ANTIQUES & FINE ART FAIR OPENS IN NEW YORK Brian and Anna Haughton unveil the 15th annual installment of the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York, Oct. 17-23, 2003. Mounted in cooperation with the National Antique & Art Dealers Association of America, the fair features 70 top dealers from around the world, ranging from Agnew's (London) and A la Vieille Russie (New York) to Vallois (Paris) and Axel Vervoordt (Belgium).
New exhibitors at the fair include John Alexander Ltd. (Philadelphia), Cove Landing (New York), Douglas Dawson Gallery (Chicago), MacConnal-Mason Gallery (London), Emmanuel Moatti (Paris), Lillian Nassau (New York), Grard Orts (Paris), and Amells Stockholm-London (London).
General admission is $16, and includes a copy of the catalogue. The gala preview on Oct. 16 benefits Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Tickets begin at $200; see www.haughton.com for more info.
ART IN GENERAL STUDIO TOUR
The hip downtown Manhattan alternative space Art in General holds its 12th annual Artist's Studio Benefit Tour and Reception on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003. Thirteen different visits to artist's workshops and studios are planned, led by the likes of Zingmagazine editor Devon Dikeou, Red Dot Gallery owner Robert Goff, art collector Susan Jacoby and Museums New York publisher Larry Warsh. Participating artists range from Arman, Christo and Jeanne Claude and Will Cotton to Alix Perlstein, Spencer Tunick and Monika Weiss. Benefactors who purchase $150 tickets tour three studios and attend the reception at the West Village design studio of Diane von Furstenberg, the honorary chair of the benefit; a $500 patron's ticket includes dinner at the home of art collectors Jan and Stefan Abrams. For more info, see www.artingeneral.org.
NADA SETS ART FAIR FOR MIAMI
The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), the 50-member dealers association formed last year by Gorney Bravin + Lee director Sheri Pasquarella, LFL director Zach Feuer, dealer John Connelly and Zach Miner, who can be found at Yvon Lambert in New York, goes public in a big way in Miami Beach this December. Timed to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach, the new NADA Art Fair, Dec. 4-7, 2003, is set for a 23,000-square foot commercial complex three blocks from the Miami Beach Convention Center. NADA's membership is fairly cutting edge, consisting largely of young dealers from Chelsea and Williamsburg. The fair is being managed by Janet Phelps, who organized the Fast Fwd: Miami hotel fair in 2001 and Artpoint in 2002.; for more info, contact janet.phelps@earthlink.net.
EARTH ART IN NEIMAN MARCUS CATALOGUE
The Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue is featuring a holiday gift for the art collector who has everything, including a very large yard -- an "environmental art installation" by agricultural artist Stan Herd that is landscaped into a field and best viewed from an airplane. Herd, who is perhaps best known for a 17-acre Van Gogh-like Sunflower Field planting of sunflowers, clover, soybeans and plowed earth that impressed CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Charles Kuralt in 1986, has more recently been making news in his hometown of Lawrence, Kan., for his efforts to get Cuban government approval to craft a work on the island in the image of Jose Marti. For the Neiman Marcus commissions, the artist designs the work to reflect the patron's interests, and then landscapes the image with local plants. Prices begin at $160,000. For more information and to order, please call 1-877-9NM-GIFT.
NEW YORK SHOWS EXPLORE DADA & SURREALISM
Several gallery shows in Manhattan are animated this fall by the spirit of Dada and Surrealism. Man Ray expert Timothy Baum has organized "Man Ray's Paris Portraits: 1921-39," Oct. 17-Dec. 20, 2003, at Carosso Fine Art on East 76th Street. The mini-retrospective of Paris during its last great heyday features about 40 photographs of artists (Braque, Duchamp, Picasso), expatriates (Hemingway, Gertrude Stein), literary lights (Huxley, Sinclair Lewis) and members of high society (Schiaparelli).
Further uptown at Francis M. Nauman Fine Art on East 80th Street is "The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Reflections of Marcel Duchamp in Modern and Contemporary Art," opening Oct. 14 and viewable by appointment; call (212) 472-6800. Titled after a remark by the late Museum of Modern Art curator Kirk Varnedoe, made in reference to Duchamp's relevance to his 1993 reinstallation of the collection, the exhibition includes works by almost 50 mostly contemporary artists, ranging from Robert Arneson and Mike Bidlo to Mark Tansey and Beatrice Wood.
At the Briggs Robinson Gallery on West 29th Street is "Symbolism and Surrealism: A Belgian Tradition from Khnopff to Broodthaers," Oct. 8-Nov. 6, 2003. The show examines the "conceptual" and "witty" work by artists who seek to "resolve the conflict between the material and spiritual worlds." Included are Felicien Rops, James Ensor, Paul Delvaux, Rene Magritte and several less familiar artists.
Last but not least is "Picabia/Man Ray/Duchamp: Trilogy," Oct. 10-Nov. 15, 2003, at Jack Shainman Gallery on West 20th Street in Chelsea. This exhibition of "three artists who first met in New York during the First World War" includes a set of 1953 Rotoreliefs by Duchamp, photographs of chess boards and pieces designed by Man Ray and later "kitsch" paintings by Picabia.
SUZANNE VALADON IN NEW YORK
What artist could have a more alluring legend than Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), the illegitimate daughter of a poor French seamstress who went on to become a lover to Toulouse-Lautrec, friend to Renoir, Modigliani, Degas and Manet, and mother of the painter Maurice Utrillo. And, she was a School of Paris painter herself, the only woman invited to exhibit at the 1894 Salon. Now, Frost & Reed at 21 East 67th Street in New York is mounting a show of her works, Oct. 15-Nov. 29, 2003. According to gallery director Ben Hennessey, Valadon is to be the subject of a major museum show in 2006 as well as two feature films.
"AMERICAN CUTOUT" AT THE STUDIO SCHOOL
The New York Studio School on West 8th Street opens "American Cutout," Oct. 15-Nov. 22, 2003, an examination of the role of torn and cut forms in postwar American art. Organized by Studio School gallery curator David Cohen, the show stretches from a Revolutionary era weathervane equestrian portrait of George Washington to contemporary silhouettes by Kara Walker. It's special focus, however, is on the 30 years following World War II, via works by Judith Rothschild, Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, Conrad Marca-Relli, Irving Kriesberg, Alexander Calder, Al Held, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, Tom Wesselmann, Richard Tuttle, Wiliam King, Ray Johnson and others. The catalogue is online at www.nyss.org/cutout.
AMIEL & PHILLIPS TEAM UP FOR ART ADVISORY
Veteran New York art dealers Karen Amiel (a former auction expert at Artnet) and Ann Yaffe Phillips (former vice president at Citibank's art advisory service) have teamed up to form Amiel & Phillips Fine Art Services, an art advisory firm that works with architects and interior designers and their clients to build art collections. "The idea is to get in on the plan early," said Amiel, "rather than as an afterthought, or not at all." The team has quickly found a niche -- last summer it provided art by Al Held for Richard Mishaan Design and Homer at the Kips Bay 2003 Decorator Showcase, and a range of contemporary works for Laura Hunt, Inc., at the Hampton Designer Showhouse in Southampton, N.Y. Coming up, Amiel & Phillips and will work with architect Campion Platt on his room in the demo apartments at 1 Central Park, otherwise known as the new AOL Time Warner building on Columbus Circle.
ART PEOPLE Mark Rosenthal has been named adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. The Norton has also appointed Jonathan Stuhlman as curator of American art. . . . Paola Morsiani has been promoted to curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. . . . Amy V. Grimm and Christian Gerstheimer have been named assistant curators at the El Paso Museum of Art. . . . The Smithsonian American Art Museum has awarded the 2003 Charles C. Eldredge Prize recognizing distinguished scholarship in American art to University of Southern California art historian Richard Meyer for Outlaw Representation: Homosexuality in 20th-century American Art (Oxford, 2002). . . .The American Federation of Arts is honoring arts patron Susan Weber Soros and artist Bill Viola with cultural leadership awards at the AFA fall gala.
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