Art Basel Miami Beach

The most important art fair in the US has just ended. So how did it go? The outlook wasn't great: the big two-week November season of impressionist, modernist postwar and contemporary art auctions in New York were the weakest in 10 years, based on the gap between the bids and the estimates. Big cheese postwar artists such as Rothko and de Kooning failed to sell.

According to Marc Spiegler, co-director of Art Basel Miami Beach, there was only one cancellation from a gallery. The thirty-odd satellite fairs that were planned to take place in Miami at the same time haven't been so lucky. Instead of forking out for an exhibition stand, not to mention travel, shipping, insurance and entertainment, several dealers opted out of the smaller shows and chose to network with collectors at parties and events.

This kind of climate produces competitive opportunities. Dedicated, long-term collectors turned out to support galleries and artists. Don Rubell, Ingvild Goetz, Susan & Michael Hort, Ulla Dreyfus, Janet Kardon, Donald Marron and Agnes Gund were all spotted cruising the aisles. The pace was slower and the prices lower, but people are still buying art.

ABMB certainly packs a lot more juice than Frieze - Naomi Campbell had a big ol' strop at the opening of Photo Expo; musician, gallerist and full-time hottie Chris Taylor got arrested (again) in a case of mistaken identity. Last year, he was brought to the ground by a SWAT team outside Miami's notorious Deuce Bar after police mixed him up with a South Beach gangster of similar description. This year, he was nearly refused entry into the US by a very hostile homeland security who assumed he was the deadbeat Georgian criminal of the same name.

You can check out the official ABMB online catalogue here. Reports of major sales can be found at The Art Newspaper online fair editions. ArtForm has the best social and gossip pages.