Previewing Fall Art Fair Season

The Outsider Art Fair, happening this weekend at Metropolitan Pavilion, showcases over 300 artists from eight countries.
( Ben Yakas/Gothamist )

Summary Transcript

Title: Previewing Fall Art Fair Season

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We just heard from Jerry Saltz, his 10 pieces of art he thinks New Yorkers should see. You can add those to your bucket list, but if you're in the mood to see art right now, the fall art shows are in full swing. Joining me for a preview of some visual art shows you can look forward to is Rhea-- let me get it right. Nayyar?

Rhea Nayyar: Rhea Nayyar.

Alison Stewart: Rhea Nayyar from the Hyperallergic as well as Valentina Di Liscia. Nice to see you as well, also from the Hyperallergic. Let me ask a question. The Armory Show just closed. We do want to talk about it for a minute. It was the 30th anniversary of The Armory Show. What was different about The Armory Show this year, Rhea?

Rhea Nayyar: It was a lot of painting this year. The 30th show was honestly enormous. It's always at the Javits Center in the recent years, and it's been so big, I would say there was a large emphasis on indigenous art as well, especially in the platform section that was curated by Eugenie Tsai. I was really, really fond of the totem poles that were brought in by Bockley Gallery from Minneapolis. There was one in particular by Dyani White Hawk, a Lakota artist. It kind of looked like glass tiles, but when you got up close, it was actually really these finely woven flute beads. Like, they're really like skinny cylinder beads. It was just like a showstopper, in my opinion.

Alison Stewart: Valentina, when you're looking at The Armory Show, you realize it's kind of serious buyers. It's like three-day pass is $120, $57 for a day. Who goes to The Armory Show? Is it dealers? Who is it?

Valentina Di Liscia: I love this question because I think a lot of people see art fairs as a highly commercial space. At the end of the day, they are. As someone who's worked art fairs before I was a journalist, I can say that galleries are primarily there to sell, but there are public days, and anybody can buy a ticket and go to an art fair. The Armory Show is a little bit pricier, right? It's $57 for general admission. By the way, that closed on Sunday, so I just want to make that clear to people. We'll get into some of the art fairs that are coming up in the fall.

Anybody can go to an art fair. Anybody can buy a ticket. There are discounts for seniors, there are discounts for students. At the end of the day, even though, yes, dealers are presenting and collectors are there to see and purchase work. We increasingly see museum curators going to art fairs to find out about new artists they might not know about. Anybody who wants to see a lot of art in one place, and we're talking like hundreds and even thousands of artworks can go check it out, with the understanding that the galleries presenting there are there to sell their work, make money. These booths are very expensive for galleries, and they want to break even and make a profit at these fairs.

Alison Stewart: Yes, there's a number of art shows celebrating their big anniversaries this year. Have you been to any? Are there any new shows that you're thinking about that are having anniversaries this year?

Rhea Nayyar: There's one that's actually debuting for the first time. It's called La Feria, the Print Media Fair, through NYU's Latinx Project. It's a one-day fair. It's happening on September 21, so there's plenty of time. It's also a free fair, which is not super common, but you just have to RSVP so they can get a proper headcount. Valentina, they focus a lot on the Latinx artists, especially the diversity of them. Right?

Valentina Di Liscia: Yes. We have a couple of book fairs coming up in the fall, art book fairs, specifically. La Feria is a project of New York University, NYU, their Latinx project initiative. What you'll find there is zines. Artists-made zines, art books, catalogs and things that are basically just print media are focused on Latina and Latin American artists, and that is their first year. It's exciting to see new shows popping up in the city, for sure.

Alison Stewart: Yes, their website says it's the first ever print media fair featuring a mix of exhibitors. What are we expecting?

Valentina Di Liscia: Well, we're expecting a lot of independent artists, honestly presenting booths. Not necessarily galleries or organizations, but individuals. That's an important, I think, thing to mention is that not all of these fairs, art fairs or book fairs, have booths that are presented by galleries necessarily, or organizations. For example, the SPRING BREAK Art Show is one that we want to mention because it's actually still going on. Today is the last day.

Alison Stewart: Okay, great.

Valentina Di Liscia: It closes at 07:00 PM tonight. You can go right after this segment, and there you'll see highly curated, very artist-dominated presentations. It's quite different from something like The Armory Show, where there's a very commercial feel, and the booths are transformed. I think, actually, Rhea, you can speak to one of the booths that stuck out this year that I think would be great for people to hear about.

Rhea Nayyar: Absolutely. There was a booth, the artist is named Stephen Morrison, and he markets himself as a dog artist. No cats ever. Basically his practice is kind of devoted to mourning the loss of his pittie mix, Tilly. He does a lot of memento Mori pieces centered around Tilly and seeing Tilly everywhere. There's a bunch of paintings in his booth that look like the back of canvases, like the framing of a canvas or the stretcher bars. They're wrapped in these floral bouquets, and each blossom has Tilly's face rendered into them.

It's really tender, really heartwarming, heart wrenching, honestly, type of piece that really hits you hard. Spring Break is actually celebrating their 13th edition in New York City, and they've kind of switched venues this year. They used to be at 625 Madison street in Ralph Lauren's old headquarters, and they were known for the checkered floors, but they've traded that in for 75 VARICK, something kind of more sparkly and glitzy.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about a guide to New York City's fall art fairs with Rhea Nayyar and Valentina Di Liscia, both from the Hyperallergic. By the way, listeners, if you want to share art show that you've seen over the past weekend, over the past week, so many openings happened up. Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or maybe you're an artist showing your work. Let us know. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC . All right, I have the Brooklyn Art Book Fair, which is September 20 to the 22nd. Is it just all books? What's the point of, or is it art or is it a mix of the two?

Valentina Di Liscia: It'll be books and prints, as far as I'm aware. It's also their 8th year, so it's a young fair, kind of new to the scene. I like that it is in Brooklyn. I honestly don't love having to jump over to Manhattan all the time for art-related stuff, so it makes me really excited. I do want to point out that because they're really centering disability, justice and accessibility, they are a masked event. It is a free event, though. It prides itself on accessibility on all fronts, so there's no barrier to entry. You can show up whenever and support the independent artists as well as the groups that are going to be there.

Alison Stewart: When you think about the vibe of the fair, the three days, what do you think it is at the Brooklyn Art Book Fair?

Valentina Di Liscia: I think it's going to be very, very progressive. It does a lot. I mean, it's featuring a lot of groups with marginalized or underrepresented voices. Youth Against Displacement will have a section there, and they've done a lot of work combating gentrification in Chinatown. There's also going to be the South Asian avant garde group, which the acronym for them is SAAG, which is a south asian dish, which I think is a really cute little alliteration [laughter]. I think it's just going to be focusing on underrepresented and emerging artists.

Alison Stewart: Where's that, again?

Rhea Nayyar: That's going to be in Clinton Hill. There's two spots for recess Art. Yes, super easy to get to, I think, on the G train, for sure.

Alison Stewart: Valentina, I want to talk to you about the Affordable Art Fair, September 25 through 29th. This is one of my favorites, actually.

Valentina Di Liscia: Yes, I mean, the Affordable Art Fair is interesting because it's a place that people can go to to perhaps become an art collector for the first time. I think that's so exciting. I think art fairs are sometimes seen as places that are, you know, not necessarily the most accessible. You can buy something for, you know, $30 at the Affordable Art Fair. I will say tickets are, I think, around $35. They do have some discounts, and it's just exciting to know that, yes, you can buy something for $30, but you can also buy something for $12,000, and that will be in the metropolitan pavilion in September.

The actual range is between 112,000. I have seen things that are a little bit less pricey there. I have seen small prints and additions, but really, it's billed as a place that anybody can go to and pick something out for the very first time. Even if you're not actually going to buy anything, I'd say check it out, because it's a great place to see a lot of local artists.

Rhea Nayyar: There is something literally for everybody there. I went last year, and you could literally buy something for someone who's blind, honestly.

[laughter]

Valentina Di Liscia: It's interesting. I took my son to it, and I showed him a piece of art, and I said, "Look, you can get something like this for the same amount you can spend on sneakers."

Rhea Nayyar: Exactly.

Valentina Di Liscia: We had a real discussion about it, and he bought a small piece of art, and he hung it in his room, and he's been really thrilled with it.

Rhea Nayyar: Oh, my gosh. Yay. A young collector.

Alison Stewart: What advice would you give someone, Valentina, who's maybe thinking about, "I would like to be a collector."

Valentina Di Liscia: See a lot of art before you buy anything and go to the galleries. A lot of the galleries, all of the galleries really are free. You can walk in. When you go to an art fair, you buy a ticket, you walk, and you can ask questions. Remember, the booth attendants representing the galleries, like I said, are there to make a profit. They might not want to stay and chat with you for an hour if you're not going to buy anything, but if you go on the more public days, which tend to be on the weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, you might find that a booth exhibitor is less busy with collectors and more eager to chat with the public.

Ask questions, get information. I think this is a bit trite to say perhaps, but buy what you love, and don't worry about market appreciation and value, because at the end of the day, ideally, the art we love, the art we purchase, is art we're going to live with, that we want to be genuinely surrounded by. I think that's the best way to collect.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Melissa, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Melissa. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Melissa: Hey, there. Just want to say, go see the SPRING BREAK Art Show. It closes today. I really loved Ali Dougal's work. Monumental paintings that you can literally, like, walk into urban and country, dense forest, very painterly, not like anything else there, which I found a lot of, like, confectiony little paintings of pink and green. This was completely different, and I strongly urge you all to go.

Alison Stewart: Well, thank you. Appreciate you giving us a call. Let's talk about the other art fair, which is October 17 through the 20th. It's in Gowanus. There's a DJ performing program elements. Tell us a little bit more about it.

Rhea Nayyar: Yes. The other art fair also markets itself as a very independent, forward art fair and that artists are invited to apply directly rather than through gallery representation or other curators. It does show a lot of support for the whole artistic process, from creating the work to showing the work, to marketing oneself, which I think is really exciting and kind of puts the ball back in the artist's court, for sure.

Alison Stewart: How does the performance fit in? Do you know yet?

Rhea Nayyar: I don't know yet, but I know that it's kind of meant to curate a very intimate social experience that divorces itself from the standard market stuffiness. It should be something where you can socialize.

Alison Stewart: Well, that's interesting.

Rhea Nayyar: Yes, no, it's going to be really fun it's going to be-- Of course, it's anchored by selling art.

[laughter]

Valentina Di Liscia: I just want to point out that the other art fair calls itself 'boast', that it's never normal.

Alison Stewart: It's never normal.

[laughter]

Valentina Di Liscia: Just go in knowing that you're going to find some more immersive things, more maybe participatory. Like you said, Alison, there's a DJ, there's performances, there's art, and it's all woven together in this one big experience.

Rhea Nayyar: There's also something interactive that I just wanted to point out. There's a section called the Karmacy, which is a note-driven apothecary where people can leave notes of aspiration for other people to take with them and so on. It's like, give something, take something. I think it's a really sweet touch.

Alison Stewart: That's nice. Let's talk to Alice from Park Slope. Hi, Alice. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Alice: Yes. I'd like to mention a show that opens on September 21, just a preface to it. The Brooklyn Museum sent out a call for all Brooklyn artists to try to be in a show that the Brooklyn Museum was curating. It was an open call, and not surprisingly, I'm sure thousands of artists applied, many were rejected. BWAC, which is a Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, has created a Salon des Refusés, based on the 19th century French Salon des Refusés, which was an exhibition in response-- again, of the art that was rejected from the academy shows that were happening in Paris.

That's a little bit of what this show is trying to be. It's a huge space. It has at least 200 artists in it. It's at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, open on the weekends. It's on Van Brunt street, and it opens on September 21.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much. The last show you have, Valentina, is this the art show that you mentioned, the ADAA?

Valentina Di Liscia: The art show. Yes. That closes off the fall season of fairs in New York City. It's held by the Art Dealers Association of America, which is the ADAA. The art show is held at the Park Avenue Armory. It starts on October 30 through November 2. I'll have to say that it's a more glamorous affair than the other art fairs. That doesn't mean that it's more expensive to get in. It just means that maybe on day one, you'll see people a little bit more dressed up. You might see a cart rolling around with oysters and champagne. I've seen it before. I don't know if they still do it. Please do not quote me on that.

[laughter]

Early bird pricing is available now through October 15 for $20. It's a good opportunity to get a ticket. It's just United States exhibitors who are members of the ADAA. There's about 75 galleries. One interesting thing about the art show this year is that more than half are going to be solo exhibitions, so dedicated to a single artist. Personally, I'm really excited by this spotlight initiative that they're doing this year for the first time, where they're actually focusing on a single city. This year's city is Houston.

Alison Stewart: It is your guide to navigating New York City's fall art fairs. Thanks so much to Rhea Nayyar and Valentina Di Liscia from the Hyperallergic. Thanks for coming in.

Rhea Nayyar: Yes, thank you so much for having us.

Valentina Di Liscia: Thanks, Alison.

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