NEW YORK—The Dow has dipped below 7,000 for the first time since 1997, and the job market is in the doldrums. Is it any surprise that things weren’t looking especially rosy at the noon bell for the 11th edition of the Armory Show, New York’s biggest international contemporary art fair, when VIPs bearing early access tickets were admitted? For about an hour the fair was something of a ghost town, with all-but-empty aisles and dealers pacing listlessly in their booths. Indeed, the message emblazoned in gold on Elmgreen and Dragset’s sculpture of a large broken marble plaque in Milan dealer Massimo de Carlo’s booth — “EVERYONE IS BROKE” — was beginning to look like a very real explanation for some serious art market woes. The piece was priced at €30,000 ($37,855), but would anyone show up to buy it?

But then things began to pick up, and the day became one of high energy, lots of reserves on artworks, and even some sales here and there. Florida collector Rosa de la Cruz dropped by De Carlo’s booth and talked prices on some Kelley Walker pieces. Florida collecting couple Mera and Don Rubell were among the first to arrive, and were seen checking out a small wooden sculpture of a clown by German artist Stephan Balkenhol at the booth of Zurich’s Mai 36 Galerie. Also spotted early on were art advisers Thea Westreich, Stefano Basilico, Philippe Segalot, and Darlene Lutz, and New York collectors Jose Mugrabi, Aby Rosen, and Harry Lis. And Marc and Livia Straus, Joel and Sherry Mallin, Arthur and Carol Goldberg, and Phil and Shelley Aarons. Greek megacollector Dakis Joannou was there. So was Guggenheim board president Jennifer Stockman. And collector and tennis great and onetime art dealer John McEnroe. And architect Steven Learner, curator Massimiliano Gioni, and Dia Art Foundation director Philippe Vergne. And film director John Waters. And dealer Richard Feigen, looking dapper. And film director Sofia Coppola, seen swanning around the PaceWildenstein booth with the Judd Foundation’s Barbara Hoffman. And even rocker and downtown personality Lou Reed, who was spotted leaving the fair’s Modern section on Pier 92. And fake memoirist (and real novelist) James Frey, hanging out at New York dealer Zach Feuer’s booth. And artists, like Marina Abramovic, who was being interviewed by a camera crew next to her work at Sean Kelly. The art world was out in force.

And spirits seemed resilient. Graffiti artist Kenny Scharf, whose snappy canvases and wall paintings filled a solo booth with New York dealer Paul Kasmin, was outside the building, wearing a sort of gas mask and perched on a special contraption that rose him to a height from which he could spray-paint his signature space-age cartoon characters on large white temporary walls. Nearby, his assistant was peddling donuts from a neon blue painted cart, part of a Scharf performance. “They just told us we couldn’t roll the cart on the carpets, so we’re stuck out here,” he lamented. As though to change the topic, Kasmin director Nick Olney gestured toward Scharf’s painting. “It’s the International Fair of New Art. And we have the newest art!”

Several galleries approached the current economic crisis with a dose of humor and aplomb. At Pace they were giving out Twinkies and Devil Dogs from glass bowls – canapes, recession-style. David Zwirner took the cake, though, featuring in his booth a large watercolor of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff by Chinese artist Yan Pei Ming. Priced at $100,000, it hadn’t yet sold, and in fact, Zwirner had gotten some pretty, ahem, interesting reactions to the piece. “One prominent art world figure came into my booth and said ‘Oh shit — I lost a lot of money on him — that’s the last thing I want to see!’ and stormed out,” Zwirner says. But the dealer himself evidently has little to complain about. By mid-afternoon he’d put a large John McCracken sculpture on sale and sold, for $150,000, a piece by Adel Abdessemed, Prostitute (2008), that consists of boxes inside shopping bags, each one holding notebooks in which the texts of the Koran, the Bible, and the Torah have been copied out by prostitutes hired by the artist. Asked how things were going in general, Zwirner replied, “We want a functioning art market. Right now I’m cautiously optimistic.”