Art Dealers host splashy "Art Show"

Each winter, members of the Art Dealers' Association of America, representing 70 of the nation's top galleries, gather in New York at the Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue and 67th Street to present the best works they have to offer. This year's event, held Feb. 23-27, attracted some 11,000 visitors. The opening night gala, attended by 2,300, raised $1.1 million to benefit the Henry Street Settlement, an arts and social services center.

In recent installments of the "Art Show" some dealers devoted their entire booths to one-person exhibitions. The trend continued this year with numerous solo displays that were among the event's highlights. James Graham & Sons, for instance, presented major abstract paintings by Norman Bluhm, covering the late artist's entire career. PaceWildenstein, meanwhile, devoted its booth to a series of large new canvases by Alex Katz, and David Zwirner presented a group of classic 1960s Pop art sculptures by Claes Oldenburg.

George Adams devoted its booth to ceramic sculptures and works on paper by Robert Arneson. Homage to Philip Guston (1980) is an oversize, over-the-top depiction of clunky, paint splattered pink shoes like the kind that appear often in Guston's late work. Another strong solo was at Tanya Bonakdar; the gallery made its "Art Show" debut with recent paintings and sculptures by Thomas Scheibitz, who represented Germany at last year's Venice Biennale. Lehmann Maupin featured Teresita Fernandez's recent wall-like sculptures made of Plexiglas cubes overlaid with photographic images of an iceberg.

At Richard L. Feigen, a vast multipanel painting by James Rosenquist, The Holy Roman Empire Through Checkpoint Charlie (1994), covered three walls of the booth. About 40 feet from one end to the other, it was offered at $2.5 million.

Matthew Marks showed a striking canvas by Ellsworth Kelly, Orange White (1962), which cast a bright golden hue upon Robert Gober's untitled sculpture (I 9982004), a silver-plated bronze object resembling a barnacle-covered wooden plank. Friedrich Petzel showed a lively grouping of recent paintings by Maria Lassnig and Nicola Tyson, along with an abstract, sewn-cotton mural by Cosima von Bonin and Andrea Fraser's Monument to Discarded Fantasies (2003), consisting of glittery carnival costumes heaped up in a corner.

Knoedler featured late Milton Avery and early Jules Olitski, plus a stone sculpture by William Edmondson and an untitled 1949 "zip" painting by Barnett Newman. Some viewers gasped at the posted price for this medium-sized painting, $14 million. Zabriskie paired Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, showing a selection of photos and objects that represent the core of the Dada movement. A large, classic Ab Ex-period canvas by Joan Mitchell, Mephisto (I 958), hung at Cheim and Read near an imposing untitled iron wall relief by Jannis Kounellis (2005), incorporating hair, knives and razor blades.

Richard Gray presented a museum-quality installation of portraits and self-portraits, most on loan and few for sale, by Lucian Freud, Eva Hesse, Matthew Barney and Warhol, among others. Philadelphia's Locks Gallery featured a large, gold-painted wooden wall piece by Louise Nevelson, Royal Tide II, and San Francisco's Anthony Meier highlighted sculptures by Donald Judd and Martin Puryear, while Arabesque, a sinewy 2006 cedarwood wall relief by Puryear, was the centerpiece of David McKee's booth.

June Kelly showed a classic 1968 target painting By Alma Thomas, as well as a large recent canvas by Lisa Corinne Davis. Mary-Anne Martin featured early and late paintings by Gunther Gerzso along with Una Carta, an intriguing 1943 watercolor filled with diaristic musings by Frida Kahlo. At Forum, quiet paintings by George Tooker and Robert Cottingham complemented the rambunctious drawings by Salvador Dali and a large, brilliantly hued work by Robert Henri, Spanish Gypsy (1924), hanging nearby.

Among the delights of the "Art Show" are the pairings and groupings of works that will likely never appear together again. Among the most memorable was at Salander O'Reilly, where Albert Pinkham Ryder's haunting nocturne The Old Mili by Moonlight (ca. 1885) hung alongside Elie Nadelman's arresting Head of a Woman (Yoke), ca. 1908, a life-size work in white marble.

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