Quite frankly, I felt deflated and depressed after walking the rounds of the two piers of the Armory art show. The highlight for me was all the free art magazines that I picked up. Lots and lots of European and New York city galleries are crowded into a small space. Apparently a lot of art is sold here and some galleries make most of their year's sales here. In a rush of buying activity galleries and "buyers" are brought together in a mall-like selling frenzy.
There was very little art that I "felt" anything for. Call me old fashioned, but shouldn't art evoke some sort of response, some sort of "revelation" that is as much about the journey in arriving there, as in the "sensation" of the moment?
To my eye, much of the art seemed infantile and jaded. Jarring bright colors seemed to have co-oped any formalist sense of color and content was more important than a developed visual language. I couldn't help but feel that I was at some sort of circus sideshow, being taken for a ride. Divorced from any sense of "rigorous discipline" or hard-won truths wrestled from solving meaningful problems, informing or deepening the work I was viewing.
Catching the subway home I was gratified to find out that I was not a lone voice in the wilderness. Reading Modern Painters I discovered that Jerry Saltz, Senior Art Critic for the Village Voice had this to say about art fairs.
"Their organizers claim that art fairs are 'important' and that they're 'forums'. In reality art fairs are adrenalin-addled spectacles for a kind of buying where intimacy, conviction, patience and focused looking, not to mention looking again, is virtually non-existent. Art fairs are places where commerce has replaced episemology, and the unspoken contract between artists, dealers and collectors has been scrapped. As one private dealer gleefully told the New York Times recently, 'It's one-stop shopping. The mall experience... fashion, parties and fun for all wrapped up in one.'"
I'm off to the DIVA Digital and Video Art Fair, the Williamsburg After Hours tomorrow so hopefully those will be more inspiring.
