Jaume Plensa, “Endless III,” stainless steel, 2010, Galerie Lelong / Richard Gray Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 2-6, $20
212-488-5550
www.artdealers.org/artshow
The twenty-third annual Art Dealers Association of America Art Show is back at the Park Ave. Armory, where nearly seventy galleries will be selling painting, drawing, sculpture, and more, benefiting the Henry Street Settlement. In general, the Art Show is geared more toward collectors than any of the other fairs; at numerous (but by no means all) galleries, the more you look like a potential buyer, the more forthcoming the men and women working in there can be. With that in mind, the ADAA has made available online a free Collector’s Guide, which will help novices and experienced buyers navigate such topics as “What to Look for in a Work of Art,” “Understanding the Art World,” “How to Buy and Sell Through a Dealer,” and “What About Auctions?” But even if you don’t have deep pockets, there is plenty to see at the show, which is highly manageable, not overstuffed and overloaded with too much art and too-narrow aisles. Ameringer / McEnery / Yohe is displaying all twenty-one drawings that comprise Robert Motherwell’s “The Dedalus Sketchbooks,” what he referred to as “artful doodles” inspired by Joyce’s Ulysses, made on Cape Cod during the summer of 1982. David Opdyke’s “Bit Assemblage,” at Ronald Feldman, consists of sculptures and black-and-white drawings anchored by the large-scale Styrofoam landscape “Zenith.” Knoedler & Company’s “Milton Avery and the Figure” consists of a number of outstanding oils, while Jill Newhouse has beautiful drawings, watercolors, and small sculptures by Auguste Rodin.
David Opdyke’s “Bit Assemblage” is at the Ronald Feldman Fine Arts booth at the Art Show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
L&M Arts has a splendid collection of Joseph Cornell boxes that look as fresh as if they were made yesterday. Franz Erhard Walther’s “Gesang des Lagers” sewn dyed canvases line the walls and even the floor at Peter Freeman, while Kathy Butterly’s small ceramic sculptures cover a table at Tibor de Nagy. Paintings by Oscar Bluemner and Charles Burchfield mesh surprisingly well at Debra Force, as do paintings and drawings by Richard Diebenkorn at Greenberg Van Doren. Photography fans will find William Klein at Howard Greenberg, Paul Strand at Zabriskie, Diane Arbus at Robert Miller, William Henry Fox Talbot and Eugene Atget at Hans B. Kraus, twelve of Laurel Nakadate’s “365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears” (one from each month) at Leslie Tonkonow, and twenty of Irving Penn’s engaging corner portraits at Pace / MacGill, including Truman Capote, Salvador Dali, John O’Hara, Igor Stravinsky, Jerome Robbins, and Walter Gropius. Among the other featured artists are Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine, Jessica Stockholder at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Gabriel Orozco at Marian Goodman, Richard Artschwater at David Nolan, Alice Neel at David Zwirner, and Zhang Huan’s “Ash Paintings” at Pace. There’s also Watteau and Turner at David Tunick, “The Figure: From Old Masters through Contemporary Art” at Odyssia, Picasso at Pace Prints, Schiele at Galerie St. Etienne, and Philip Guston just about everywhere you look.