Colin Gleadell says ArtBasel Miami Beach is gaining momentum as hedge-fund buyers return to the art market after a year-long hiatus. But that’s not all, the Telegraph‘s art market reporter, writes:

Another optimistic sign, says Scott Wright, referring to the art-boom tendency for collectors to research and make offers for works before a fair opens, is that “the gallery is witnessing more pre-fair interest than it has experienced in the last 18 months”.

His gallery, for instance, is presenting a new self-portrait by the eccentric, 80-year-old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who has been obsessed with hallucinatory dots and patterns since her childhood. Kusama became the world’s most expensive living female artist a year ago, when one of her earliest dot and pattern paintings, made in 1959, sold for $5.8 million (£3.9 million) in New York. Another recent self-portrait by Kusama was exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery in New York in May, and sold to the biggest hedge-fund buyer of them all, Steven A Cohen. Scott Wright’s example, priced in six figures, has already been placed on reserve to a collector who will make a decision at the private view of the fair tomorrow.

Will the Sun Shine for ABMB? (Telegraph)