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Kenny Scharf

Here we thought we knew everything there was to know about painter Kenny Scharf, and then he surprises us. He may not be a Miami native, but Scharf lived in the city during the '90s, which during the time his pieces were exhibited at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Bass Museum of Art, and Miami Art Museum, along with a smattering of gallery shows.

However, these day Scharf is still coming back to the Magic City, in large part thanks to Wynwood Walls, where he just completed his third mural for the late Tony Goldman's outdoor gallery.

See also:
- Wynwood Walls to Pay Tribute to Tony Goldman During Art Basel
- Shepard Fairey: New Tony Goldman Mural is About "Celebration and Inspiration"

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courtesy of Temnikova & Kasela Gallery

One of Marko Maetamm's Bleeding Houses

Marko Mäetamm's warped children's book, Our Daddy is a Hunter, and paintings of houses with blood spewing made him one of the breakouts of this year's NADA art fair. The Estonian multimedia artist has twice represented his country at the Venice Biennale, so he's not exactly coming out of nowhere but, well, he is coming out of Estonia.

His Hunter book (the paintings are also available as rolls of wallpaper) and his Bleeding Houses are highly personal works that address violence in Estonian society.

See also:
- Five Freaky Exhibits at NADA Art Fair: Mob-Style Carpet Jobs and Murder
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Artists in the 305 are a creative bunch. They find new and unique ways of creating and also performing art, not to mention displaying it. Multimedia artist Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez has done just that -- projecting her avant garde film project onto the exteriors of houses during Art Basel.

Says Rodriguez, "Miami Remix, a trance film composed of whirling kaleidoscopic mandalas created from hand-drawn and hand-scratched film images of local Miami landscapes, originally made its public debut in 2011 at the main branch of the Miami Beach Public Library, and has been streaming on YouTube for online audiences for over a year. But this year, during Art Basel, the piece [finally came] out of its digital closet and [took] to the streets of the city that inspired it."

See also:
- The Art Cops on Art Basel 2012's Worst Offenders and Attempting to Bust Banksy for Crimes Against Art
- Robert Rodriguez Punches New Times Reporter, Talks About His El Rey Network
- Art Basel Miami Beach 2012: Winners and Losers
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courtesy of Morrison Hotel Gallery

Julian Lennon, Someone To Look Up To

When Julian Lennon began photographing U2, he was granted unusually intimate access and took quite a few images.

"Then I went to look at them," Lennon told Cultist at the Morrison Hotel gallery's Art Basel popup at the Dream Hotel. "And I went, 'Shit. They look like fucking holiday photos.'

"I've got the opportunity here with U2 and I'm shooting shit. And that's where I was, I'd literally sat on the floor after a session with Bono, and that's when I took the shot. I knew immediately it was the one shot I needed."

The resultant shot (seen above), Someone to Look Up To, shows Bono in the studio, a photo of a young John Lennon aligned above his head.

See also:
- South Beach to Host 200 Vintage Photos of The Beatles and Rolling Stones
- Peter Anton's Roller Coaster Features Nearly Nude Couples and Giant Candy (Photos)

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As Miami lies panting in a puddle of its own steaming art juices, we must take the time to single out the heroes that made Art Basel Miami 2012 safe for all to enjoy: the Art Cops.

Officers Matt Vis and Tony Campbell of the International Art Police (and also of New Orleans-based collaborative art duo, Generic Art Solutions) travel to art fairs and galleries around the world with ticket books in hand, ready to write up those violating their "rules of art." 

Cultist rode along with the pair as they discussed 2012's worst criminals and the challenge of ticketing Banksy.

See also:
- Banksy's Probably Not Cool with His Works Appearing at CONTEXT Art Miami
- Banksy Graffiti Headlines New CONTEXT Art Miami Fair During Art Basel

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Bloggin' ain't easy.

A common misconception is that bloggers spend their entire day sans pants behind their Macbook pros aggregating culturally relevant blog content to maximize web traffic.

Au contraire, mon frères.

Sometimes--not often--we have to wear adult clothes and venture out into that scary unknown old folks call "the outdoors." And sometimes--not often--you get punched in the face by legendary filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.

We met Rodriguez on Saturday across the street from "Mestizo City" to talk about his latest project, an English-language network for Comcast aimed at second and third generation Latinos, El Rey.

What transpired, however, was an exclusive Robert Rodriguez-directed scene starring this reporter, and a cameo by New Times video man Jake Katel.

Peep the clip after the cut.

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courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery

detail from Car Poolers 1

Alejandro Cartagena shot his "Car Poolers" series by waiting for pickup trucks to drive under a highway overpass in Mexico. The resultant photographs, which we saw last week at Kopeikin Gallery's booth at Miami Project, show fleeting but surprisingly intimate glimpses of laborers in the beds of the trucks, heading to or from the massive, low-quality housing complexes being built close to the country's border with the U.S.

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Ceenan Calzadilla

A lot inside the eminent Scope tent at Art Basel appealed to the "shock factor." Like that very detailed line diagram of a woman giving a man anal pleasure. Or the massive installation display of dead fetuses strewn about a child's nursery. Or that "thug fountain" so generously bestowed upon the fair by VH1.

But what do you know: amid all the flashy chaos, the most interesting exhibit (to us, anyway) came in the form of Miami-based performance artist David Rohn, who we found tucked away in a corner of the fair, posing as the late Walt Whitman and reciting sweet nothings of poetry verse to passers-by.

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Jack Cotter

Banksy at Art Miami: Winner or loser?

Congratulations, reader. If you're seeing these words, you made it through Art Basel Miami Beach 2012, the event's biggest, glitziest, and most spectacle-packed edition yet. There were dozens of fairs to check off your list. There were parties galore each night, with free-flowing booze and D-list celebrities in abundance. If you spent this weekend Baseling like a pro, you're probably still nursing that hangover from two nights ago and planning to draw up a petition to make Art Basel Monday a federal, work-free holiday. (We'd sign that petition in a heartbeat, by the way.)

Still, before you go back to your regular life, with its lack of champagne carts, pop-up parties, and creepy sex rollercoasters, take a look back at who came out on top this year -- and who got Basel-slapped in the face.

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Blow Pop by Kaleo

Celebrities, the ultimate in public commodities, are common fodder for the creative set. Whether it's a garbage painting of Honey Boo Boo or a velvet recreation of the King, the A list, B list and D list are all over the art world.

See also:
- Miami Art Museum Receives $5 Million Donation
- Artist Mel Bochner Teaches Seven-Year-Olds What It Means to Be Grabbed by the Balls During Art Basel

Naturally, when making the rounds at Basel's satellite fairs, we spotted lots of famous mugs amidst the art. Check out some of the best artistic representations of our favorite stars, living, dead and legendary.

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