Art in multiples, back in the armory
Gerhard Richter is in contact with Titian at few art fairs. But the The International Fine Print Dealers Association Print Fair, which kicks off with a preview on Thursday and runs through the weekend, regularly brings together neighbors old and new while providing opportunities for emerging artists and emerging collectors, with some works offered for less than $ 1,000 .
The fair returns to the Park Avenue Armory this year after several years at the Javits Center. And with the move comes a shift in the calendar: the previous fair was only four months ago. But collectors and curators, dealers and gallerists, fine press publishers and artists can't get enough of it.
“It's a bit of a quick turnaround,” says Jay A. Clark, curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, but the New York fair has always been a highlight, and “it's especially exciting that it's returning to the Armory. .”
Typically available in limited editions of nearly identical copies, prints are a fundamentally collaborative medium, with artists working with skilled craftsmen to complete the work. Discerning print buyers often look for editions produced during the artist's lifetime.
The star of this fair is perhaps the immense 'The Immersion of the Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea' (1514-15, published 1549), in which the 16th-century Italian Renaissance artist Titian dares to take the humble relief print against the ambition and scale of painting. The experimental character fits well next to modern and contemporary work.
Comprised largely of sea and sky, Titian's landscape is interrupted at the bottom left by the titular army while a crowd watches from the shore in front of a cliff to the right, creating a panoramic drama. The Biblical story of the conflict in the Holy Land served as an allegory for political events and military conflicts in Titian's Venice.
Titian's approximately 12.5 by 2.5 meter grid consists of twelve large individual woodcuts that create one uniform scene, filled with meticulous details (find the nursing woman and the defecating dog) and expressive passages of waves and clouds. It is offered by David Tunick, a New York dealer of old masters and modern prints and chairman of the dealers association.
If you look closely at the Titian, you will also see traces of wormholes in the woodblocks and what appear to be ancient corrections drawn in ink where folds in the paper opened up after printing. It is one of only a dozen known examples of the print and bears the marks of history visibly, while standing in stark contrast to the pristine impressions of Albrecht Dürer's 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' (1498) in a rare early proof, also offered at Tunick's stand. Both prints have significant six-figure price tags. (To see Dürer's more sculpturally inspired take on the supersized woodcut in his “Triumphal Arch,” first published in 1517.)
At David Zwirner, a majestic Vija Celmins, “Ocean Surface Wood Engraving” (2000), shows a rectangle of open water, seen from above. (Priceed at $45,000.) In the context of the fair, it provides an eerie echo—across 500 years of printed history—of a single page in Titian's Red Sea grid. A woodcut by Donald Judd, 'Untitled' (1993), at Galerie Lelong & Co., lays thin vertical and horizontal red lines across a white rectangle, inlaid within a striking black border, which similarly resonates through the centuries through the reveal grid as a fundamental compositional tool. (Priced just over $10,000.)
South African artist William Kentridge nicely echoes the Titian's scale, in a pair of contemporary works that continue a decades-long collaboration with print studio and publisher David Krut Projects. In “The Old Gods Have Retired” (2022), an intaglio print with a gnarled tree in the center, the artist incorporates coffee liquid into the etching process to produce a work of art measuring approximately 1.5 by 2 meters in an edition of 20 pieces (each at $70,000, unframed).
The fair offers the opportunity to view major works by well-known names, but bargains can often be found on the print market. Polígrafa Obra Gràfica, a publishing house in Barcelona, is presenting a large series of prints, entitled 'Some Books', by the British duo Wood and Harrison for $30,000, while in its booth they also sell work for less than $2,000. Both the Bernard Jacobson Gallery in London and the Michigan printing company and publisher Stewart & Stewart advertise prints for less than $1,000.
With prints, even the works of great artists can be obtained for cheap prices with a smart hunt. On Thursday at 3 p.m., Phillips auction house is offering a sale of works by the James Rosenquist estatewith eye-popping estimates ranging from $500 to $1,000 for a major pop artist now prominently featured on MoMA.
For collector Jordan Schnitzer, buying prints at the fair is “like eating: you experience it and know whether you like it or not.” Schnitzer of Portland, Oregon, who attended his first association print fair in the early 1990s, has built a collection of prints and multiples of more than 15,000 items.
Why does Schnitzer collect prints? “It's great to have art in your life,” he said. “You can get work from some of the greatest artists of our time that is much more affordable than the more unique works in painting or sculpture.”
None of the works in the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation booth are for sale; Schnitzer participates as a collector and not as a dealer. For him, the fair is an opportunity to build and maintain relationships with dealers, galleries and publishers, and to see as much art in one day as would otherwise take a week.
Schnitzer's booth will feature 26 works by Brooklyn artist Leonardo Drew. The work of four other influential artists – Robert Rauschenberg, Hank Willis Thomas, Julie Mehretu and Matthew Day Jackson – selected by Drew from Schnitzer's collection, adorns the exterior walls of the booth.
The return of the fair to the armory feels like a homecoming. But there are also strategic considerations.
In conversations with gallerists and dealers, I was told more than once that some local collectors with deep pockets were more likely to visit a gallery booth in Paris or London than to go to the Javits center in their home city. With the return to the Armory, gallerists hope business will improve, especially among New York's top collectors.
If prints are like food, as Schnitzer suggests, the print fair is also an accessible place to sit down at the table. When asked if prints were a good investment, Tunick modestly gestured with his hands to explain the steady upward trend over the decades before hesitating. “You should buy what you are passionate about,” he said.
Please note that the paper money we use, any crisp note in denominations of $5 or more, is the result of a combination of offset, gravure and letterpress printing. You probably already have some pretty sophisticated prints. At the Armory there may be several people willing to trade you for them. Print for print.
The IFPDA Print Fair
Friday through Sunday (VIP preview Thursday), Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, Manhattan; fineartprintfair.org.