The Armory Show

John Chamberlain Jean Dubuffet Philip Guston Jackson Pollock Francis Alys Hernan Bas Marcel Dzama Neo Rauch

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NEW YORK—The contemporary fair’s most recent edition brought together 243 exhibitors from 55 countries, and expanded offerings to include a modern art section. Buying, by most accounts, was restrained. Several pieces commented on the tough times, such as a 2009 marble plaque by the Scandinavian duo Elmgreen and Dragset with the inscription Everyone is Broke, at Milan’s Massimo de Carlo. The message of the work, priced at about $38,000, proved an exaggeration, as it was picked up by an American collector.

+ James Goodman Gallery, of New York, sold three pieces: Corksoaking, 2007, a painted steel work by John Chamberlain; an acrylic and paper collage on canvas, by Jean Dubuffet; and an untitled 1959 oil by Milton Resnick. Wares by Jackson Pollock, and Philip Guston, priced at $3.5 million and $1.8 million, respectively, failed to sell — although the dealer says the former has attracted "serious interest."

+ New York’s David Zwirner failed to find a taker for the Chinese artist Yan Pei Ming‘s large watercolor of the alleged Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, which had a price tag of $100,000 — but the piece certainly got a reaction. "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,' " recounts the dealer, who had success selling works by Francis Alÿs, Marcel Dzama, Rachel Khedoori, Neo Rauch, and Adel Abdessemed. Prostitute, 2008, at left, by Abdessemed — consisting of shopping bags that each contain boxes of notebooks in which the texts of the Koran, the Bible, and the Torah were copied by prostitutes hired by the artist — went on opening day.

+ During the first hour of the fair, London’s Victoria Miro Gallery sold the Miami-born Hernan Bas’s acrylic on linen painting In the Reeds, 2009, for $85,000.

+ The New York dealer Zach Feuer had a small solo show of pieces by Russian painter Dasha Shishkin. A large work by Shishkin in acrylic and ink on fabric, Caution Is the Greatest Thing, 2009, was purchased for less than its ticket price of $25,000. The Florida and New York collector Nancy Singer sprang for one of Shishkin’s small works, which were priced at $5,000 to $8,000.

"The Armory Show" originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2009 Table of Contents.