Maastricht Art Fair
The Maastricht Art Fair was also the height of good art. It was filled with brilliant old masters paintings, arts and antiques from across the world and all of amazing quality. This year the fair is no different - only this year there are more jitters than anything else. The fair is on through Sunday of this week so we’ll have to see how things fare but Carol Vogel, in her recent piece in the NY Times, seems to think that things are going reasonably well. And that this market may not see the doom and gloom of recent sales (excluding the YSL sale, of course).
While it is always difficult to gauge just how much business is done at any fair — dealers, after all, are masters of positive spin — there were a lot of relieved faces on Friday morning. At the opening Christophe Van de Weghe, a Belgian-born Manhattan dealer who was exhibiting here for the first time, had sold a 1982 Basquiat painting, “Untitled (Black Athlete),” that was the centerpiece of his booth. Depicting a full-length boxer with raised arms, it was snapped up by Laurence Graff, a London jeweler who also had a booth here, for $4.5 million.
Could this be the revitalization that we’ve been waiting for. Ben Bernanke said this morning that the recession could be over next year and perhaps the art market is already responding. Or…maybe the old masters will always be popular, no matter what economic climate. We’ll have to wait and see.
2 years ago | Tags: art art market Maastricht art fair old masters
