According to Peter Schjeldahl’s New Yorker story on art fairs in this week’s issue:

Paddle 8 reported three-quarters of a million views for the hundred and one participating galleries, but only about 50 sales. I like to ascribe the tepid action to the fact that it is absurd to buy art that you haven’t actually seen, but it was almost certainly due to the lack of see-and-be-seen sociability.

This is a remarkably biased assumption. Paddle 8′s sales may or may not have been meaningful at 50 purchases. We don’t know the prices paid or have a real comparison to sales that took place at the fair itself. If those were 50 $1m+ sales, it would very meaningful (even though it is highly unlikely.) If sales at the fair were (as seemed from the reporting during Armory Week) not very robust, it may also be a respectable number.

The point here is not that Schjeldahl is wrong or right but that his statement is built upon poorly-reasoned premise followed by a wishful pair of conclusions.

All is Fairs (New Yorker)

Paddle8.com and the Armory Show held their press conference this morning but not before giving an exclusive to the Wall Street Journal which reveals the details of the partnership as well as one clever strategic use of the arrangement:

The Chelsea-based David Zwirner Gallery is taking the latter approach with a solo installation by Michael Riedel that will be available both in the booth and on Paddle8, along with supplementary works by the artist available solely online

“It’s a great platform for an artist like Riedel, who will debut a site-specific work made especially for our booth at the fair,” said Julia Joern, the director of marketing at David Zwirner. “And as soon as he installs it, and as soon as it can be photographed, we’ll also be able to share it to a much larger audience though the web.”

The value of this partnership is the fair’s ability to magnify itself at virtually no cost and Paddle8.com’s opportunity to work with a number of galleries that might be hesitant to sign up with the service. The next few weeks could be a crucial moment in the nascent art transaction platform’s trajectory.

An Art Fair’s Online Gamble (Wall Street Journal)

Artinfo suggests that the Merchandise Mart is embarking on a major defensive strategy to revitalize Art Chicago and the Armory Show in light of the new fair coming to New York. Steven Levy has been named Senior Vice President of MMPI’s Art Group:

In the last few years, Merchandise Mart’s biggest fairs, the Armory Show and Art Chicago, have garnered lackluster reviews from both gallerists and the media for being less than discriminate when it comes to letting in exhibitors. But Levy, it seems, is hoping to shake things up: “All will be examined and rethought as of this minute to best showcase the uniqueness of each fair,” he said in a statement.

Levy has worked in trade and consumer shows for over 35 years, though this new position will be his first foray into the world of fine art. He is also the co-founder of the Interior Design Show and the One of a Kind holiday shopping art and craft shows in Toronto, Vancouver, and Chicago. He is currently the senior vice president and general manager of Merchandise Mart’s Canadian division.

Merchandise Mart Taps Steven Levy to Oversee the Armory Show, Art Chicago, and the Company’s Other Art Fairs (ArtInfo)

More Armory sales reports. This time they come from two galleries that talked to Mutual Art about their booth strategies and the volume of traffic:

Lindsay Ramsay: We did a solo show of a YBA (Young British Artist) Toby Ziegler, which we sold out. [...] This wasn’t just a display of works from the stockroom – it was a very unique installation. I would say we sold about ten of the artist’s works, ranging in price from $15,000 – $60,000.

Anne-Claudie Coric: A young Chinese artist who makes installation from stolen neons: He-An (see image below); Indian artist Atul Dodiya (we sold his work for 60 000 EUR); Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiaru Shiota, whose thread sculptures we sold the first day and now have a waiting list (price range 8,000 – 15 000 EUR). We also sold works by artists we have been representing for a long time: Chilean installation artist Ivan Navarro, American photographer James Casebere and German painter Jonathan Meese.

Gallery directors reflect on The Armory Show: Are we post-recession? (Mutual Art)

Anthony Haden-Guest reviews the Armory Show and all of its satellites. He sees a “notable” trend toward absence among the biggest names:

Many hefty New York galleries were no-shows at the Armory, among them Pace, Marian Goodman, Michael Werner, David Zwirner and Gagosian (each choosing to show elsewhere or at no fair at all), and that meant that many artists who have seemed ubiquitous features of the Global Artscape—Takashi Murakami, Anselm Reyle, et al.—were conspicuous by their near total absence. I saw no striking Warhols and no Jeff Koons, for instance. Indeed, apart from outbreaks of Mel Ramos here and there, Pop and post-Pop, once the fairs’ emblems, were a diminished presence.

So did Armory 2011 signal that the model of the art fair as a system for delivering high-end merchandise to the extravagantly well-heeled is passé? Hardly. The change is a reflection of the fact that the auction houses (and their private sales arms) are increasingly wresting four-star goods away from the dealers. “And people don’t want their art to be overexposed. Burned,” said the Rhinebeck dealer, Stephen Mazoh. “There’s a ceiling to the number of millions somebody will spend at an art fair. It’s to do with discretion. At an art fair, the prices are known.”

Art Fairs Give Ground to Auction Houses (NY Observer)

Katya Kazakina and Kelly Crow were around the Armory Show last week. They pulled up these sales:

• David Kordansky:  three vibrant Primitivist paintings by West Coast artist Ruby Neri, with prices ranging from $14,000 to $18,000.
• Blain/Southern: Matt Collishaw’s 13-piece series of Old Master-style still life photographs depicting fast-food morsels like onion rings and cheeseburgers,  $10,000 apiece.
• Greenberg Van Doren: Alexander Gorlizki, A Time to Refrain,” sold to an American collector for $6,000.

Adam Sender Grabs $2,000 Silk-Screens; Giacometti Priced at $4.5 Million (Bloomberg)

At Armory, Fast Food, 3-D and Some New Big Guns (Wall Street Journal)

David D’Arcy in the National offers this sale:

• Michael Schultz Gallery of Berlin sold East Is Red by the Chinese painter Zou Cao to a New York collector for €130,000

Back to Business in the US Art Market (The National)

The Master, Judd Tully, keeps the sales information coming on ArtInfo.com:

• Jay Jopling’s White Cube also sold MoMA–feted artist Gabriel Orozco’s 2008 painting A Samuri Tree for $250,000.

• Anthony Gormley’s 75-inch-high steel Sublimate XXX figure, from 2009, for £250,000 ($376,000)

• A trio of rhinestone- and glitter-encrusted Raqib Shaw works on paper from 2009, including Self-Portrait as the Savior of the World, for $65,000 each.

• Rachel Kneebone’s impressive porcelain sculpture of entwined figures and floral elements, Et in Arcadia Ego, 2009, for $60,000.

• A major 1960 work by the late, great Ferus co-founder Edward Kienholz, Untitled (Piano with Keys), sold to Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky, who has promised his collection to the Dallas Museum. It sold just under the asking price of $200,000, according to Franklin Parrasch.

• The team also sold Robert Irwin’s Twin Towers, 1977, comprised of a black-and-white photograph of the vanished Manhattan landmark with an acetate overlay, for $50,000 to another collector with museum-donation plans

• Ed Moses Untitled graphite on paper from 1965 for $30,000; and a Billy Al Bengston painting, Dento, 1968, for $75,000.

• They also sold the flotilla of five Warhol Silver Clouds, including their original 1964 packaging, for $5,000 each.

A Corporate Aftertaste at Pier 94 but Helped by Ferus (ArtInfo.com)