EXPO 2018

As usual, the work is quite varied, from older works from the 1940s-1970s (smaller Picassos, Miros) to brand new work with the oil paint still fresh.

I will call this year the year of the send-up: homages to Rothko (color fields with metal panels), Barnett Newman (Zips), Morris Louis (stained canvases), the latter of whom had a number of originals displayed. I chatted with an artist from London who did more serious Louis knock-offs. He said there was lots of interest in them. Then I realized I was seeing the art in a different way this year: I started looking at them as a collector, then as an investor, and then as an artist. The artist in me loves the ideas and the technique, but the collector in me always asks the question whether it has an retinal nutrition: would you want to live with it and look at it on a daily basis? The answer was yes to two large horizontal pieces, one by Larry Poons ("Arithmetic"), and another by Aboriginal artist Johnny Tjupurrula. These pieces are very colorful and would be perfect for lobbies of office buildings. The color alone is uplifting. Many of the pieces in a large exhibition are there for the spectacle. Who would buy them and how could they be displayed?  To wit, the work of Fu Xiaotong, whose multi-panel works on paper are made over a series of months by pricking and poking into wove paper. This gathered a somewhat large crowd of admirers, but how could this work be hung, and would its fragility be cared for?

I could see my own work displayed here, not because it rivals the level of quality or in the ideation, but at the level of somebodiness. It's always about that, at least initially--then you can get away with anything. I saw a series of pieces by Sherrie Levine that appeared to be digital prints of pixelization. I ran into a gallery owner friend who said he applied for a booth every year and was always rejected, even though his gallery would duly qualify. It's really not about the quality of the art; It's whether you can be in the somebodiness club.

New themes for this year: more black artists represented, "new aesthetic" pieces, "sending-up" lo-res graphics, large photo prints, whereas in previous shows you saw very little photography.

Going to large art shows is a good way to see non-linear creativity, all resolved exquisitely. If not for these large exhibitions, few might ever see them, except by appointment only. Now looking forward to SOFA in November.