Even before the fair began, Scantland purchased a work by Igshaan Adams, an artist known for lavish tapestries on view in Casey Kaplan Gallery’s booth. For the most part, Scantland says, he spent the first few hours of the fair just looking around. “Leslie Martinez, who’s showing at And Now gallery’s booth—I’d seen images of her work, but to see them in real life? That’s what it’s about,” he says.
Looking Ahead
The art fair comes on the heels of New York’s November auction season, where a few record-setting weeks nevertheless showed signs of slackening demand. The spotty bidding on view was attributed by some to jitters over the prospect of global recession.
Multiple dealers wonder if such fears will trickle down (or flow sideways?) into the rest of the market. “I think every dealer in the world asks themselves that question,” says the dealer and former Goldman Sachs partner Robert Mnuchin. “Has it, is it or will it? And I think the answer is none of us know at the moment.” His major takeaway from the November auctions, he continues, is that “the strongest part of the market was the outstanding works. Anything that was outstanding, almost irrespective of the price—not totally, but that was the predominant desire.”
Given the size of the fair and breadth of its offerings, it would be a stretch to say that most of the work at the fair is outstanding. But at the end of the first day, multiple galleries reported major sales. Mnuchin says he sold a large work by El Anatsui for $1.75 million. Gladstone Gallery reports selling an Alex Katz painting for $1.2 million. And Jack Shainman Gallery says it sold a 1997 painting by Kerry James Marshall for $2.8 million.
Indeed, as Miami enjoys yet another week filled with parties, art fairs, product launches and yes, a few crypto-related events, it seems that rich people are still spending money, with not so much going to digital art.
“It's lovely to not have this kind of crypto frenzy,” says Kibum Kim, standing in the booth of his buzzy gallery Commonwealth and Council. “It’s just more calm, and there are more conversations about art. No one is sticking a phone into our faces trying to show us their digital wallet.”
So does he—or did he—have any crypto-rich clients? “Of course not,” Kim says. “We’re a serious gallery.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.