I spent last night at the opening of the ADAA Art Show, and all I can say is that this show is back. It’s not — I suspect, and soon will see — the Armory Show, where the art is much edgier and which is opening in preview as I write (I’ll be going shortly). But this year’s ADAA show is full of fresh art, often made recently. Not everything is expensive. Yet virtually everyone I spoke with last night was complimentary about the offerings.
What will you see? The booths that leave the biggest impressions tend to be the ones with solo shows, naturally. So Metro Pictures is out front, one of the first booths you see, with Cindy Sherman’s “Murder Mystery,” while nearby Marian Goodman has a beautiful show of works by Francesca Woodman. DC Moore is offering Romare Bearden, L&M Arts has John Baldessari, and David Zwirner has a booth full of Suzan Frecon (left), which the gallery says completely sold out last night. Frankly, there are too many good booths to mention…
Several dealers reported sales — and I saw a number of red dots, plus several works on reserve. There’s no way to gauge the commerce, really, however. Â
 So far, I’ve seen just two other reports — from Gallerist NY and Art Info, which agree on the quality.  This may be a sign of a better mood in the market or renewed competion with The Armory Show, who knows? Whatever, this year it’s worth seeing. In fact, I’ll be going back.
UPDATED: OK, now I’ve listened to a few more people for their view of the ADAA Art Show, and some were lukewarm. In his BaerFaxt, Josh Baer pointed out, rightly, that “The ADAA seemed grown up with “real art,†somewhat of an antidote to shows like the Whitney Biennial but relatively devoid of masterpieces (or supposed masterpieces).” I agree – I saw no masterpieces last night.
As for The Armory Show, Baer writes: “The Armory has better logistics, is easy to navigate and a chance to see a lot of new art, if not great art.” We will have to disagree about the first two, but I agree the art there is “not great.”
I walked almost through most booths on both piers, and found almost nothing that I hadn’t seen before. One booth had a copycat Wayne Thiebaud (his pies!), a copycat Andreas Gursky and a copycat Robert Polidori. A Chelsea gallery with a diversified roster brought virtually all photography that was similarly derivative of Gursky, Candida Hofer, et. al. Likewise with most of the paintings on view. What wasn’t stale seemed gimmicky to me. In the modern section, some pieces were lovely, but not out of the ordinary — just very typical works.
Gallerist NY is again far more enthusiastic.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery (top), a sculpture by Ai Weiwei (bottom), courtesy of Business Insider