A Sky filled with Shooting Stars

The folks at the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) got a bit shirty with my colleagues at ARTINFO.com a couple of years back because ARTINFO had suggested that the ADAA Art Show was a less important event than the Armory Show. That was unfortunate because not only is the Armory Show (which this year happens March 5-8) quite palpably one of the handful of major art fairs on the international circuit (while the Art Show simply isn’t), but because it also failed to recognize that much of the Art Show’s attraction stems from its modest size. This year 70 galleries fill the Park Avenue Armory quite comfortably. There’s hardly a dud booth among them – only the vacuous Mel Bochner show at Peter Freeman struck me as a waste of space - and there’s some really quite splendid work on display. So, in selecting my recommendations this time around I decided to reflect the Art Show’s relative intimacy  - and the preponderance of domestic-scale objects that dealers have clearly decided might catch collectors’ fancy in these hard economic times – and set myself a personal limit: I could only select things that I could carry home under my arm. It actually turned out to be a less-than-onerous restriction, as you’ll see … (Once again, the point is that these are things that I would buy if I could afford them.)

Suzan Frecon, "orange and yellow composition" (2008), $12,300

This beautiful little Suzan Frecon at Lawrence Markey – in “watercolor on agate-burnished old Indian ledger paper” (and how’s that for an out-of-the-ordinary material?) made me resolve to get to know this long-established New Yorker’s work better. She’s clearly an artist of gorgeous facility and a magician with color. (The real thing is actually much more subtle than the gallery’s jpg makes it appear.) At about 10 inches by 20, I could even hang it in my Lilliputian apartment.

Neil Winokur, "Andy Warhol" (1980), $5,000

Janet Borden has a booth full of fantastic photographs that almost all meet my carry-it-home-under-your-arm criterion. I was particularly taken by a little quartet of Neil Winokur portraits, all taken at about the time that I first arrived in the city: Cindy Sherman looking about 15 years old, Robert Mapplethorpe with the air (that Ms Borden reminded me he often had) of just getting home from a party, Nan Goldin looking like she used to when I’d bump into her at the Mudd Club, and my eventual choice, this portrait of Andy Warhol looking just ghastly. Since I adopted my clear plastic glasses frames I feel look more like Andy than ever, so if I bought this I could hang it next to my shaving mirror and reassure myself that things aren’t as bad as I sometimes imagine.

Michael Gregory, "Untitled (tulip)" (2008), $5,500

Andy Warhol was a voracious collector, and he didn’t limit himself to things he could carry home, but I could quite imagine him collecting Michael Gregory’s work if he was still with us. Set starkly against mysterious dark backgrounds, and presented in heavy goth frames, Mr Gregory’s tulips are just wonderful. My friend Nancy Hoffman has a whole selection of them on her booth, but I picked this particularly tightly furled one.

Kurt Schwitters, "Pebble" (1944-46), $225,000

Another piece rich in personal resonances for me is this exquisite little Kurt Schwitters from Knoedler. When I was a kid growing up in the north of England, the English “Merzbarn” that Schwitters had built during the last years of his life was rescued from destruction and installed in the art gallery of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, which is my home town. By this bizarre coincidence Schwitters became one of the first influences on my perception of what an artist might be. This weird little thing was made at about the same time as the “Merzbarn.” That pebble came from a northern English beach, and – so Knoedler’s Sallie Mapp Wiggins told me – that odd yellow triangular thing is a blade broken from a tractor-drawn plough. Wonderful. If it doesn’t sell this weekend, I hereby volunteer to look after it on Knoedler’s behalf.

Lynda Benglis, "Chimera II" (1979)

Chalk to Schwitters’ cheese, and every bit as desirable, is this little Lynda Benglis made in gold-leafed plaster and gesso. Ms Benglis is seemingly blessed with a perrenial stylistic wanderlust, but she has probably never made anything quite so intriguingly beautiful as this. The folks on Andrea Rosen’s booth were a little bit reticent about the price of this one, but let me put it like this: you’ll not get a lot of change from $90,000.

Alfred Leslie, "Untitled" (1960), $45,000

In my book Alfred Leslie is one of the seriously underestimated artists of the modernist canon. One of the first pieces I ever wrote for ARTnews was a feature review of his 2004 show at Allan Stone. How nice to find a wonderful little collage like this and to realize that my enthusiasm for Mr Leslie’s work in that review was not only well placed, but might actually have been understated.

Jean Arp, "Composition" (c.1925), $175,000

Elsewhere at the Art Show I coveted wonderful Jim Nutt pencil drawings at David Nolan (at $25,000 each), a mysterious dark Arp gouache at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, the whole wallful of Hans Hofmann’s black and white landscapes at Ameringer & Yohe, the little Larry Rivers at Tibor de Nagy, the wonderful Jim Nutt portraits at David Nolan, and any of all of the Robert Longo pencil drawings at Metro Pictures. The fair is open until 5 o’clock Monday. You should go. Don’t forget your check book.

Jim Nutt, "Untitled" (2008), $25,000