European Fine Art Fair, Maastricht, the Netherlands - NYTimes.com
Otto Naumann Ltd.
“Self-Portrait” 1640, by Anthony van Dyck; the Maastricht art fair offers the old, new and the arcane.
The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.
Otto Naumann Ltd.
For sale again: Rembrandt's “Portrait of a Man With Arms Akimbo” from 1658.
TEFAF/Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Robert Gober's “Untitled Shoe” 1990, red casting wax.
Despite recent stock market fluctuations, disasters in Japan and unrest in the Arab world, tens of thousands of art lovers have flocked to the soulless convention center here since the fair opened with an invitation-only preview on Thursday. Two hundred and sixty exhibitors from 16 countries are showing some 30,000 artworks. Fair officials said that by the time the fair ends on Sunday, they expected a total of 70,000 people to have visited, about the same as in past years, though so far the crowds seemed somewhat thinner. But if the number of private planes that landed at the tiny Maastricht airport on Thursday — 60, up from 43 last year — is any indication, this event still packs in a pretty swell crowd.
Over the last few days many museum directors could be seen perusing the booths, including Mikhail B. Piotrovsky from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; Henri Loyrette from the Louvre in Paris; Wim Pijbes from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; and Michael Conforti from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. Museum curators too have made the trip to look at art and see colleagues, including six from the Metropolitan Museum of Art alone. And as always serious collectors have come to shop. Among those seen milling around the booths: Sheik Saud al-Thani of Qatar; Stefan T. Edlis an industrialist from Chicago; Mark Fisch; a Manhattan real estate developer, Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art; and Baroness Marion Lambert, wife of Baron Philippe Lambert, a member of the Belgian banking family.
For all the variety of wares it is the fine art that still gets the most attention here, with the pros on hand trying to take the temperature of the market. Getting an accurate reading is tricky, however, since dealers notoriously talk the market up. And unlike at Art Basel, the frenetic contemporary art fair held in Switzerland every June — where collectors typically make a mad dash for the booths, checkbooks in hand — buyers at this fair tend to take their time. Often deals are not completed until the weeks after the event’s end. Still, some significant sales have already been reported here, including a $5 million Miró sculpture; a 1671 oil-on-panel view of Haarlem by the Dutch master Gerrit Berckheyde, priced at $6.3 million; and a 1937 Picasso drawing of Dora Maar marked at $2.5 million.
“There’s a huge amount of liquidity out there,” said Richard L. Feigen, the Manhattan dealer. “But with so much turbulence in the world, collectors don’t want to let things go, making it hard to find good material.”
Unlike last year, when there were no blockbuster offerings, this year there are a few. (Though some of the cognoscenti are grumbling that most are a bit too familiar from auctions past.) Otto Naumann, the Manhattan dealer, is offering the fair’s star, Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man With Arms Akimbo” from 1658, which depicts an unidentified sitter staring, confidently, straight at the viewer. The painting, priced at $47 million, belongs to Stephen A. Wynn, the Las Vegas casino owner, who paid $33.2 million for it at Christie’s in London two years ago. “I tried to buy it at the Christie’s sale,” said Mr. Naumann, who explained that he persuaded Mr. Wynn to sell it after he read about occupancy rates plunging in Las Vegas last year.
On an adjacent wall is “Portrait of Sigismund Baldinger,” by the 16th-century German painter Georg Pencz. Mr. Naumann bought it at Christie’s in London in July for $8.5 million; he is asking $12 million.
While Mr. Naumann’s booth is one of many with work that has been on the market recently, the fair is not without its discoveries. Jack Kilgore, another Manhattan dealer, bought “Emperor Commodus as Hercules,” a painting on oak panel from 1588-89, in December at a small European auction, where it was cataloged as only 18th-century Flemish school. Examining the meticulous brushwork, he had a hunch it was by Rubens, who had painted a series of Roman emperors, one of which was missing. Research, including consultations with various scholars, confirmed that this was it. (And the fair’s vetting committee agreed.) A collector then snapped up the painting for $1.25 million on Thursday afternoon, but Mr. Kilgore declined to identify him. “I could have sold it three times,” he said.
Several years ago the fair began beefing up its modern and contemporary art section, giving other fairs like Art Basel a bit of competition. But this year, although there are 46 modern and contemporary galleries exhibiting, the same number as last year, the selection is noticeably weaker. Gone are many of the big-name dealers like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Annely Juda, L&M Arts and Michael Werner Gallery, all of whom dropped out over the last few years with no heavy hitters to replace them.
Still, there are a few standouts. Anthony Meier, the San Francisco dealer, for instance, has a glass case of small sculptures by Robert Gober: a red shoe ($90,000), a Seagram’s gin bottle ($110,000) and a wax candle ($625,000). “There’s a huge collecting community for Gobers in Belgium,” Mr. Meier said.
Sperone Westwater, the Manhattan gallery, is showing the work of Barry X Ball, a New York artist known for using three-dimensional computer scans as well as traditional carving techniques, who is having an exhibition at the Ca’ Rezzonico museum in Venice this summer timed to the Biennale. His “Envy,” a translucent white onyx sculpture from 2008-10 based on a bust of a snarling, snake-haired Medusa by the Italian Baroque sculptor Orazio Marinali, is priced at $250,000, and as of Sunday it had not sold.
There does seem to be an appetite for good examples of work by proven contemporary artists. Christophe Van de Weghe, another Manhattan dealer, had red dots beside several paintings, including a 1981 Basquiat for $2.6 million and a canvas by Christopher Wool for $1.5 million. Both buyers, he said, were European. “Business is strong as long as the price is right,” Mr. Van de Weghe said. “It’s still a sensitive market.”
