The consensus is in: sales at Art Basel Miami Beach and her many sister fairs were grim, but not as bad as last year. Over at ABMB proper, a performance piece by Regina José Galindo captured the mood. The artist submerged herself in a bathtub until she could no longer breathe. She came up for air, then plunged back in again.

Or as one local gallerist put it, right around the time her booth at Scope Miami broke even on Saturday afternoon: “At least I didn’t lose money, like last year.”

“We’re selling a lot today,” cheered Charo Oquet, who presided over the Zones Art Fair, home of the winner of this year’s best name for an event, Art Baselita (Runner up: Art BASSel).

The out-of-town press agreed. “Stronger sales than last year,” reported the international edition of The Art Newspaper, while the NYT observed “Smaller Prices and Relief.”

Of course, for some of us, the only art we could afford to collect was the free postcards stacked up at generous booths. (See selections from my collection further down.)

We were left with nothing to do but look at the art. This year, there seemed to be a glut of Baldessari, with dot-covered faces popping up in booths all over town. At ABMB, JB was rivaled only by MJ, with Kehinde Wiley‘s 10 foot by 10 foot plus oil painting of the King of Pop a la Rubens at Deitch Studios exciting more buzz than any other work at the Convention Center and in the blogosphere (Arrested Motion has a complete catalog of glimpses of the Gloved One, while coolhunting compares Kehinde’s King to Rubens’s).

If your timing was right, you could make your own comparison of a ginormous self-portrait of Chuck Close at Art Miami to the real-life mug of the painter/photographer/printmaker as he wandered around Wynwood. (The portrait was only $120,000! That seemed like a bargain to me, but then again, I’m only collecting postcards).

Much of the art was exactly what you would expect: Picasso pottery, Botero curves, Lorna Simpson portraits. Then again, the Picassos and the Warhols at ABMB might have commanded the highest pricetags, but the scruffier fare over at Wynwood commanded our attention.

Here you might find what you would never expect. Like “The Riot Temple” set up outside the entrance to Scope Miami — a robot gamelan orchestra attached to a temple made of Shoji screens and police riot shields. Or Gohar Dashti‘s domestic scene between husband and wife plopped down in the middle of a desert patrolled by soldiers at Art Asia…Just a few reminders that a dip in art sales might be the least of our worries.

MY POSTCARD COLLECTION Here are some of my favorites: “Made in China” by sculptor Sui Jianguo from Exhibit A at Art Asia; the Kate Clark and Bernardi Roig sculpture combo from Claire Oliver at Art Miami; and the “Todo es Mentira” card from the Karlo Andrei Ibarra series “Souvenir Stories: Beyond the Paradise” from Rica at Photo Miami.