On the Piers, Testing the Waters in a Down Art Market

By HOLLAND COTTER | Published: March 5, 2009

The signs are literally everywhere in this year’s edition of the Armory Show, emblazoned on prints, spelled out in lights, carved in stone: “Capitalism Kills.” “Everyone Is Broke.” “Don’t Cry.” “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Made with Froot Loops: presidential portrait, center, by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev.

All parties involved in New York’s flagship international contemporary art fair know that, this time around, something serious is up, or rather down. But sub-7,000 Dow or no, the show is not only back in more or less full gear on Pier 94 on the Hudson River, but it’s also introducing a substantial and sometimes interesting supplement called the Armory Show Modern on the adjoining Pier 92.

The Armory Show, which is on through Sunday, has always been closely watched for what it has to say about the health of the art market. Scrutiny will be particularly intense this year. And while sales tallies can’t be known for some days, observers may perceive advance indicators of distress.

For one thing, several fair stalwarts, who are also large art-world names, have not returned this year, among them Lehmann Maupin, Friedrich Petzel, Greene Naftali, the Project, Patrick Painter and Matthew Marks. Mr. Marks’s absence carries particular psychological significance, as he was — along with Pat Hearn, Colin de Land and Paul Morris — one of the fair’s founders 15 years ago.

And then there’s the first-time presence of the historical Modernist component, comprising some 60 galleries. What’s that about? From a practical point of view, it helps pick up some of the dropout slack, pushing the total number of booths this year to well more than 200. It may also have been calculated to attract a more seasoned and financially less volatile collecting audience to the fair, now that the hedge funders have high-tailed it.

And maybe the thinking was just by being big and new, it might give the whole enterprise a lift, which it needs. The Armory Show is feeling its years. What began as a larky meet-and-greet weekend in bedroom suites of the Gramercy Park Hotel is now a marketing convention standard in every way, right down to overpriced salads, crummy coffee and the presence of people who actually believe they are V.I.P.’s.

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