A Guided Tour for a Wannabe Collector at Art Basel Miami

MIAMI BEACH- “Walk towards the painting,” the art advisor Liz Klein instructed, referring to a large Gerhard Richter work, one of his “Strip Paintings.”

As I neared the two-paneled photo print, the bright red, green, blue, yellow and white horizontal lines filled my field of vision, squeezing out any sense of depth. “It's an optical illusion,” she explained. Ms. Klein and Lily Siegel, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, were providing a tour of some highlights of the Art Basel Miami fair on Thursday. I had asked the two women to imagine I was a newly minted multimillionaire who was interested in collecting, but didn't know where to begin. I wanted a 45-minute primer on how to look at a work of art.

The Richter, on display at the Marian Goodman gallery, was a good starti ng point, they explained. As one of the most important abstract painters of the past 40 years, Mr. Richter is often credited with reinventing painting. Part of the generation that grew up in postwar Germany, he started his career doing photo-realist paintings and has continued playing with optics, perspective and color. At 80, Mr. Richter could be resting on his laurels, Ms. Klein said, but instead he is experimenting with a new medium. Mr. Richter's paintings are highly sought after and can command $20 and $30 million. These photo prints, which Mr. Richter calls paintings, start at a more affordable $2.2 million. For a private collector who is interested in optics, color and abstraction, “this is a beautiful unique work with a real physical presence,” Ms. Klein said.

And a highly established artist like Richter could provide some security for the skittish investor, Ms. Siegel added: “Any major institution has a Richter in it.”

Next on the walking tour wa s Anish Kapoor. He, too, is interested in optics. “Lost,” a large concave half circle in turquoise was on display at the Meyer Riegger gallery.

Ms. Siegel said that Mr. Kapoor really made his name with a commission he created for the Millennial Park in Chicago called “Cloudgate” (think of a giant silver jellybean). He has frequently produced concave circles like “Lost,” Ms. Klein said, playing with different colors and finishes. The piece has an audio aspect as well. Once again I walked towards the work, noticing how the blue erased any sense of depth. When I mentioned that it felt like being submerged in an ocean, my words bounced off the half shell and echoed.

“The idea of a physical experience makes the art seem accessible,” Ms. Klein noted. And at 76 inches by 76 inches, it could fit in an apartment. It was listed for under $1.3 million.

Next we walked over to David Kordansky's gallery. “This is a good gallery to watch for the next big artist,” Ms. Siegel said.

Ms. Klein explained that “part of what makes an artist interesting is the ability to tap into many different techniques, references and periods of art history and then synthesize them into a new language.”

Ms. Siegel called it “an intelligent dialogue with the past.” The pointed to the work of a Swiss artist, Mai-Thu Perret. Her highly polished glazed ceramics in pink and deep red reference minimalism, but through a traditionally feminine medium and colors. Another work used reflective silver, part of a trend of mirrored platinum finishes of which Ms. Siegel and Ms. Klein approved.

Ms. Perret also experimented with painting large Warhol-like Rorschach blots that tapped into a heroic, masculine tradition, Ms. Klein said. By using cheap acrylic carpet, the artist was also playing with t he industrial materials that male minimalists artists pioneered. Her prices ranged from $17,000 to $35,000.

With time running out, we made one final stop, at the Friedrich Petzel gallery to look at Dana Schutz's painting “Getting Dressed All at Once.” Ms. Schutz, who is in her mid-30s, currently has a show at the Denver Art Museum. Figurative painting has been out of fashion, Ms. Klein said, but Ms. Schutz offers something fresh. The idea of getting dressed all at once communicates a sense of the frenetic pace of contemporary life. “You get a sense of movement, with the figure butting up against the edges of the canvas,” Ms. Klein said. The artist also employs weird sculptural forms that make the limbs look as if they have no musculature, she said.

My advisers noted that her work referenced Picasso's portraits of his mistress Marie-Thérèse from the 1930s and de Kooning's undone women. “There is a very contemporary sensibility and use of color that successfully bridges the past and present,” Ms. Siegel said. It was priced at $125,000.

There were many more galleries and artists on their list, but as many art collectors note, it is easy to get so over-saturated that the individual pieces begin to merge together. Besides, everyone had to start getting ready for the evening's parties.