MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – At the Jessica Murray Projects booth Saturday afternoon, the actress Lauren Hutton was buying a pair of sneakers. It may not sound like an art fair activity, but art takes many forms at Art Basel Miami Beach and the several concurrent fairs connected with it.

The sneakers, by Buenos Aires and Brooklyn artist Judi Werthein, area comment on immigration, and feature a map of the America-Mexico border region on the insole and a compass dangling from the shoelace.

Buying art, buying sneakers: Art as commodity is a frequent theme in work at the fair, which in itself may be the most spectacular example, with thousands of pieces of art being sold by hundreds of dealers over the past week.

Take the Chanel picnic installation created by Libby Black, a San Francisco-based artist who grew up in the heartland, the daughter of an engineer and a nurse.

Her installation consists of every item needed for a picnic, transformed into a luxury brand product. A Greenwich, Conn., couple bought it Friday at the Heather Marx Gallery booth at the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair. They plan on displaying it in their home, covered with Plexiglas when the grandchildren come over.

Ms. Black’s work plays with the over-the-top nature of luxury brands, which she was first exposed to as a child.

“My mother would go looking for fake Louis Vuittons on trips to Florida,” Ms. Black said. “I didn’t get it, but I knew it was really important.”

Through the picnic, as well as in fake stand-alone stores for Kate Spade and Louis Vuitton, complete with saleswomen, she plays with what the logo and the lifestyle represent. Sometimes her work, made of paper, resembles actual products. Other times she invents products such as a Gucci canoe, owned by Houston collectors, and a Chanel surfboard, owned by the Orange County Museum of Art.

“I’m making fun a little, but I’m also embracing [luxury brands] at the same time,” Ms. Black said Saturday night. She was wearing Banana Republic and the Gap and carrying a real Louis Vuitton wallet (purchased for her by her mother a few years ago). She opened the wallet to reveal discount cards for Safeway and the Utrecht Art Supply Store.

It’s art imitating the collector’s life, and perhaps, someday, her own.

That lifestyle is prominently on display at the fair.

“Here, there’s a ton of women that have that Hermes bag that’s $12,000. You can’t help but noticing,” Ms. Black said.

“The most exciting thing is to see people drop a ton of money. It’s seductive,” Ms. Black said. “In Miami, I’m seeing all these really great cars. When that car drives by I feel this power.”

The close relationship between commerce and art defines this fair experience. As one artist and collector, Dan Peyton, put it, “This is like a big fantasy department store for collectors. You can see so many things all at once.”

The director of the Art Basel Miami Beach Fair, Samuel Keller, is the man responsible. He is as savvy talking with artists and dealers as he is with the business executives who support the fair.

The number of parties during the course of the fair are legendary. They exist because Mr. Keller has so successfully courted businesses and convinced them to covet exposure to the fair audience.

At least a dozen companies hold shindigs during the fair, often with an art-related purpose, but not always. Of course Mr. Keller manages to make appearances – and sometimes conduct lengthy conversations – at all of the important ones.

So he was at the NetJets party Tuesday for the folks who used their share in the private jet company to fly down to Miami Beach. And he was at the Hugo Boss party at the Setai Hotel, which celebrated the finalists for the Guggenheim’s prize for artists. And he stayed a good long while at the reception on the beach Saturday, when Aby Rosen and David Edelstein announced that Mexico City artist Daniel Guzman’s work will be featured in their new W Hotel in South Beach, to open in January 2008.

He was most certainly at the dinner Wednesday held by UBS, the lead sponsor of the fair. Mr. Keller joined the head of the bank in America, Mark Sutton, to greet 800 guests.

The investment bank spends about as much sponsoring the fair as it does on events and amenities during the fair, which include guided tours in five languages, and a posh lounge that serves free champagne and meals. It offers fair tickets to 3,500 UBS clients.

“It all goes back to Samuel Keller. He does a great job marketing the fair,” the director of UBS sponsorships in America, Melanie Wright, said.

He keeps the dealers happy, too. “He’s constantly tweaking and reinventing the fair,” the New York dealer Angela Westwater said.

Some artists rebel against the fair’s commercialism. One installation offered free beer, another all the ingredients to make “social pudding,” for just 99 cents.

Jessica Thompson of Toronto created three “Soundbikes” that fair participants could ride for free (or take home for $2,500). They are cruisers outfitted with a laugh track that plays when one pedals.

“It took me weeks to get it right; I needed to make sure it didn’t sound like I was laughing at someone,” Ms. Thompson said.

This reporter took the Soundbike for a ride on the ocean boardwalk and started laughing right along with it.

That experience brought home an important point: It’s not just the climate, the sandy beaches, and the pink and blue buildings that lift people’s moods during the fair. A lot of the art can be a powerful anti-depressant.

The passionate and prolific collector Raymond Learsy explored this idea, which is really about the psychology of collecting.

“What forms are left for self-expression?” he asked. “Art is one of the last vestiges of individual choice. People want to find things that they can relate to personally, that they can contemplate and enjoy. Art is one of the few things that give people a sense of participation.”

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The best giveaways at the fair: The white canvas bag from Matthew Higgs’s nonprofit gallery White Columns, designed by Matt Murphy, and the WPS1 sun hats. What to look out for next year: The director of WPS1, Brett Littman, said he and his colleagues are talking about creating an “Art Basel Miami Beach Survival Kit.” Its contents would include snacks (because there’s no time to stop and eat), liquor (when the line for drinks is too long), and sun block.

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The best local hangout: When Robert Colacello and a posse of friends tired of going to all the “in” parties they had invites to, they headed to the bar Free Spirits at the Days Inn. “It’s a total dive,” Mr. Colacello said. “The music was great. We were jumping around until 2 in the morning.”

Ignoring the “it” spot for the dive reminded Mr. Colacello of going dancing in New York with Andy Warhol and Truman Capote.

“We’d find these places to go dancing that were nothing. One was by the United Nations, one was a hangout for truck drivers and queens in the West Village. We’d switch around every month,” he said.

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The best parties: The Whitney Museum of American Art scored a trifecta here. On Thursday, museum trustee Stephen Ames and his wife, Ann, held a dinner celebrating artists, for the third year in a row. It was also sort of a coming out party for the Biennial curators and the artists featured, many of whom were present, such as Josephine Meckseper and Gedi Sibony.

The next night, the Whitney Contemporaries took over the pool at the Shore Club, with the bright Lisa Anastos presiding. BlackBook was the party’s cohost. The key here was the generosity with the alcohol and cigarettes. The lounge “beds” were set with complete bottle service, which most certainly topped the “butlered dessert” that Bulgari had offered the night before. (Natch, the Camel cigarettes were only passed out in exchange for some personal marketing information.)

The third great Miami Beach soiree was a Whitney party only unofficially: a 50th birthday party for Whitney trustee Joanne Cassullo, held by Whitney trustee Beth Rudin De-Woody and her good friends Tom Healy and Fred Hochberg. Messrs. Healy and Hochberg welcomed 50 or 1186 801 1290 813so guests to their Miami Beach home, which used to be the pool house for the mansion next door. Projected on the pool was a video by the Neistock brothers featuring photographs from the birthday girl’s life. The invitation described Ms. Cassullo as a “criminologist, patron, bombshell,” but except for Carlton DeWoody’s kazoos and Ryan Humphrey’s guns (wooden works of art he has recently been selling on the streets of Chelsea), there were no weapons or crimes for Ms. Cassullo to investigate.

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The best nightlife art: Vanessa Beecroft’s installation of black maids in dainty uniforms in Adam Kalkin’s Push-Button House. The maids, local women cast by the artist, sat motionless while the curious and tipsy looked on and wondered what it all meant. And then it was time to drink some more.

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The New York roll call included Suzanne and Bob Cochran, Casey Spooner, Tiffany Dubin, Bettina Zilkha, Celerie Kemble and Boykin Curry, Anne Maffei, Bronson van Wyck, Susan Shin, Adelina Wong Ettelson, Tracy Stern (wearing shoes with clear plastic heels filled with sand), and Dayssi Kanavos (“We’re here to buy art, but it’s all been poached,” she said Saturday at the Sagamore Hotel’s brunch for 1,000 fair-goers).