Notes from Palm Beach, part 1
Palm Beach! International Art and Antiques Fair
February 3-12
I rented a convertible and it rained cats and dogs. A few glasses of wine and an appetizer plate of calamari at the Breakers set me back $100. But hey, you’ve got to love Palm Beach during art fair season. It may not be teeming with all the imported New York glamsters and scene makers that net-jet down to the sizzling fair du jour, Art Basel Miami Beach, in December. But, in my mind, that’s a good thing.
In Palm Beach, the scene is far less frenzied, far less tragically hip. People are buying art, not just the latest hyped artist/flavor of the month. They’re not pressured into quick decisions because there’s a line of buyers ten-deep right behind them.
Some have deemed the Palm Beach! International Art and Antiques Fair, which opened in early February, more of a decorator’s show. And I am the first to admit: there were some lusciously beautiful things there. But there was plenty here of high quality to feed the mind and soul, discoveries far beyond the third-rate Impressionist pictures and off-day Picassos and Chagalls that pollute so many fairs.
Herein, a multi-part rundown of some of the fair highlights:
New to the Palm Beach fair this year was the booth of Goedhuis Contemporary, a pioneering New York gallerist in the area of recent Chinese art. Having taken note of all the monied younger collectors swarming to Miami, fair director Michael Mezzatesta has promised more new art in the mix. It was a smart move to invite these guys, as the cultural revolution has fostered an incredible flowering of new art, and the Chinese contemporary market has taken off like a rocket. But the best news of all is that Chinese contemporary art still trades at one-tenth the values of the big American and European names. Amongst the many compelling works Goedhuis brought was Qin Feng’s Civilization Landscape No. 4 of 2004, an intensely emotional, singularly explosive gesture, writ large: Abstract Expressionism meets Chinese brush painting (above). It’s just one example of how Chinese artists are negotiating the divide between their vast, deeply held artistic traditions and the expressions of the avant-garde in the West. Also notable at the Goedhuis booth: Yang Yanping’s gloriously lush large-scale color ink painting, a boldly colored and watery floral that was crying out for a Palm Beach villa. And sure enough, it was snapped up the first night. —M.S.
to be continued….
