Walking around the two-pier behemoth that is today’s Armory Show, it’s hard to imagine that this was once a scrappy upstart hotel fair. Over the course of the week, I heard various people speak nostalgically about what the Armory had been like in its early years, as if it had been some prelapsarian moment before the art world discovered capitalism. However, in a 1995 Frieze magazine survey, co-founder Pat Hearn stated bluntly that “the art fair is simply an effort to move the product in whatever way possible.”
ny art fairs 2011
Posted inArt
Emerging Collectors at 4 NY Art Fairs
For the past three days, we traveled to four New York art fairs to find out who are the people that attend, if they buy art and how do they judge art. The special series, Emerging Collectors at the Fairs, was sponsored by 20×200 and was comprised of a random sampling of attendees to each venue.
Posted inOpinion
A Cheat Sheet for Art Fair Coverage
Over the past week, we’ve brought you an enormous volume of art fair coverage. Art fair week may be over, but just in case you missed any of the events, we have your answer here: a Hyperallergic art fair cheat-sheet, with links to all of our separate articles plus a few from other blogs.
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Who Goes to NY Art Fairs? Emerging Collectors at Scope
The fourth and final in a special series sponsored by 20×200 that profiles some of the people who are attending the New York art fairs this week. The following is a random sampling of attendees at the 2011 Scope art fair on Saturday night. Here is who and what I found on a Saturday night in SoHo.
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The Fountain Art Fair Alternative
The Fountain Art Fair was parked at Pier 66 in Chelsea, floating on the water as if at any moment it could set sail for an undisclosed location. The odd cousin in the family of New York art fair week, Fountain is a quirk DIY vision of what’s happening in contemporary art today.
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Who Goes to NY Art Fairs? Emerging Collectors at The Independent
The third in a special series sponsored by 20×200 that profiles some of the people who are attending the New York art fairs this week. The following is a random sampling of attendees at the 2011 The Independent art fair on Friday night. Here is who and what I found on a Friday night in Chelsea.
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Paying Attention at Moving Image 2011
The first thing that I noticed about Moving Image, an art fair based entirely around video works, was the relative calm. Gone were the crowds, gone were the collectors running rabidly from booth to booth, gone were the chatty gallerists and curators. Moving Image is a place to look at art and experience it one on one. It takes some time, but walking through the videos I definitely caught a few stand out pieces that would have been overwhelmed in an regular art fair display.
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Who Goes to NY Art Fairs? Emerging Collectors at The Dependent
The second in a special series sponsored by 20×200 that profiles some of the people who are attending the New York art fairs this week. The following is a random sampling of attendees at the 2011 The Dependent art fair on Friday night. Here is who and what I found on a Thursday afternoon in Chelsea.
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Brooklyn’s First Art Fair
When the Verge art fair launched Verge Brooklyn, many Brooklyn galleries were peeved that the DUMBO-based event would take away from local galleries scenes. Why would they have to pay to be in an art fair in their own borough when Armory week was the only time they could get out of town collectors to their spaces? Even if the Verge Brooklyn fair began with a bumpy start it was able pull of something no one has tried before, an art fair in Brooklyn
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What is Art-xploitation?
Wayne Coe creates complicated sand paintings on the sidewalks and floors of New York using the language of gay male porn theater advertising from the 1970s and 1980s to create ads for contemporary artists. I caught up with the artist, who was performing for six hours yesterday as part of Brooklyn Art Now in DUMBO , to ask him about “art-xploitation,” which he says is “the use of male film hyperbole to sell art.”
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Feeling Civilized at the 2011 Volta Art Fair
Across the street from the Empire State Building is the Volta Art Fair, a sophisticated and civilized art fair where galleries from around the world present solo artist projects. Elizabeth Tenenbaum and Elissa Levy of InContext Studio Tours gave me a preview of Volta New York 2011. After attending six art fairs during Armory Week, Volta felt different to me. It was a tightly curated, intelligent and a refreshingly friendly view of international contemporary art. The attitude here was more like a TED conference than an art fair, seemingly more concerned with good ideas than with commercial sales.
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Is The Art Show a Senior Citizen’s Swinger’s Club Past its Prime?
The Art Show has been hosted by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) for the last 23 years, reigning supreme as the longest running national art fair. The ADAA consists of 175 galleries but only seventy exhibitors enrolled this year, excluding stunners like Andrea Rosen, Betty Cunningham, PPOW and Gavin Brown. A large majority of the participants are located uptown between 50th Street and 90th Street. The generalized content (“cutting-edge, 21st century works” and “museum quality pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries”) and my fears of dated academia prepped me for the deflated viewing that was The Art Show. The ADAA’s Executive Director spoke to the “calm and intimate atmosphere” of The Art Show. Although the Park Avenue Armory’s soaring “balloon shed” construction is partially responsible, the cavalcade of elderly patrons weren’t exactly rambunctious. The air-kisses exchanged between crotchety senior citizens summoned a swinger’s club way past its prime.
