Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Actress Faye Dunaway, surrounded by a pack of photographers, posed yesterday at Art Basel Miami Beach, part of a weeklong art fair that even a brutal recession can’t kill.

As Dunaway, in tight pants and high-heeled boots, played the sex kitten for the flashing cameras, big-money art collectors strolled the Miami Beach Convention Center, air kissing and relishing the slower pace and reduced prices of the new buyer’s market in modern and contemporary art.

“The fair is less frenzied than last year,” said art collector and dealer David Mugrabi, whose family owns hundreds of Warhols. “But there are still a lot of big buyers here, and they want to feel they got a deal.”

Dealers who rode the recent art boom are now obliged to rethink their prices.

“We’re getting offers at less than the asking prices,” said dealer Andrew Fabricant at Richard Gray Gallery, whose stand was adorned with large paintings by Alex Katz and Robert Motherwell. “No one is rushing to buy anything, but it’s not coming to a crashing halt.”

Sales were slower than usual, though some early deals gave gallery owners hope. Christophe Van de Weghe sold two small Warhols -- a painted heart for $75,000 and a Polaroid self- portrait of the artist in sunglasses and a blond wig for $22,000. “It’s nice to sell,” Van de Weghe said. “You cover your expenses in the first five minutes.”

Blowing Off Steam

Following one of the most difficult seasons ever on Wall Street, collectors were looking for a fun week in Miami to blow off steam.

“I feel good coming in here after all this,” said New York collector Gilbert Harrison, chairman of Financo Inc.

The seventh annual Miami fair follows a series of fall auctions that signaled a decline in art prices. Buyers at Miami said they would rein in their spending.

“I’m not on a buying spree, but I’m targeting specific things,” said collector Rosa de la Cruz of Key Biscayne, Florida, who is opening a three-story, 30,000-square-foot private museum next year.

De la Cruz was among the cluster awaiting the fair’s VIP opening at noon. The start wasn’t the stampede of recent years, when hundreds of collectors raced into the hall like Wal-Mart shoppers. This year was more like an Upper East Side tea party than a land run.

“We are very much in a wait-and-see moment,” said New York art adviser Jennifer Vorbach.

Affordable Antiquities

Artist and film director Julian Schnabel and his son paced the aisles, while fashion designer Calvin Klein assessed the mood.

“It will be interesting to see how the attendance and sales are affected,” said Klein, who said he prefers the clean lines and prices of antiquities to contemporary art. “So few people are interested in antiquities -- it’s more affordable.”

Nearby, Acquavella Galleries hung a $7.5 million Picasso painting of a man in a yellow hat along with a $2 million Marlene Dumas painting based on a photograph of a stripper.

Donald Marron, chief executive officer of Lightyear Capital, took a break from art hunting and sat beneath the Picasso, chatting on his cell phone. His curator, Matthew Armstrong, said they were “on the cusp” of buying four works.

The slowdown was visible around Miami, beyond the convention center. Attendance at the Tuesday night opening of the edgy NADA fair, for younger dealers, was sparse. Sales were healthy, though at much lower prices.

Matthew Higgs, director of the nonprofit White Columns, brought “a recession-proof booth,” including $150 Xerox prints by hot artists in editions of 50. Twenty-six prints by Wade Guyton, of a flaming page, sold in the first two hours. Miami collector Dennis Scholl loved the price and bought two.

Chinese Paintings

Across town, in the newly gentrifying Wynwood District, the opening of the Art Miami fair buzzed with locals munching sushi and ogling art. Buyers lurked among the browsers. Chinese contemporary dealer Michael Goedhuis sold six brush-and-ink paintings for $478,000 to a collector based in Shanghai and Vancouver.

Across the street, at “The Station,” a curated, non- selling show attracted young women in stilettos and their thin- bearded male counterparts to an unfinished apartment building. Visitors received gift bags with flip flops and small bottles of Grey Goose vodka. Work by 40 artists was assembled by artist- curator Nate Lowman and Whitney curator Shamim M. Momin, including a full-scale recreation of a methamphetamine lab called “Hello Meth Lab With a View,” by Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe.

By late yesterday afternoon, Miami painter Gwendolyn Siniard was ready for a smoke. Seated on a canvas folding chair on the sidewalk outside a Walgreen’s drugstore in South Beach, her paintings of Art Deco buildings and palm trees had failed to draw any interest from the fast-walking art crowd.

Siniard’s canvases were priced at $150 to $1,000. Puffing on a menthol cigarette, she said she was fed up with Miami.

“I haven’t sold a thing in a month,” she complained.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com.

Last Updated: December 4, 2008 00:01 EST