Big Buzz but Sluggish Sales at Art Chicago

Big Buzz but Sluggish Sales at Art Chicago

Courtesy Galerie Thomas

At Galerie Thomas's booth at Art Chicago: Georg Baselitz's "The Church" (1986)

Courtesy Pierogi

A standout work at NEXT was Jonathan Schipper's "The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle," at Pierogi's booth.

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By all early indications, Art Chicago’s reputation as an important international contemporary art fair was well on its way to being restored following its near demise and rescue by Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. in 2006. MMPI spent approximately $6 million to renovate its 12th floor as a permanent home for the show and countless dollars on heavy promotion in preparation for this year's fair; leading cultural institutions partnered to create the umbrella Artropolis, a citywide, multi-venue celebration of the arts; major Chicago collectors and patrons including Lewis and Susan Manilow, Larry and Marilyn Fields, and Paul and Dorie Sternberg opened their homes and private collections to participating dealers; and as of press time, attendance at the 180-booth fair was estimated at 50,000, up from last year’s 42,000.

Indeed, the preview party Thursday night was the place to be. Local collectors, including hotelier Helmut Horn, major Art Institute of Chicago benefactors Richard and Ellen Sandor, and Museum of Contemporary Art board chairperson Helen Zell, put in appearances. So did celebrities (although regular attendee Elton John didn’t show up until Saturday); museum groups from as far away as Beijing; a cross-section of people from Chicago’s cultural scene; interior designers with clients in tow; and artists, curators, art lovers and, of course, the partygoers who never miss the hottest ticket in town.

“Tonight has the same buzz and energy and has attracted the kind of people I used to see in the earlier days at Art Chicago,” said attendee David Williams, the chief creative officer at the investment research company Morningstar and an art collector himself.

Yet despite the nearly universal praise from both exhibitors and attendees for how professionally MMPI handled the show and its swarms of viewers, dealers reported sales that started slow and remained disappointingly sluggish-to-fair. “It wasn’t a land rush to buy when the doors opened,” says Paul Morris, MMPI’s vice president of art shows and events, “but in many ways this is a new show and it is not yet on the cultural calendar of the Russians and Europeans the way the Armory and Basel shows are.”

First-time exhibitor Veronika Jeric-Binder of Munich’s Galerie Andreas Binder reported that people were “looking but not buying”; Vicki Harris, the director of New York’s Laurence Miller Gallery, said she thinks the troubled U.S. economy has started to trickle into people’s psychology. Harris also speculated, “There simply may be too many art fairs now spaced too closely together — all attracting the same potential buyers.”

For his part, Paul Gray, director of Chicago's Richard Gray Gallery and a member of Art Chicago’s selection committee, said he thought that “having five fairs under one roof” — including the invitational exhibition of emerging art NEXT; the Merchandise Mart International Antiques Fair; the Artist Project, an independent artist exhibition; and the Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art — was a problem because the offerings were too diverse, diluting Art Chicago’s focus.

Overall, blue-chip, established artists tended to sell best at Art Chicago. Frankfurt’s Die Galerie reported more than $1 million in sales between two pieces — Max Ernst’s 1957 oil La Regle du Jeu and Andre Masson’s 1926 oil La Chambre. The ubiquitous large-format photographs also did well: Desert Prada, Texas by Burk Uzzle sold for $30,000 at Laurence Miller Gallery’s booth, while Vic Muniz’s WWW (World Map) (Pictures of Junk) digital C-print sold for $80,000 at New York’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Many dealers, especially those from New York, reported selling mostly to established clients. Gray, however, sold a Jaume Plensa sculpture, Self Portrait as H.B. III (2006) to first-time buyers from Tulsa, Oklahoma, for $120,000.