…I’ll show you mine. Face it- that’s a prospect as tempting now as it ever was. And dealers and fair organizers alike should hearken to the concept.
Mind you, I’m not advocating the addition of peep shows to any venue. Perhaps not strongly advocating, as, in Jackson Square, just a few blocks from the sex clubs along Broadway I can tell you so far it hasn’t provided us much benefit. What’s put me in mind of this old concupiscent phrase is what I read recently about the changing dates of the fairs in the still tediously extended London Season. When things were running well in the trade, the comfortable mid-June overlap between Olympia and Grosvenor provided punters a fantastic opportunity to see the best of everything concurrently. American collectors and designers- ever and yet composing the financial backbone of the trade- were formerly able to spend a week in London- without having to sacrifice other summer travel plans- visiting the shows. Invariably the major salesrooms would simultaneously have fine quality sales, and, overall, punters would be confident that they’d seen and had the opportunity to make purchases from a panoply of the best that the antiques and art world had to offer.
With the demise of Grosvenor and the vicissitudes of Olympia, what we’re left with are competing fairs that effectively force the prospective visitor to choose which he plans to attend. Of course, the organizers of the new fairs have gone to great expense to provide lavish venues to attract custom, but let’s bear in mind that the organizers’ custom is to a large extent the stand rental of the dealers, who all pay mightily to participate. While all dealers appreciate the amenities put up by a good quality fair, they also know the proof of the pudding is not in the looking, but in the eating. The fair from the dealer’s perspective is entirely a numbers game- sales make the fair, and the larger the numbers of punters through the exhibition hall or marquee, the greater the opportunity to make it into the black.
My own frequently expressed belief that the internet has rendered less effective both fairs and established art and antiques venues has taken on the tone of a jeremiad. Nevertheless, I would maintain that, to counter the effect of internet shopping, the larger the numbers of dealers, the more tempting the opportunity to visit becomes for prospective buyers. Can this be accomplished in a single fair? I don’t think so. When Olympia was approaching 500 dealers, the numbers of objects was overwhelming, and tended to all run to the same (brown furniture) thing. And as with dealers, every fair has a different look and tone. Certainly Olympia, Art Antiques London, and Masterpiece have made herculean efforts to make themselves distinctive and distinct from one another. But are any of them on their own a single destination to the exclusion of the others? I’d say that Selfridge’s, Harrod’s and Harvey Nichols are each distinctive- but what would be the effect of being able to visit one and then one or both of the others only after an interval of several weeks? Under this circumstance, all would suffer.
The London Season is still in a state of flux, made the worse by a world economy that can most optimistically be described as unsettled. Still and all, condensing the fair dates to allow for a consecutive, overlapping run would magnify the impact (read ‘positive remuneration’) of the season.