Art Info: Plenty of Praise for Revamped Palm Beach Fair

By Sarah Douglas

PALM BEACH—The economy is in turmoil, the Dow has slumped below 8,000, and the weather in Palm Beach is the coldest it’s been in 20 years. But despite these tough odds, art fair organizers David and Lee Ann Lester seem to have made a success of the American International Fine Art Fair, the art and antiques fair they founded in 1997, sold to DMG World Media for $18 million in 2001, and recently bought back (and renamed) at the behest of a group of disgruntled dealers who had considered taking over the fair themselves.

The Lesters’ success this year appears to be the result of aggressive promotion and bolstering of confidence among the fair’s 80-odd participating dealers, some of whom were convinced to return to the fair after dropping out during the DMG years.

The Lesters arranged for a full-color advertising supplement in last Friday’s New York Times, local TV spots, and buses to import collectors from Naples, Florida. They shortened the fair from 11 days to five — it now runs February 4 to 8. They had nightly events — at the swanky Donald Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago Club, the Norton Museum of Art, and the Flagler Museum — and brought in a group from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including director Malcolm Rogers.

The organizers also put together what participating exhibitors characterized as a pre-opening pep talk, which managed to galvanize and motivate dealers, instilling an upbeat attitude to counterbalance the doom and gloom brought on by a faltering economy and the specter of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, who looms large in Palm Beach’s tight-knit community of wealthy collectors.

The vernissage, a benefit for the Norton Museum, was a smashing success. Between the early guests who shelled out $1,000 per ticket and the later ones who came in for $125, Lester said he brought in 3,400 bodies that night, almost six times the number that attended last year’s opening. On hand were socialites, philanthropists, and businessmen, including Iris and Carl Apfel, Maura Benjamin, and Robert Nederlander.

The following day, when the fair opened to the public, attendance was at 2,000, more than double for the same day last year. “We can’t control sales,” said Lester. “But we are giving [dealers] an audience.”

Collectors were cautious but active. Lester claimed that a Chinese property developer from Hong Kong, who prefers to go unnamed, flew in on his private jet and hoovered up millions of dollars worth of art at the fair.

As in previous years, jewelers like London’s Graff were mobbed on opening night. “Diamonds tend to do well even in bad markets,” said François Graff, standing in front of a display case containing “The Flame,” a pear-shaped 100-carat diamond priced at $30 million.

Flashy as the jewelry is, the real attraction here is art and furniture, all of it carefully vetted. A wide array of objects was on display. Walking from one end of the fair to the other, you could go from a pair of 18th-century Chinese export lacquer cabinets made for Prince de Ligne of Brussels, one of which features, on a discreetly placed fold-out panel, a series of explicit erotic scenes ($1,750,000 for the pair at Carlton Hobbs) to a pair of 19th-century silver his-and-her chastity devices ($22,800 at M.S. Rau Antiques).

Veteran dealers at this fair have worked hard to develop local clients. At the booth of London-based arms and armor dealer Peter Finer, who has been doing the fair for around 14 years, an Italian rapier from circa 1600 and priced at $90,000 was on reserve to a collector in Palm Beach who owns a matching dagger. “Collectors are taking their time,” said the gallery’s Red Finer, echoing the sentiment of many dealers.

Still, artworks were selling. Munich’s Galerie Thomas parted with a small bronze Max Ernst sculpture of a surrealist bird-like creature for $40,000. “At Art Basel Miami Beach in December, we saw that already those people who buy in the upper range for investment or reputation are off the market, as are those with small incomes who really have to think about whether or not to buy,” said the gallery's Raimund Thomas. “But the large majority in between — and that’s where most of our clients are — still have interest, they are just more cautious.”

There were plenty of sales to prove it. On opening night a local collector swung by the stand of Palm Beach dealer Holden Luntz, the only photography dealer in the fair, and dropped around $40,000 on a striking black-and-white photograph from 1958 of a woman in a Givenchy hat by Frank Horvat, who is known for taking fashion photography out of the studio and into the street.

Jacques Bailly sold a Jean Dufy painting for $55,000.

London gallery MacConnal Mason sold a painting by English artist Terence Tenison Cuneo, An A4 Pacific Crossing the Forth (c. 1965), a realistic depiction of a train chugging across a bridge, for around $200,000.

David Mason, who is on the fair’s executive dealers committee, seemed particularly optimistic. “This is a time when people have sharpened their pencils and are negotiating a bit more. But historically art has been a good hedge. Also, life goes on, and people want to go back to enjoying themselves. And there are good opportunities in this market.” Like many other dealers, Mason praised Lester’s ability to up the overall quality of the fair and draw crowds.

New York’s Macklowe Gallery parted with a stunning Tiffany lamp, circa 1900, that was suspended from the ceiling of the booth and decorated with a striking floral pattern heavy on magenta and green, for “around $300,000,” according to Barbara Macklowe. A contemplative view of a house’s snowy porch, Winfield’s Porch (1983), by the recently deceased Andrew Wyeth, was sold by New York’s Adelson Galleries for “in excess of $5 million,” according to director Elizabeth Oustinoff. And New Orleans dealer William Rau sold a Monet landscape, Pine Trees at Varengeville (c. 1882), which once belonged to painter Kees Van Dongen, for “a seven-figure price.” Rau also reported selling three other paintings as well as four or five silver objects, and he said he’d had serious interest in a large, allegorical painting by William Bouguereau, Alma Parens (The Motherland) from 1883, showing Mother France caring for her children. Once owned by Sylvester Stallone, it was priced at $6.5 million.

Asian art also saw relatively strong results. New York–based contemporary Chinese art dealer Michael Goedhuis parted with two pieces on opening night: Full Gallop (2005), a dramatic colorful work by Zeng Shanqing in ink on rice paper that depicts riders charging forward, priced at $75,000; and a smaller piece in ink on paper, Liu Qinghe’s Growth IV (2005), which shows a young boy in military dress, priced at $28,000. Historical Asian material was selling at the booth of new exhibitor Erik Thomsen, a New York–based dealer of Japanese art. “The quality of visitors has been high,” said Thomsen. He’d parted with several gold lacquer boxes and silver teapots, a few screens priced in five figures, and, for $12,000, an Edo period (19th century) hanging scroll, attributed to Utagawa Yoshitora and showing a woman in traditional Japanese dress. “It’s a beautiful fair,” says Thomsen. “And we’ve had a good start.”

Overall, there was very little criticism from dealers in the opening days of this re-envisioned event. Wilhelm Grusdat of Munich’s Galerie Terminus, who has done the fair for four years, and this year brought large works by John Chamberlain, Gerhard Richter, Roy Lichtenstein, and other postwar masters, said he thought the fair could use more European dealers and perhaps some from Asia, but added, “We need to give David Lester time — at least a year. I’ve already seen a change this year with him. The quality is better than ever.”