Deborah Ripley reports on the prints action at Art Basel Miami:
The main event of Miami art week is, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Dec. 4-7, 2008. Among the handful of print dealers still exhibiting at the fair was Carolina Nitsch, who admitted she was worried about the art market. By Saturday, she was relieved to report that sales were very good. “Strong work will always stand out,” she declared, after selling Bruce Nauman’s Double Poke, a neon sculpture originally issued as a multiple to benefit the New Museum, for an impressive $250,000. She also sold a large etching by Richard Dupont for $4,500, and a suite of Carolee Schneemann’s challenging performance photos from the 1970s, which famously show the naked artist pulling various objects from her vagina. The buyer of this last was a museum.
The booth of Two Palms Press was crowded with viewers anxious to get a gander at Richard Prince’s new naughty portfolio of 19 print collages, entitled “Dead or Alive” and debuting at $200,000 for an edition of six. Prince’s mélange of images of de Kooning’s “Women,” clipped from museum catalogues and grafted onto pulp-magazine pinups, enables viewers, according to the press release, to finally experience “unrepressed de Kooning.” Thanks to the stiff price, sales were repressed as well — at least so far.
Miami Print Report 2008 (Artnet)