NEW YORK — Veteran fair organizer Sanford L. Smith is back at the Park Avenue Armory this year in a new iteration of his annual November art-and-design fair. This time around, following the problematic one-time New York foray of the Pavilion of Art and Design this time last year and the indefinite postponement of Modernism before that, he’s teamed up with French antiques stalwart Syndicat National des Antiquaires, the organization of dealers in highly-prized French antiques behind the behemoth Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris. The result is Salon: Art + Design, featuring 53 international dealers, 31 of which are members of the Syndicat, it’s proven to be a show of unprecedented caliber.
For the most part the fair sticks to modern and contemporary works, ranging from about 1890 to the present day. Taking up the same prime real estate as it did this time last year at PAD NY, Paris’s Galerie Downtown greeted visitors to the fair with the mid-century desing people harvested from the Charlotte Perriand house acquired by François Laffanour 20 years ago. A beautiful red staircase by Jean Prouvé immediately catches the eye.
Delving further into history, Kraemer, a Syndicat member and Paris-based family business dating back to 1875, made its New York debut. Expressing the sheer wealth of the Syndicat, they specialize in the very finest 18th-century furnishings, most with exceptional royal provenance. In a novel demonstration of how Empress Catherine the Great’s desk can easily intermingle with contemporary furniture, they’ve set up a small living room of sorts within the Armory, complete with flatscreen TVs projecting family photographs with other inventory. The beforementioned Catherine the Great piece, a beautifully lacquered Roentgen secretary desk designed specifically for the Hermitage palace, will go for undisclosed millions of dollars.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Tribeca-based gallery R 20th Century (who happily report that they were relatively untouched by the recent storms) brought a uniquely contemporary flair to the fair. Alongside vintage stuffed animals by mid-century German toy designer Renate Muller, they’re peddling the action figures of South African artist Michaella Janse van Vuuren, 3-D printed with a sinister twist: One features the head of a vulture with beak agape, complete with flappable wings made of intricately linked chain mail.
Catering to the diverse tastes of the contemporary home decorator, Paris’s Entwistle Gallery represented the ethnographic arts with a collection of African and Oceanic tribal sculptures, the oldest of which was a wooden bust by Mali’s Dogon tribe, carbon-dated from 17th century. Aisle D served as the fair’s zoo, with the dueling menageries of London’s Sladmore Gallery and Paris-based Dumonteil facing each other — both specialize in animal sculpture — with the rabbit-themed works of Francois Petrovitch at the Antoine Laurentin booth further down. The Dumonteil camp wasn’t bothered by the arrangement, citing the different sensibilities the British bring versus that of the French: Sladmore’s epic bronze horse head sculptures by England’s Nic Fiddian-Green (one chemically treated for a handsome turquoise patina dripping down the horse’s neck) took command of their booth. On the French side, Dumonteil’s main attractions were its numerous bronze monkeys, bears, and panthers by Georges-Lucien Guyot.
Galerie Gmurzynska featured an arresting display of Suprematist El Lissiztky’s 1920 Proun portfolio, a wall of stark black, white, and red geometric figures to be sold for $4.5 million. And returning from PAD NY last year is Carpenters Workshop Gallery, the London- and Paris-based dealers whose Buffet Nouvelle Zelande by Vincent DuBourg won the highest honor last year, a spot in the Museum of Art and Design. They were back with more of the characteristically splintered DuBourg pieces — a black desk ominously wrapped in thorny black vines, and a silver bookshelf splayed at its center — but patinated and polished metals ruled the booth. The Netherlands’ Studio Job had rendered two global landmarks in black and bronze, with their own special subversive twists: Their Taj Mahal had been turned upside-down to serve as a side table, while their Eiffel Tower lamp was morosely tilting its head to one side.
The Workshop’s co-fouder Julien Lombrail expressed a bit of worry, given the circumstances of the weather. (The shipment of three pieces, including works by Japanese design powerhouse Nendo, were compromised by Hurricane Sandy, and the snowstorm the night before affected the turnout to the fair’s gala benefit preview). But an hour into the fair’s opening, a steady hum of collectors inquiring about prices and provenances had filled the Armory’s massive drill hall — a good start for the fledgling fair.
Salon: Art & Design runs through November 12 at the Park Avenue Armory. To see highlights from the inaugural fair, click the slideshow.