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery is Erling Kagge. He's a collector, but he's also an adventurer. He was the first man to walk alone to the South Pole, and in one year he went to the South Pole, the North Pole, and the top of Mount Everest. As a result he hasn't spent that much time at nightclubs.

Erling took us to a nightclub called Cosmo. Here's their wallpaper:

And Richard at Cosmo with artist Nate Lowman, (wearing aNYthing) who did a great visual essay for the exhibition catalog, "Canaries in a Coalmine." It was a New York-style club—lots of velvet ropes and a too-tight door and overpriced Champagne.

The next night Stellan and I discovered a more fun club, Bla, pronounced blue, where people danced like it was the early eighties. Here's what one of the several girls I danced with looked like at 3 A.M.:

Mr. Jean-Paul Goude was the art director of Esquire magazine in its heyday. He was hired by Harold Hayes, perhaps the greatest magazine editor of the twentieth century, when he was a young gadabout illustrator in Paris. I loved Esquire and I loved his work, and I tried very hard to get into the magazine to work with him. I wound up working on an incredible piece with him called "America Dances" and we've been friends ever since. (Decades!)

Pop Art was supposed to blur if not erase the distinctions between fine art and commercial art, and it did in a way, but not really. It was not the revolution it was cracked up to be. And Mr. Goude has always practiced an art that is perceived as commercial. He loves an audience, and he has delighted millions with his magazine work, his album covers, his music videos for artists like Grace Jones (whose svengali and mate he was at her peak), his amazing commercials for clients like Chanel and Kodak, and perhaps the greatest parade ever staged, down the Champs Élysées on the occasion of the French Bicentennial.

Goude is a great artist, a genius, an eccentric, and a great charmer. He recently published an excellent book called So Far So Goude (Assouline, 2006) that documents his work, his career, and his life. (It also has a CD so you get a film, for his filmic side.) Being a commercialist, he has spent the last decade or so running around Paris and the world making amazing TV spots that reach millions, and so he never really exhibited his work, and it hasn't been possible to buy it.

All that changes today. Goude has finally broken down and made some pictures and put them in a gallery, Hasted Hunt at 529 West 20th Street. It opens today. Many of his most amazing images are on display, examples of his remarkable fusion of painting and photography. Goude was doing Photoshop twenty years before Photoshop was invented, with photographic prints, paint, paste, and razor blades. And Photoshop has never surpassed his extraordinary imagination and wild sense of humor.

Here's Jean-Paul at the gallery last night, with writer Joan Buck, formerly the editor of Paris Vogue and one of our newer New Yorkers.

I forgot to remind myself to remind you that John Lurie's new book Learn to Draw (Walther Konig, Cologne) is almost available. Give it two more weeks. Better yet, order it now—or, if you're in NYC, pick it up in advance at Printed Matter or Spoonbill—before the stampede of aesthetes, jazz fans, hipsters, fishermen, and lonely female art students causes it to sell out.

This book will teach you everything you need to know about drawing a penis, and so much more. It will also give you many valuable hints about coming up with good titles for drawings, or even novels or sonnets, although this is something that may require even more practice than drawing penises. This book is very, very amusing. It is right up there, in my opinion, with the work of John Callahan, the great paraplegic cartoonist. Some people might think the humor is sick, but John is certainly not as sick as Callahan, not yet, anyway.

You can buy John Lurie's Learn to Draw from Wal-Mart for $25.34, plus 97 cents shipping. It kind of amazes me that you can buy it from Wal-Mart, but if you don't want to, you can also buy it from Amazon for $26.40 or Barnes and Noble for $28.80. Borders wants to sell it to you for $40, but that's a company that sold my The Style Guy book in the Men's Studies section. Good luck with them, John!

To check out what a good artist John has become since he fired the band and locked himself up in his Soho penthouse, you can also visit his web site. There you will see beautiful fine-art prints for sale at remarkable values and find a handy mechanism for ordering John Lurie's CDs, just like the ones heard at Glenn O'Brien's house. For example, African Swim and Manny & Lo, a fantastic soundtrack album overlooked because of the general obscurity and/or non-existence of the films:

Trust me, John Lurie will not disappoint (unless you're a close friend). I can't wait for his next book, What Do You Know About Music? You're Not a Lawyer. Please finish it this year, John!

Perry Rubenstein looked more like a big-wave surfer than a gallerist when I saw him at Art Positions, a gathering of freight containers turned into mini-galleries on the beach. He was showing South African artist Robin Rhode's large homage to the all-time heavyweight champion of the world. Miami was where Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali. Perry's in the striped trunks.

It is my opinion that it's difficult for an older man to carry off long hair, but this gentleman shows that, with a good tan and a good tailor, it is possible.

This look somehow works in Miami. Note the hairline.

Writers Linda Yablonski, the Liz Smith of Artforum, and Bill Powers, sometimes editor of Black Book. I love Bill's blazer. It resembles Thom Browne, but I suspect it was made by Bill's wife, the designer Cynthia Rowley.

Jack Pierson signed his new book at a party thrown by his gallery, Cheim & Read. They were pouring a nice wine, and I had a few. Jack may have too, inspiring the way he wore his hat. Of which I thought I heard him say, "Oh no, you can't take that away from me."

Artist/businessman Andy Spade, of the Kate/Jack Spade empire, with photographer Patrick McMullan and friend. This was taken at 2 A.M. at the Delano. After this, Patrick forced us to march to the Raleigh, where the bar was still open, and stay until it closed. And I don't remember anything that happened after that in Miami.

A young dealer with a perfectly discreet pocket square, in little peaks.

Terrence Charles works for Vanity Fair, and he's about as well dressed as it gets.

The waitresses went as school girls at the Shore Club's party for Sante D'Orazio's Katlick School book (published by teNeues).

Art lovers, artfully dressed to a tee.

Kelly and Calvin Klein with writer Billy Norwich, checking out the blue-chip art.

The art of the sport coat.

Following a dinner for the great designer Narcisco Rodriguez, Dita von Teese performed a sensational striptease act. That's a bucking machine transformed into a giant lipstick.

Steven Frailey is not only a great artist, he's also chairman of photography at the School of Visual Arts and one of America's leading beekeepers.

Glenn and Glenn. That's me and Glenn Albin, who used to edit my column at Interview, "Glenn O'Brien's BEAT." Today he's editor-in-chief of Ocean Drive.

Stylist Alexis Zipp and Ben Pundle of Morgan's Hotel Group at Narciso's dinner at the Delano.

Genius British hat designer Steven Jones in Warhol-flowers bespoke suit and Gene Pressman, who used to run Barneys and who's now advising other empires and writing books, like the forthcoming Chasing Cool.

That's Slava Mogutin, the wild Russian poet and artist, and his partner in art crime and life, Brian Kenny.

This cat checking out the NADA show looked cool in long shorts and two different argyle socks.

A highlight of NADA: snide performance art. She was reading from Glamorama.

I caught Tommy Selah, Creative Director of the Soho Grand, Natalie Joos, once my assistant and then Craig McDean's, Mandy Brooks, Assistant C.D. of the Soho Grand, and my wife in the lobby of the Raleigh.

A stainless-steel bus parked outside the beached cargo container mini-galleries of Art Positions.

A body painter on break outside Art.

Contrasting flaps and lapels are big.

This loop of tape never hit the ground. Is it art?

Nicola of Deitch Projects with another festive look.

Ray Azoulay, proprietor of the Obsolete Gallery in Venice, CA, a great connoisseur of oddities and objets d'art, not to mention trousers.

Richard Prince and that Style Guy person at the NetJets Party in R.P.'s honor at the Sagamore.

Cecilia Dean of Visionaire at the Ralph Lauren party.

Alex Galan of D.A.P. and Michael Mack of Steidl, in the newsboy cap, at the D.A.P. booth at the Convention Center.

An excellent example of the flowered shirt revival.

Ah, if only Thorstein Veblen had lived to see this. It's the consummation of consumption, and the more I walked and the more I looked at people looking at art, the more I approved of it. Sure, it resembles a feeding frenzy among sharks when a big bucket of chum has been emptied overboard, but in the best way.

I'm sure many of the people here were buying art for the wrong reasons, but that's much better than doing lots of other things for the right reasons. And I liked the way they looked while doing it. Well-dressed couples wore lots of color and lots of adult bling. In a way they are doing for WASPs what the Masai do for the Third World.

My ancient mentor Wyndham Lewis said, "Lenin in a top hat is a far greater anomaly than a Zulu chieftain wearing the same costume."

I am bored with boring-looking people and, on the opening day of Art Basel Miami Beach, they were hardly noticeable for all the people making a pleasant spectacle of themselves. You almost felt they had dressed up for the art itself.

Here's one of the best-dressed dealers in New York, Jeffrey Deitch, with a Keith Haring that was only exhibited once, at Paradise Garage, the famous dance club.

On a similar note here's Rafael Jablonka, a distinguished dealer from Cologne, sitting in his booth. I asked him about the work on the wall behind him and he said, "That's the director of the gallery." I know what he means.

Now here's a good-looking civilian. He was wearing heavy linen trousers with buttoned belt loops and a big cargo pocket. Probably the most civilized cargo pants I've seen. He also had on very nice chocolate-brown suede Belgian shoes.

Here's Douglas Baxter, the dapper director of Pace-Wildenstein, standing in front of a sexy Oldenburg. Most men don't know how to wear a shirt collar outside the jacket or combine gray with brown. This is how.

Miami has always been a place where you see Hawaiian shirts—from the lower-end Margaritaville varieties to the real collectors items. Here's an excellent example:

Here are a few avant-gardians who are hardly spring chickens, but who demonstrate that mature men can wear original clothing with the best of them. This chap was wearing a patchwork Comme des Garçons shirt, and it worked.

Here are a couple of cool, calm collectors. Both very smart. Look at the perfect lapel on the more conservative blazered gent on the right. His friend was wearing an exquisite hat and jacket. I think the jacket is raw silk, over a rough linen shirt. The kind of jacket you want to feel.

Speaking of avant-garde seniority, here is the Pope of Pop himself. Mr. Rauschenberg is a little slower getting around, but he was gracious, chipper, and warm. He had works on display at about eight galleries, but not a lot compared to his old friend Andy. I think once somebody gets a Rauschenberg they want to hold onto it.

Oscar Wilde said wear a work of art or be one. There were some ambitious T-shirts in evidence.

One doesn't see a lot of ties in the art world, but John Goode of the Gagosian Gallery (center) is wearing an optically compelling pattern from Paul Smith and sort of flaunting the label. He's seen here with Judy Auchinchloss (in fabulous shades) and Sandy Parkerson, with frames that look an awful lot like genuine tortoise.

There's a time for pinstripes, and one of them is when you're selling minimal or abstract art like Friedrich Petzel of the Petzel Gallery.

As I mentioned before, most dealers tend to staff their galleries and booths with temptresses and super-vixens. Here's my colleague Mr. D'Orazio, the famed photographer, with Nicola Vassell of the Deitch Gallery. She could sell you a painting of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Next to her is Basquiat's portrait of himself with Andy Warhol. It sold.

Here is one of the most stylish dealers of all, Mr. Barry Friedman, a tastemaker for decades. Friedman sells extraordinary furniture, photography, and paintings. Where else will you find a Man Ray, a Boetti, or a Charles Rennie Mackintosh chair? I could be wrong, but I think he's had a hand in reviving, at various times, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Russian Avant Garde, and Art Deco. But he sure knows how to wear what Thelonious Monk called "hat and beard."

Alberto Mugrabi is one of the most important collectors on the scene. He's also one of the most fun. Alberto owns a really great Warhol Mao wearing a jacket exactly the same color pink as his shirt.

Sante D'Orazio and I strolled through Art Basel Miami Beach at the Convention Center yesterday. I was concentrating on male splendor and he on the distaff side, equally splendid, for Vogue Italia. The first day of an art fair is the big day, when the heavy hitters check in early to get first dibs on the historic offerings. We took hundreds of pictures, as there were a great many stylish individualists strolling through the art. Everyone we asked for a shot complied, with the exception of Keanu Reeves. If he wasn't a movie star you wouldn't have noticed him. The real stars of this firmament were the dealers and collectors.

When we spotted Tim Hunt, the dapper curator of the Andy Warhol Foundation and a spectacular practitioner of bespoke clothing, we wanted to get him in front of one of the boss's works. I figured at any given spot in the Convention Center there had to be a Warhol within 75 feet. I was right. Here's a nice, late painting at Gagosian.

Here's New York's most intriguing and amusing dealer, Mr. Gavin Brown, proprietor of Gavin Brown's Enterprise and Gavin Brown's Passerby, the only gallery with a bar in it. Gavin is the hirsute chap on the left, and he's with two wry friends. My Swiss-cheese-like memory bank lost their names, but not their charm. Today I'll be toting a pad. By the way, my theory is that the handsome Mr. Brown's beard and its effect on the ladies is substantially responsible for the vogue in untrammeled facial hair.

I don't know if the collectors dress so colorfully because they are aesthetes or because they are in Miami. I suspect a bit of both. Here are some fellows who caught my eye with their chromatic splendor.

The shirt, glasses, and crocodile shoes all match. These gents were together. Orange top. Orange bottom.

This young gent had a terrific pink shirt on and wonderful shoes. Should have had a close-up of them. He's laughing at something I said, not the Art Newspaper, despite the wit therein from writer Adrian Dannat.

No shrinking violet, this gentleman.

We can't all be gym rats, and there is something to be said for substance. This man proves my theory: If you've got it, flaunt it.

This nearly-metallic sport jacket looked even better in person.

And here are my friends Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour Brant. Peter is not only America's most feared polo player, he is also one of the most important collectors on the planet. He was a pal of Andy Warhol's, and my old boss at Interview Magazine, which he still owns. The Brants are standing in front of one of those Warhol self-portraits where his hair seems to be electrocuted. You know who Stephanie is. She doesn't do much supermodeling these days except for exceptional gigs. She's a busy mom and second-opinion on the art collection. More later!

It really is a world of its own, and it seems to be getting bigger all the time.

I don't think that's because people are suddenly more aesthetically inclined, although maybe they are, but it does have something to do with the rich getting richer. Art is the ultimate form of conspicuous consumption. It's highly visible, extraordinarily, expensive and fabulously useless. The collector class is growing fast, and as the rising value of art makes the stock market look dull, things are booming at almost a pre-bubble level.

That's not a put-down. Better art than frozen pork bellies or Krugerands. And it's good for a nice bunch of people—artists. I'm not going to get into why I like artists now, but I'd rather see them in the big bucks than Halliburton.

Last year at New York's Armory Show I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that it is actually the art world that consititutes the ultimate fashion consumer class. These are the high-fashion freaks, the couture clients and, yes, the most intrepid fashion victims. It's something observable at any art fair, and perhaps most spectacularly at Art Basel Miami Beach, the premiere American art fair. Most galleries have dapper directors and a bevy of attractive assistants from the handsome and dapper to, increasingly, the fetching and foxy. At the Armory show I noticed that many of the most successful galleries were staffed by very attractive young women, turned out in very fashionable clothes and consistently spectacular shoes.

I thought it would be fun to walk around Art Basel Miami Beach and take a look at the art world in full battle dress. So here's a gallery of dealers, collectors, and even a few artists, manifesting a broad and delightful spectrum of individual style.

Among the most dapper of dealers is Andrew Fabrikant of the Richard Gray Gallery. His personal turnout is as blue-chip as the art he represents.

Manuel Gonzales is Global Art Executive of JP Morgan Chase, but he doesn't dress like a banker. He's wearing black. He has visionary taste in art, which shows in the way he seems to be gazing into the future while talking on his mobile.

This young man was wearing a lavender button-down, unbuttoned, a rep tie of just the right width, and a good tweed cap.

Handsome hotelier Andre Balazs, wearing a stylish barong, was eyeing the art with the famously fun beauty Elizabeth Saltzman, the Fashion Director of Vanity Fair. Seconds later Elizabeth licked Mr. Balazs for the camera of my friend Sante D'Orazio, who is probably selling it to the National Enquirer as I write this. They are very old friends.

Per Skarstedt wore a classic natural-shoulder three-button suit the way you're supposed to, and his booth featured an all-star lineup: Condo, Kelley, Kippenberger, Koons, Kruger, Oehlen, Prince, Shermon, Trockel, and Wool. A great name for a law firm.

I don't know who these formidable gents are, but they looked great. The man on the left shows how to elegantly turn a disadvantage to advantage. His cravatier shows a Rauschenberg-like talent.

I don't use the word flair much, but this fellow has it.

David Lieber of Sperone Westwater, another advocate of classic American shoulder naturalism, stands in front of a painting combining Hello Kitty and Sant Ambroeus imagery by my amigo Tom Sachs. I saw Tom's $5,000 Prada limited-edition book at the fair. Christmas is coming, Tom.

We ran into the great Chuck Close, who was very sweet to the many fans who approached him, including us. I introduced myself saying, "I'm the other guy who eats lunch at Il Buco every day."

The gallery is Luhring Augustine, and they stand that way when they pose: Lawrence Luhring is on the left, and Roland Augustine on the right. They are standing in front of a rare collaboration between Christopher Wool and his rising-star former assistant Josh Smith. When I looked at this picture I realized that Roland looks like a very slim Tony Soprano.

More later. Time to hit the parties.

My friend Sante D'Orazio, a noted fashion photographer, portraitist, and life-study specialist, has a new book: Katlick School, published by teNeues. Inside the composition-book cover are 130 more or less erotic photos by an artist who ought to know. The model for all of them is a young woman named Kat Fonseca, who looks mighty good in and out of a school uniform.

I'm not going to say much more about it because I wrote the introduction, "School Girls Rule," a title inspired by one of my favorite old Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks, and I worked hard on it, so why paraphrase when I'd prefer you went out and bought it (or at least read it at Barnes & Noble)?

There was a book-signing party the other night at the bar at Ian Schrager's Gramercy Park Hotel, and I got mine, hot off the presses, signed by the artist and his model. It was a night of torrential rain, but a cool crowd turned out anyway to toast this little gem of eroticism that seems to have put the Diocesan panties in a twist.

We saw actors Mickey Rourke, Kate Bosworth, and Val Kilmer, hotelier Andre Balazs, artist Jeremy Blake, and writer Theresa Duncan (one of my favorite bloggers), art dealer Tony Shafrazi, and models Helena Christensen, Petra Nemcova, and Molly Sims, among many glittering others.

Here's Kat Fonseca and artist Jeremy Blake:

Rourke vs. D'Orazio:

Sante, Kat, and Andre:

Supposedly some less sporting Catholics were upset that Sante's dust jacket portrait shows him wearing a Roman collar and cassock. But we all like to look like that sometimes, don't we?

There aren't a lot of art bargains, but they happen all the time at Supreme, the haberdashery/skating goods emporium on Lafayette Street in NYC, North Fairfax in L.A., and hither and thither in Nippon. James Jebbia, the mastermind of this brand, which he founded in 1994, has commissioned skateboard decks from a variety of artists, from 1998 to the present. Among them: Ryan McGinness, who did an ultracool Pantone series; the always gnarly and inscrutable theoretician of Iconoklastic Panzerism, Rammellzee; realist supreme Dan Colen; Peter Saville, who did variations on his record sleeve for Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures; Public Enemy; Larry Clark, who worked nudity, sex, and violence into his two decks; and, now, Jeff Koons.

I picked up a Koons deck for my son Oscar, who at six is still riding a Razor, and it's hanging on his wall. The kid has a pretty good art collection at this point. The Koons was the bargain of the lot at $68 (cheap).

I figure that eventually Oscar will want to ride it, so I think I'll pick up what we book collectors call "a riding copy." I remember my first board had metal wheels and a small, plain-wood, flat deck. My ass remembers, too.

Yesterday evening, as the sun rather spectacularly set over New Jersey, artist Tom Sachs led a tour of the U.S.S. Intrepid, the aircraft-carrier-as-museum parked at Pier 86 on Manhattan's West Side. The occasion was the fact that the Intrepid will be leaving its familiar birth near the circle line in just a few days.

"Oh, is the Bush adminstration re-classifying it?" quipped my wife, Gina, alluding to the 55,000 documents that disappeared from the National Archives earlier this year, documents containing information like the numbers of now-obsolete missles that were in the U.S. arsenal in 1971. Little is known, however, about the reclassification program, because the program itself is classified.

No, actually the storied flat-top is being towed out of its berth in the Hudson mud across the river to Bayonne, where it will undergo a complete renovation that will take until 2009. Tom is something of an expert on aircraft carriers, since he is probably the only artist to have built his own. Actually, he didn't build a whole carrier, but he did build a 1/6 scale model of the the U.S.S. Enterprise's "island," the massive control superstructure where the bridge, command centers, and mast are located, for his recent exhibition at Fondazione Prada in Milan.

We tramped across the flight deck, the hangar deck, through the island, the junior officers' quarters, and the chain locker, while Tom and the museum's curators made enlightening comments on the ship and I piped up once in a while, being something of a naval buff. I had impressed Tom weeks ago with my knowledge of the missile submarine—the U.S.S. Growler—which is parked across the pier from the Intrepid, and which we also visited, so I was an amateur technical advisor. When Tom referred to the Intrepid's "forecastle" I told him that he should say "folk-sul," which is how any seaman worth his salt says it, and much of Tom's knowledge is book knowledge. His sea legs seem impressive but mostly theoretical. Somehow the word came out "fork-sul," which I liked a lot and hope will catch on.

There is a fantastic collection of aircraft on the flight deck and everyone's favorite seemed to be the SR71 Blackbird, an incredible craft which set the official world's speed record on its farewell flight, hitting Mach 3.2. The Blackbird, a.k.a Sled, went into service in 1966, replacing the old U-2. Its mission was snooping on Russian military installations, and it remained in service until satellite technology replaced it. It had missles fired at it several times but was never hit, as it flew too high and too fast. The museum curator said the plane actually flew higher than 100,000 feet and faster than Mach 3.2., but that was all off the record and hush hush. As I tapped on the titanium fuselage I wondered if any of this stuff had been "re-classified" by the Bush Administration in their frenzy of returning things declassified under previous administrations.

Here's Tom pointing out the spycam port on the SR 71:

As an old submarine buff, this issue of classified antiques reminded me of how, as a kid, I'd never been able to get into the conning tower of the old decommissioned World War II subs you could tour because it was still "classified." In a world where even Congress is deemed too risky to read the National Intelligence Estimate, I guess you can't be too careful. We were allowed to see some interesting parts of both the Intrepid and the Growler. There was an elevator to the magazine that had all kinds of warnings posted on it. When the Intrepid was on duty off the shores of Vietnam, there was a marine sentry posted here at all times because, as our guide pointed out, this was where they kept the nukes that these ships did not officially carry.

Tom pointed out the snazzy Mig 21, with its brutal nose cone, noting that this was the reason for all of this, as he waved his arms at the Intrepid, all the aircraft, and the submarine with its poised Regulus cruise missile. The delta-winged Mig 21 was one of the most successful fighter aircraft ever designed—over 13,000 were manufactured and they served in the air forces of fifty-six nations. It was a fast and highly maneuverable plane that was feared by the naval aviators who served on the Intrepid because it was more than a match for the American F-4.

Sachs was also quite taken with the Israel Aircraft Industries Kfir, which certainly has the snazziest paint job on the flight deck, I think because it was created using the contemporary artists' strategy known as "appropriation." When the French decided not to sell their Mirage fighter to Israel, the Israelis knocked it off and they did a great job of it, as the 1973 war proved. This particular aircraft is a veteran of the U.S. Marines' "Aggressor Squadron," which played the role of the enemy in training Top Gun school pilots.

I think the Growler tour was perhaps the most impressive part of the evening for this artworld bunch because the submarine lifestyle is something few have thought about. Th