I love March, not only because it is my birthday month but also (and possibly more importantly) because it is Armory Week. At this time of year, despite the bitter cold, collectors, dealers, and art enthusiasts alike flock to New York to visit the art fairs happening around the city.
Considering that Armory Week falls right on the tail of fashion month (a handful of my friends are still in Paris closing out the Fashion Shows there) I marvel at the energy of people bustling around from booth to booth, fair to fair. But as they say, we sleep when we are dead, so off to the races we go…
The other night I attended a fab soiree at Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan’s apartment to celebrate Jonathan’s collaboration with Toms. [1] Jonathan and Simon have exquisite taste and live an artful life in all senses of the term. I brought my friend Max, who works as an editor for Penguin Books and is the wittiest person I know. Max is great at parties and I adore him. [2] We ran into lovely and brilliant Tom Delavan, who recently became the design editor at New York Times T Magazine [3] and sipped ginger cocktails with Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Toms. I’ve always loved the mission of the company: for every pair of shoes you buy, a pair is donated to a child in need. The new line of Jonathan Alder x Toms includes sunglasses which are not only incredibly chic, but with every pair you buy, a cataract surgery is preformed in a third world country. Max and I wore them to get drinks at The Standard Hotel after the party.
Now, onto the fairs: My first stop was the ADAA (Art Dealers Association of America) Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory. This fair shows works ranging from older masters and blue chip artists [4,5,6] to recent works by some compelling young artists. [7,8,9] As soon as I walked in, I ran into my friend Leslie, who works at Wienstein Gallery based in Minneapolis. The Wienstein Gallery booth showed a solo Vera Lutter show and I found it striking. [10,11] Vera Lutter creates unique prints using a pinhole camera that she creates herself, with varying sizes depending on the space. [12]
I was madly in love with the photographs by Arne Svenson exhibited in Julie Saul’s booth. As I’ve mentioned previously, Julie is a dear friend and I think she knocked it out of the park (Avenue Armory… hehe) with her booth. Svenson’s series Neighbors is a fascinating study on privacy or lack thereof in a metropolitan city such as New York. It is a social commentary on the have’s and the have not’s, and the push-pull relationship the wealthy have with voyeurs of their lives.
Arne Svenson shot the residents of a super glossy, super exclusive building in TriBeCa through the massive glass windows of their apartments. (This is especially interesting to me because I used to live across the street from this building and would occasionally sit with a glass of wine and watch the swanky parties.) He made sure that the photos did not show any faces, so the people in the photos are anonymous to anyone but themselves. [13,14] The tenants of the building filed a class action lawsuit, and lost, making this series a parable to those who live in glass houses.
I was charmed by a little photo collage by Allan D’Arcangelo, combining a real photo of an overpass with a simple line drawing of a road and a cloud. [15] On the note of clouds, I really liked the playful multi-media works by Spencer Finch at James Cohan Gallery’s booth. From a distance, they looked like simple photographs of white clouds in a blue sky. [16] But upon closer inspection they turned out to be montages of clear Scotch tape layered over blue construction paper. [17]
I was stopped in my tracks by three gorgeous Irving Penn nudes in the Pace/MacGill booth. They were so expertly juxtaposed, I felt a bit emotional looking at them. [18] Ann Hamilton was creating on-site portraits as part of her O N E E V E R Y O N E series and that drew quite a crowd. Subjects stood behind a film through which they could be seen but could not see, resulting in blurred but intimate images. The photographs were printed on a delicate fine gampi paper and I thought they were beautiful, and a bit nostalgic. [19]
Post Note: The new Jonathan Adler x Toms launch includes adorable sandals, which I would highly suggest you buy if you like sandals. (Sandals, as a side note to this post note, are not for the subway. I never cease to cringe when I see open toes on the subway. That is just not ok.)
