Art fairs are to the art world what boat shows are to boat fans—a fast, slick way to show off the goods. They’ve been around for a couple of decades now, popping up all over the world. They’re slowly altering the traditional gallery system as a way to sell art. From Henry Kahnweiler (who opened his first gallery in 1907) to Leo Castelli (who represented the major pop artists in the 60s), art dealers have always practiced the subtle, private, and dignified art of backroom business —nurturing individual collectors over long periods of time and slowly nudging, cajoling, and flattering them into buying the works of the artists they represent.
Now comes the art fair, where art dealers sit out in the open, for all to gawk at, waiting for random rich shoppers to stop, point, and say, “How much?” The job is exhausting — five days in a row, waiting for hours on end for the truly rich to separate themselves from the looky-loo’s who have merely paid the twenty bucks’ admission to walk around and see the art.
When my friend who works for a Manhattan art dealer dealing high-end Modern art called to ask if I had a student who might help her out for two days at this year’s Art Show here in New York, I told her that I’d love to do it myself.
Painter though I am, I have a decidedly bourgeois side to me that couldn’t resist the idea of dressing up and playing one of those gallery girls (OK, OK, so I’m a little long in the tooth for the part) who sits at the front desk greeting visitors with a cultivated, snooty indifference. For the fair, I aimed to look as downtowny rich as possible (I’m limited in how far I can go by my stubby nails and my cruddy shoes — both sure giveaways that I’m a pretender) so that if someone were to inquire about a Gorky, for example, I could point with aplomb to the precise spot in the book indicating $3.2-million dollars.
My real job at the fair was not to quote prices (my friend did that), but to keep my beady eyes focused on the smallest works of art to prevent them from “walking.” But standing around guarding art for hours on end led to my imagining that I, too, was the kind of person who could walk into a booth, stop in front of a painting, point, and, when a dealer responded with, “Six point five” (no one bothers with the “million” part), not blink.
During one of my breaks, I removed my I.D. and took a slow stroll up and down the aisles to check out not just the 70 or so galleries that were represented at the fair, but the fairgoers as well. Although many of the men looked like investment bankers and the women looked like they lived at their plastic surgeons’ offices, there were lots of looky-loo’s as well.
I came across a booth with two paintings by Albert Gallatin — a name that’s not exactly on the tip of most people’s tongues, but whom I happen to admire very much. He was a rich painter from the 1940s who belonged to a group known as the “Park Avenue Cubists.” I stopped, stared at the pictures for a long time, and even though the red dots indicated both paintings were sold, inquired as to their prices.
“That one was thirty, and the other fifty,” the dealer said sweetly (I knew she meant thousand, of course). Cheap little things, by any art measure.
“Listen,” I said. “Do you have any other Gallatins — perhaps in the twenty-thousand range?”
There was a long pause. I’d given everything away with that single question. Then again, maybe she’d noticed my hands, or had seen my shoes.
“No, darling, not that I know of. But if you leave your card, we’ll get back to you.”
I gave her my card, which identifies me as a painter and a professor of painting. We were both pretending, which was just fine with me.
