Recent New York Art Fairs reviewed

Armory Show (on the piers)

This year’s show featured a tighter layout (one pier instead of two) and larger exhibition cubicles for the galleries. The galleries responded by installing larger work, including some museum size sculptures and paintings. Last year I recall there were many pieces which could be carried away tucked in the armpit—not so this year. The focus on the artists was contemporary, with almost everything made in the last 10 years--there were a few stray Warhol’s and Katz’s from the 80’s. No Yves Klein or De Kooning drawings were to be found gracing the temporary walls.

A few impressions stick out about this show:

Many works concentrated on perfect surfaces—the artist’s invisible hand. Much painting was done on smooth surfaces like aluminum—a surface that does not hold a photographic image well.

Painting is in brutal competition with photography for detail and color saturation.

Much of the subject matter seemed whimsical or personal in painting. And photographs were of anonymous architectural spaces. Another large cache of photgraphs were of ‘spaces in between’—the space which stands outside of conventional objects of interest: like an empty parking spot between a red and yellow Lamborghini. It is a kind of real life negative space. Ed Rusche explored it in his 1970’s photos of Los Angeles (along with some of Robert Frank’s work), and contemporary photographers seem to have tapped a rich vein with this subject.

Lack of significant subject matter allows one to focus on the technique of image making. And there were many types of photographic, computerized and hand-tooled techniques on display.

Photography overpowers drawing, but seeks the same effect—that of quick and casual image making.

Portraiture photography was medicinal—objective, well lit, detailed images—almost felt like looking at humanity in a Petri dish.

There were about 50 different artists doing Gerhard Richter. There were the feathery touch photorealist Richters, the abstract Richters, the Bader-Meinhof black and white Richters. Although I like Richter very much, I was somewhat bothered by all the artists who admire him so much that they paint nearly identically to him. Perhaps it is Richter’s cool and slick ethos that attracts many painters or collectors. His images are mysterious yet identifiable, his surfaces smooth, his paint-handling skilled—all qualities which seem to be very much in vogue. What is missing is the political context which infected his paintings with so much depth and meaning. There was no underlying stench of guilt and collaboration in this year’s Armory “Richters”, no reference to war, destruction or economic upheavals. In fact, this entire exhibition was very non-political. I’d hate to admit this, but I felt myself yearning for Barbara Kruger’s 1980s verbal pieces.

Not only was politics mostly absent, except notably, a Richter/Warhol knockoff of black and white repeated images of Mohammed Atta (I would have applied lipstick to his face), but there was a nearly complete absence of any nudes or sexually explicit work. Manet’s “Olympia” would have looked radical displayed at this year’s show. Perhaps from a contemporary collector’s perspective, owning a nude or a sexually charged piece makes too strong a statement about your morals or tastes---better get a photo of a room with white walls to put in your room with white walls. Play the cards close to the vest.

Pulse (at the Armory)

This fair was on the site of the original 1912 Armory exhibition. Very similar to the Armory show not at the Armory, but the work had less flash and more physical effort. It was still heavy on the ‘Richters’. Discovered an interesting painter—Cary Carsey, an Australian artist, and found out there was an Argentine painter doing work identical to mine (of perpendicular drips constructed into a grid with depth—an ill mash-up of Jackson Pollock and Agnes Martin) at the same time (2004) as I. Was there something in the zeitgeist? I sold mine for chicken feed and have none left, his were at a gallery (I forget the name). Should I be a better known painter? Should I have a gallery?

Scope (behind Lincoln Center)

This was the only fair at the end of February with no ghosts of Gerhard Richter. Some of the work was familiar as this was the show where I knew some of the participants personally (Shannon Lucy, Tom Fruin, Alfredo Martinez). The work here was not necessarily better than the other shows (in fact some painting especially had a ‘grad-school’ feel of large rough-hewn realistic compositions) but it did feature some interesting use of materials which I did not catch at the other two.

There was an installation of tiny trees cut out of tissue-thin metal with the shadows cast by the forest drawn on their platform. It somehow reminded me of Richard Tuttle, fragile and ephemeral. There was also a collection of tiny snapshot sized oil paintings (like old 1970’s color polaroids) of anonymous storefronts, made with I assume must be a single hair brush.