On her second day at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miley Cyrus rested.
She was at a dinner Thursday night at the Thompson hotel, for Jeremy Scott’s new book with Rizzoli, a day after a performance orchestrated by the art dealer Jeffrey Deitch jolted what had been a mostly low-key day of sales at the fair. Though galleries brought about $3 billion worth of art — David Nahmad had a $35 million Alexander Calder mobile on display at his booth — by the end of Wednesday, the most high-profile sale was a Jean-Michel Basquiat that went for $5.5 million, according to Bloomberg.
Around the time of the New York spring collections, Cyrus made a series of mixed-media pieces for Scott that has spurred a greater interest, now encouraged by her friendship with Deitch, in creating her own brand of art.
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“I can be at home from eight in the morning, working on it until four in the morning,” she told WWD. “It’s almost like writing music. You’re doing nothing but you’re doing everything at the same time. You feel OK with being at home and focusing on one thing, even if you’re doing nothing, really.”
She said the concert the night before was conceived in the same spirit.
“I wanted to sing things everyone loves, like ‘Super Freak’ and ‘Happy Together.’ It’s something people know and can sing along to, but they’re unexpected,” she said.
Though she didn’t come to Miami to thumb her nose at the traditional art world, which she thinks takes itself too seriously, Cyrus did successfully manage to shake things up at a fair that, by wide consensus, has played it fairly safe this year.
“It’s such a different crowd than what you’re used to when you’re doing a regular concert. It’s such a different scene,” she said. “That’s why I kept saying to people, ‘Get up, have fun, smoke weed.’ ”
As she was finishing her thought, a waiter brought over a cigarette on a tray, under the mistaken assumption the pop star had ordered it.
“Did that really happen? People love that s–t, don’t they? A cigarette on a tray…” she said, incredulous.
Like Cyrus’ concert, Scott’s dinner was out of the ordinary for Basel, more for pop-culture personalities like Paris and Nicky Hilton and A$AP Rocky than artists or collectors. Outside, Scott constructed a Barbie Dreamhouse (fresh off his spring collection theme) sponsored by Mattel and Moschino, where Paris would DJ later.
“She’s my idol,” Paris said of Barbie. She wore a hot-pink Barbie-inspired dress Scott had designed for her when she was 17. “I’ve always been obsessed with her. She’s beautiful, she’s perfect, she’s confident. I feel like she’s my sister.”
Scott, who was surprised she still owned the dress, was being followed around for a documentary about his life, which he said will be released next year.
“It’s a little bit over a year now we’ve been filming,” he said. “It’s not like a reality show. It’s not oppressive. They did follow me to SoulCycle one day and that was, like, too much for me.”
Meanwhile Paper magazine had convinced another non-art-world person to drop by its dinner at the Herzog & de Meuron garage on Lincoln Road: Kim Kardashian, whose recent full-moon cover in a provocative photo by Jean-Paul Goude had its fair share of detractors. Cleo Wade wasn’t one of them.
“Sick, right?” she said of Kardashian’s body. “She’s a goddess.”
If the Paper and Scott dinners were for Basel’s gate-crashers, the establishment congregated at The Dutch, at the W South Beach, for the annual dinner convened by real estate mogul Aby Rosen. Larry Gagosian, Wendi Deng Murdoch, the collectors Maria and William Bell, Peter Brant, Owen Wilson and Baz Luhrmann were all there. Sulking in a corner were Tobey Maguire, Ethan Suplee and Leonardo DiCaprio, who was still reluctant to discuss the Frank Stella painting he bought earlier that day. Paris Hilton was here, too, only she had switched the Scott for a dress by the label For Love & Lemons. Alex Rodriguez declined interviews but did manage to mention he was wearing Tom Ford.
A party backed by Dom Pérignon followed next door at the Wall and drew a younger set — Chanel Iman, Alexandra Richards, Wiz Khalifa and Hannah Bronfman.
Vera Wang wasn’t sure she wanted to join them. She’d gone once before.
“Eva Chow and I went to the Wall. We left after one minute. We were standing on a bunk with Aby Rosen. That’s when I knew I had to leave,” she said. “I don’t want to go to a rave.”