Joanne gets the award for the most comprehensive coverage of the Miami fairs of any single blog; check it out: http://www.joannemattera.blogspot.com/
more, via comments section of Fair Fatigue, in Ed_Winkleman:
I attend the fairs. I get to show in them. I blog them. I enjoy them as a welcome break from my solitary work in the studio. Hey, I had a great time in Miami. But when I hear dealers talking about giving up their bricks-and-mortar spaces in favor of a gallery identity and an itinerant reality, that scares me. And what happens when—as with all fashion trends—the art fair trend dies down?
By the way Ed, in the midst of all the hype about sales that permeated the fairs, your wonderful artist Jennifer Dalton shows drawings with amusing and terrifying statistics about artists and the artworld. Most artists need to work an outside job to support themselves, many don’t have health insurance, and if they’re lucky, they’ll make about $30,000 a year from the sale of their work.
Best,
Joanne Mattera
I've just spent five days blogging about seven fairs, so maybe I'm too dazed to be commenting here now, but I can't tear myself away from the keyboard. For 20 years I supported my art life as an editor, working on Madison Ave., largely for women's magazines (the pay was good and it gave me enough time to paint) until I had enough and made the leap full time into the studio. What I see in the art world now world is a "fashionization" of art that is just getting more intense: the art trends (like fashion moments, which which keep cycling faster and faster), the age thing (will we all have to be size 0, too, if we want to show or sell work?), the celebrity-ification of artists more intense than it has ever been, and now what seems to be an insane ramping up of the art fairs. As I was schlepping from venue to venue, I was thinking how like Fashion Week it was, with a bit of The Academy Awards thrown in, what with the celebrities, the parties, the who-what-where is hot, and the art must-haves this holiday season. Eek.