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Applause to PR dynamo and keeper of AIPAD press passes, Nicole Strauss ---here getting a diplomatic gift of "M" AKA "In The Art World" magazine from artist and art-writer Terry Ward.*
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Ward being art writer.*
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Ward as art writer, making note to self: "everyone is going to write about the Mao photo and its many derivative portraits, so find something else to write about."*
iHuddle. The grouped figures looked somewhat like the observers in Dr Tulp's lesson [wiki]. In Booth 303, Minneapolis' Weinstein Gallery yet again showed itself a peer to the NYC galleries. Weinstein (disclosure: author has one of their photos) could have brought in classics from the home gallery like the Maplethorpes or the classic August Sander pastry chef [web-info] ---or maybe something from McDermott & McGough who are so popular here (previous Ward article here). Instead, they took a risk with haunting wall-sized edgy Alec Soth images expressing irony and social isolation. Powerful pictures.
Booth 427 ---HIGHERpictures. Gallerist Kim Bourus with the wall of cops. This is a monochrome scene, but the splash of color from a freeform oil on canvas first got the reporter's eye. It can be a challenge for art galleries to show at a photo-art show: does one only show one's photos (and thus give the false impression that you're photos-only?) or does one perhaps scare off the photo-lovers by including paintings. Mixing paintings and photos makes "no difference" to Bourus, who cheerily said it is "all part of the same thing." ** 
Booth 221. Yancey Richardson Gallery. Large (some car-hood-sized) photos with themes of abandonment or architectural deterioration ---especially intriguing when the booth was also empty and feeling abandoned.
AXA art insurers demonstrated with a cutaway display of damaged (formerly) glass-faced art exactly how not to ship a $60,000 Cindy Sherman photo. If the Sherman is real (versus a doctored display copy) there were enough surface scratches from the glass action to represent a $59,800 value loss.
At Booth 201, Joshua Mann Pailet from NOLA's A Gallery For Fine Photography explains a mixed-media photo process. The married art-photo duo Louviere And Vanessa created the pictures resembling old engravings or scrimshaw or tattoos. In fact they were close-ups of world currency illustrations printed onto uniquely-textured gold-painted backgrounds with visible brushstrokes, fingerscoops, and script lettering. The word counterfeit appears in each. A resin topcoat gives the whole a glassy surface and makes one wonder if the brushstrokes are 3-d or are just printed there.*
At Booth 201, Joshua Mann Pailet from NOLA's A Gallery For Fine Photography explains Louviere And Vanessa's mixed-media photo process. There was plenty of irony-talk about the use of banknote-imagery in art during the late soft-Depression. The metallic backgrounds with resin-infill create color-shifting effects evocative of new currency's anti-counterfeiting bi-color inks.*
At Booth 201, NOLA's A Gallery For Fine Photography shows Louviere And Vanessa's mixed-media photo process.*
At Booth 201, NOLA's A Gallery For Fine Photography shows Louviere And Vanessa's mixed-media photo process.
Also noteworthy but not pictured:
Recession never mind, this year's orchid-count might have been a record. Flowers enlivening the entry portal could have fooled visitors into thinking a gardening fair was ahead. Robert Mann Gallery's cut flowers (Booth 410) were a delight.
The old joke about titling a blank canvas Albino Cow And White Dog Outside In Minnesota In A Snowstorm or some such came to life at Booth 301 in a surprisingly compelling (and well-selling) Peter Brown blizzard / whiteout landscape photo. The fridge-door-sized picture had a barely-visible gray horizon line and a few pinkie-nail sized barns against the white-sky / white ground / white whiteness. The prize for New York's Whitest Photo 2011 must go to this image.
Old AP and UPI wirephoto originals had a strong showing. A Cuban-exile heritage acquaintance I know would love the Dead Che news photo (possibly at Scott Nicholson Gallery's booth). In the same booth, a surreal-yet-real vintage news shot showed a bleak desert moonscape ---buttes and bluffs--- with a blimp's rear angled into the sky. The blimp's deflating midsection droops to the ground where the nose section has already "pooled" into a rubber puddle shape. In the sky: a mushroom cloud (!). It was some manner of atomic test ---blimp versus A-bomb. Needless to say, the blimp lost. Possible lesson: if ever given the choice of betting on a fight between A-bomb and blimp, don't put your money on the blimp.
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Unless otherwise noted, photo credit:
Terry Ward / GrumpyVisualArtist.BlogSpot.com
Exceptions:
*Robert Chapman ArtPhotos ( Facebook.com/ArtistCamera )
**Robert Chapman ArtPhotos directed by Terry Ward
***Terry Ward directed by Robert Chapman ArtPhotos
****Courtesy of art gallery:
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