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.”

The young New York dealer Zach Feuer was cautious — he’d taken a smallish booth at the back of the fair at a lower cost this year — but perhaps not quite as optimistic early in the day. He had a small solo show of a handful of pieces by Dasha Shishkin; a large painting was on reserve for $25,000, but he hadn’t had any sales. Until Florida and New York collector Nancy Singer dropped by the booth, that is, while this reporter happened to be hovering. Singer sprang on one of Shishkin’s small pieces, priced around $5,000–8,000, and wasn’t shy about it, exclaiming, “She’s a wonderful artist!”

Another Florida collector, Dennis Scholl, says if he’s not jumping on any purchases, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. “We’ve always used the fairs more as research and development.” (He and his wife, Debra, regularly commission pieces for their exhibition space in Miami.) “Dealers are thinking about who their individual clients are and bringing work that reflects what those clients are interested in,” Scholl said of the fair. “Some balance has come back to things. This is more reflective of the art world I’ve known for the past 30 years.”

Zurich and London gallery Hauser & Wirth certainly brought what their clients were interested in. Namely, a solo show of sculptor Hans Josephson. All but about three of the 15 or so works in the booth were sold or on reserve by mid-afternoon, at prices ranging from $20,000 to $210,000. They’d also sold from their back room a new Paul McCarthy sculpture in fiberglass dipped in nickel coating, from his “Humble” series. The work, from an edition of 3, went to a European collector for $200,000.

Next door, New York dealer Sean Kelly was heartened by the lively crowds. Surrounded by works by gallery artists like Callum Innes, Frank Thiel, and Antony Gormley, he said they’d made eight sales in four hours. So much for the market being dead.

There may be something of a herd mentality behind collectors taking the plunge and purchasing artworks these days. “It’s like the first five minutes of the high-school dance,” art adviser Stefano Basilico observed of the mood early in the day. “People are thinking, ‘I’m not going to commit to you — what if that other girl’s available?’”

But by the end of the say, some people seemed to have chosen partners, to keep with Basilico’s metaphor. A thrilled Feuer reported that he’d sold that large Dasha Shishkin (for under the ticket price, he admitted), and redoubtable Berlin dealer Gerd Harry Lybke of Eigen+Art had sold the largest painting from his solo show of new works by Matthias Weischer for $185,000, as well as two small paintings for $35,000 each, and a few drawings. What were his expectations coming into the fair? “I expected I would sell out my booth in three days time,” he barked with confidence. “This market demands high quality, and good artists.”

Sarah Douglas is Staff Writer at Art+Auction. She blogs at The Appraisal.