With the presidential election looming and interest rates soaring, it’s a psychologically fraught time in general. These tensions haven’t spared the art market, stoking a general sense of unease reinforced by major auction houses reporting overall lower sales. But market pessimism was nowhere to be found at the Armory Show, whose eagerly anticipated 30th edition took place over the weekend at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. Some art-world experts were suspicious of the fair’s first edition under the umbrella of Frieze. Others feared over-saturation given the abundance of satellite fairs (Volta, Independent, Collectible) around town and an edition of Frieze happening concurrently, in Seoul.
Uncertainty hardly dampened sales, which started off strong at the VIP preview and persisted throughout the weekend. Kasmin sold a Robert Motherwell painting for $825,000, a bronze Ai Weiwei sculpture took $450,000 at Tang Contemporary, and Victoria Miro placed a Yayoi Kusama painting for $800,000. Blue-chips aside, smaller galleries had no problem offloading work, with Sim Smith, Spinello Projects, and Alexander Berggruen selling their entire booths. That optimism spilled over to Chelsea Industrial, where Volta New York also reported buoyant sales.
If the Armory Show is considered the “first day of school” for the art market’s annual cycle of fairs and auctions, perhaps it’s heading into a growth spurt.“There’s a legitimate positive energy by everyone walking around this fair,” Robert Dimin, a partner at Tribeca’s Dimin gallery, told the Art Newspaper about the Armory Show’s general mood. “So many dealers are smiling and selling work, the collectors and the advisors and the patrons coming in are really, really excited about what they’re seeing.”
