Letter from South Beach

The main draw in South Beach, the thin strip of land with the Atlantic on one side and Biscayne Bay on the other used to be its endless beach front and sunshine. “Snow birds” — retirees from the Northeast — wintered here, and a proliferation of hotels reflects South Beach’s long standing reputation as a resort. But that was then: today, art, culture, and cuisine attract a different kind of visitor to whom the beach is very much a secondary option.
 
Mind you, the escapees from the blizzards of Canada and the rigors of upstate New York still flock to South Beach’s sandy stretches, but they now belong to a parallel universe, of which the other consists of museums, art galleries, design centers, murals, celebrity chefs, music — and the rather exotic transient population drawn to these attractions.

One of the main props of South Beach’s remarkable transformation is Art Basel Miami, an immensely popular yearly market of contemporary painting and sculpture established fourteen years ago. These days you’ll even see celebrities and musicians attending and showing their support. Accomplished actors such as Hillary Swank and Sylvester Stallone were there for an opening soiree as international singer Ellie Goulding performed for the guests’ entertainment.

In its early days, the show focused on shock and awe, but registered poor sales. Today, the week-long South Beach Art Basel in early December is more commercial. At this year’s show, which drew more than 80,000 collectors, gallery owners, and other visitors, a Francis Bacon painting exhibited by a leading London gallery was said to have a price tag of “thirty.” In other words, $30 million, but such are the prices that there was no need to be specific.

Not everything was priced in millions, but there were no bargains either. As a random example, at another London gallery owned by Edmondo di Robilant, an Italian art dealer, works by the Italian kinetic artist Gianni Colombo were tagged at between $30,000 and $40,000 — and selling.

What the New York Times recently called “a critical mass of cultural attractions,” complements the big art show with some more adventurous projects. For example, the always elegant and innovative de la Cruz Gallery, went heavy on German contemporary artists ranging from Martin Kippenberger and Sigmar Polke to the oversize cloth sculptures by Cosima von Benin. In fact, there was such an important presence of German contemporary works in Miami that German Ambassador to Washington, Peter Wittig, and his wife, Huberta von Voss-Wittig, were drawn to visit the area.

Music has a new (since 2011) showcase in the New World Center, the futuristic concert hall designed by Frank Ghery. The also new Perez Art Museum focuses on modern and contemporary art from Latin America. Nearby is the Miami Design District brimming with creative ideas. In the thriving muralist neighborhood of Wynwood a street art exhibit splashed across 80,000 feet of exterior walls is constantly changing.What was once a warehouse district full of crumbling buildings is now a showcase for large-scale works by a wide range of artists.

A large part of South Beach’s renascence is its array of carefully restored Art Deco architecture that lines Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue, a legacy of its earlier heyday in the 1920s and 1930s as a playground for millionaires and Hollywood movie stars. That glittering era faded with the start of World War II and with it the fanciful pastel buildings of South Beach Deco. Their maritime motifs recall the cruise ships that regularly make Miami a port of call, with portholes for windows, ship railings and sea shell moldings. For example, the 1937 Park Central Hotel, the first structure to be renovated, was once favored by Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and other stars.

Much of the credit for this revival goes to a former Communist activist and New York transplant named Barbara Baer Capitman, the widow of a prominent party member who had moved to South Beach. In 1976, she formed the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) to save the historical buildings from the predatory hands of developers wanting to destroy them. The MDPL (www.mdpl.org) campaigned to have them restored to what the writer Alexander Cockburn once called “the stagey, solemn simplicity of another era,” and successfully rescued some 800 structures from — as he puts it — “condomaniac, behemothic tide” of glass and steel architectural excess.

The League organizes walking tours of the main restored buildings such as the Tides Hotel, designed in 1936 by Lawrence Murray Dixon, one of the principal architects of Deco South Beach along with Henry Hohauser. Dixon was both prolific and versatile, and between 1930 and 1945 dominated the city, designing scores of hotels and hundreds of homes. Hohauser built the graceful Cardozo Hotel, with its characteristic rounded façade, now owned by the singer Gloria Estefan and her record-producer husband Emilio.

Hotels provide the venue for some of South Beach’s new crop of high end restaurants. Greater Miami probably has a larger cluster of celebrity chefs than anywhere else in the country, among them the ubiquitous José Andrés with The Bazaar in the SLS Hotel. Also worthy of note, Andrew Carmellini’s The Dutch Miami at the W Hotel, and the Michael Schwartz Restaurant at the Raleigh Hotel.

But South Beach’s rebirth as the largest concentration of Art Deco structures in the country was not achieved without a struggle. Many historic hotels fell to the wrecking ball even as activists and developers fought their battles in the courts. And the area has its darker moments, notably the killing of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his palatial (but not Art Deco) home in 1997. Versace was shot to death by Andrew Cunanan, who had gone on a killing spree before finally committing suicide. Inevitably, the house — Casa Casuarina — is now a boutique hotel with one of South Beach’s best restaurants.

Miami experienced its second transformation with the influx of Cuban refugees which altered both the demographics and the culture of the city. It is apparent less so in South Beach than in Miami’s Dade County, where 53 percent of the population is of Cuban origin. But the Cuban culture spills over into South Beach in the clubs, cafes, and even the parks where Cuban rhythms reverberate, and people float easily between English and rapid-fire Spanish. Miami as a whole comes closest to a bi-lingual city, perhaps foreshadowing other areas of the United States as the Latino and Hispanic population grows and becomes economically and politically more assertive.

The narrative of Cuba’s refugees conditioned U.S. policy towards the neighboring island for over five decades. But in July 2015, the United States and Cuba resumed diplomatic relations as part of a process of rapprochement. It’s too early to see the impact of this tectonic shift in bi-lateral relations, especially since Cubans in the Miami area are feigning indifference.

But warming bi-lateral relations have so far not dimmed Miami’s light as a beacon of hope for Cuban refugees. More people made the 200-mile crossing in 2015 than at any other time in the past decade. In September, bathers in South Beach applauded as a dozen exhausted Cubans and their dog named Chiquitica beached their sailing boat after being at sea for six days and running out of food and water.
  
Miami is also a Mecca for denizens of the Hemisphere who swarm into the shopping malls like locusts. Three years ago, it was rich Russians buying the condos while they were still skeletal construction sites. But that wave has come and gone. Today it’s wealthy Brazilians and Chileans acquiring beachfront condos as homes away from home — with lots selling at $634 per sq foot as condo prices have spiked 57 percent since 2009. Telemundo, the Hispanic television giant has its production hub in Miami.