Art Articles

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. 

3 years ago | Tags: art art market Maastricht art fair old masters

Armory Show

Holland Cotter has an article in the NYTimes that sums up the Armory show quite nicely - with special emphasis on the fact that we’re in a down market and we’re trying to sell a bunch of art in a sector (art fairs) that have been typically very lucrative. 

The Armory Show, which is on through Sunday, has always been closely watched for what it has to say about the health of the art market. Scrutiny will be particularly intense this year. And while sales tallies can’t be known for some days, observers may perceive advance indicators of distress.

For one thing, several fair stalwarts, who are also large art-world names, have not returned this year, among them Lehmann Maupin, Friedrich Petzel, Greene Naftali, the Project, Patrick Painter and Matthew Marks. Mr. Marks’s absence carries particular psychological significance, as he was — along with Pat Hearn, Colin de Land and Paul Morris — one of the fair’s founders 15 years ago.

It was very interesting to be at the fair because I could completely feel this same pulse that the article talks about. I could feel how people were feeling, I could feel which galleries were selling and which weren’t, I could really get a feel for the scope of the art market. Keep an eye out for numbers in the coming week.

3 years ago | Tags: art art fair Armory Show Art market