I hear over and over again, “Oh, what a glamorous life you lead”. Well, while this may be true, the comment is always connected to a trip I am taking. Unfortunately, travel is not glamorous. As most of you know air travel today is no fun at all and when one is going to the same places over and over again, it can be tiresome… yes, even Paris!
Now, if I were going to Paris as a tourist and could stay at a quaint little hotel on the left bank where I did not have to worry about telephone service and internet connections and could visit all the tourist places that people come to Paris to see…
I knew an elderly dealer years ago who seemed to spend his life flying from one city to another buying wherever he could and participating in art fairs. I asked him once where he found the energy and how did he adapt to the time changes. I was quite surprised when he told me that he hated it and had great trouble with the physical drain of travel!
So why do we do it. One could simply answer to make a living but happily there are compensations. We get to see friends, some of whom may even live in New York but somehow we only find each other when we are in other countries. We get to visit collections, on a one to one basis with the collectors and every once in a while we see a real art treasure. Whether it is for sale or just for viewing it can be most exhilarating.
By the time you read this I will have left Santa Fe and be in New York and tomorrow I head for TEFAF, the great Art Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands. I must say I am looking forward to that. There are so many great dealers in so many fields that there is no problem spending several days there and not being bored. It is divided into many sections, the two largest being the decorative arts and the old master paintings. A new large section for works on paper including photographs was started a few years ago. Then there is a fairly good cross-section for modern and contemporary art and smaller ones for fields such as primitive and Oriental art. There is a great deal of older jewelry but for those who like the big contemporary names there are dealers such as Graff and Buccellati.
Thanks to these Missives I can now go in as a member of the Press allowing me for the first time to take my camera into the fair itself. While TEFAF puts a wonderful selection of images of the Fair online I am hoping for some more spontaneous shots. We shall see.
If all goes well, my next Missive will be from Maastrict and from there my plans are in flux. Will I be heading back to New York right away because we are planning to move the gallery in the near future or will I take a train trip hitting several of the German towns that I have not previously visited. As of this writing, I think that there is a good chance that I will take the train to Frankfurt stay a few days and then go to Basel and see an exhibition that is of interest to me.
In any case, at the end of March I will be in Paris for the opening of the Salon du Dessin with about two dozen of the best dealers in works on paper from all over.
From Sonheim’s, "A Little Night Music’’:
Unpack the luggage, la la la,
Pack up the luggage, la la la,
Unpack the luggage, la la la,
Hi-ho, the glamorous life!
