The Vernissage TV crew does one of their signature Dziga Vertov style visit to New York’s Armory Show on Piers 92 & 94.
Armory Show Sales Report
Katya Kazakina reports on the $350,000 sale of a Mary Corse work from Kayne Griffin Corcoran
- three of Corse’s shimmering paintings were reserved by museums and all other pieces in Kayne Griffin Corcoran’s booth were sold
Kelly Crow had these sales on Instagram:
Pearl Lam Galleries
- two pieces by Su Xiaobai sold for $250k each
Nate Freeman went during the snow to record these sales:
König Galerie
- sold Katharina Grosse’s vividly colored painting o.T. (2017) for €140,000 ($173,000),
Lisson Gallery
- sold Tony Cragg’s wt (extended) (2016) for £385,000 ($477,960)
- Carmen Herrera’s Cadmium orange with blue (1989) for $600,000,
- Laure Prouvost’s The Hidden Paintings Grandma Improved – We Are Coming Out (2017) for £30,000 ($37,200).
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
- two brand new, large-scale paintings by Alex Katz, priced at $500,000 and $550,000
Jack Shainman
- sold a giant screenprint by Hank Willis Thomas on retroreflective vinyl for $85,000.
Snow Storm Couldn’t Stop Armory Show Crowds, but Early Sales Were Scattered
The fair sent around these sales:
Artsy: A Chastened Genocchio Tries to Make Armory Show Relevant In Gallery-Squeezing Market
Alexander Forbes of Artsy opens his preview of the new, new Armory Show, a fair that has struggled to define itself in the new era of global art fairs, with this frank description:
“The yardstick when I came in was getting to the level of a Basel fair,” says Benjamin Genocchio of his remit one year ago when he became director of The Armory Show. The 47-year-old former art journalist came out swinging for the Swiss mega-fair and for Frieze. But in the weeks before the 2017 edition of The Armory Show, the first that truly bears his signature, a more demure Genocchio has emerged—and with him a revised strategy for the fair that he says plays to its strengths while rethinking what it means to be relevant in the current market. […]
Paddle 8 Made 50 Armory Show Sales
According to Peter Schjeldahl’s New Yorker story on art fairs in this week’s issue:
Paddle 8 reported three-quarters of a million views for the hundred and one participating galleries, but only about 50 sales. I like to ascribe the tepid action to the fact that it is absurd to buy art that you haven’t actually seen, but it was almost certainly due to the lack of see-and-be-seen sociability.
This is a remarkably biased assumption. Paddle 8’s sales may or may not have been meaningful at 50 purchases. We don’t know the prices paid or have a real comparison to sales that took place at the fair itself. If those were 50 $1m+ sales, it would very meaningful (even though it is highly unlikely.) If sales at the fair were (as seemed from the reporting during Armory Week) not very robust, it may also be a respectable number.
The point here is not that Schjeldahl is wrong or right but that his statement is built upon poorly-reasoned premise followed by a wishful pair of conclusions.
All is Fairs (New Yorker)
Paddle8 + Armory Show = Opportunity
Paddle8.com and the Armory Show held their press conference this morning but not before giving an exclusive to the Wall Street Journal which reveals the details of the partnership as well as one clever strategic use of the arrangement:
The Chelsea-based David Zwirner Gallery is taking the latter approach with a solo installation by Michael Riedel that will be available both in the booth and on Paddle8, along with supplementary works by the artist available solely online
“It’s a great platform for an artist like Riedel, who will debut a site-specific work made especially for our booth at the fair,” said Julia Joern, the director of marketing at David Zwirner. “And as soon as he installs it, and as soon as it can be photographed, we’ll also be able to share it to a much larger audience though the web.”
The value of this partnership is the fair’s ability to magnify itself at virtually no cost and Paddle8.com’s opportunity to work with a number of galleries that might be hesitant to sign up with the service. The next few weeks could be a crucial moment in the nascent art transaction platform’s trajectory.
An Art Fair’s Online Gamble (Wall Street Journal)
