In honor of the Armory Show in New York — where, barring a miracle, sales are likely to be slow — today I was going to post a cartoon that’s on view in an exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum: “On the Money,” a collection of New Yorker cartoons, is full of very funny drawings by artists commenting on money and how it defines us (whether it belongs at the Morgan is a question for another day, and also related to money). But late yesterday, I learned from the Morgan that it could not grant permission for me to reproduce it. So — you’ll have to visualize.
The cartoon, by Whitney Darrow, Jr., shows an man beside his painting, and reads “Buy now, save up to $50,000.” It was published in September, 1951. Darrow meant the man to be the artist, but now it could well be a dealer, too!
UPDATED: Last night I ran into a senior figure in the art world, who told me that he’d been told that sales during February’s five-day ADAA Art Show, which I wrote about for the Daily Beast (link), came to just 14 sales among the 70 dealers. I posted that here, with a caveat, and set out to confirm. When I finally reached Linda Blumberg, ADAA’s executive director, she said that was wrong. Speaking from the Armory Show, she did not have numbers at hand; but, she said, more dealers sold something than not, and some sold many pieces. “Granted,” she added, “more were at the lower end of the price scale.” But not all, as I mentioned in the Beast piece.
I won’t be writing about the Armory Show, but The Art Market Monitor has been keeping track of several reports from the floor.