Sotheby’s has turned a Brutalist landmark into an art mall, and Independent 20th Century is doing its best to fill it with treasures the market has overlooked. The fifth edition of the dedicated modern art fair opened today, September 24, at the Breuer Building in Manhattan, a structure that once served as the long-time home of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1966 to 2014. It later briefly housed the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s contemporary galleries, followed by the Frick Collection, which used the space temporarily during renovations.
Sotheby’s bought the building in 2023, and that is where the fair takes place — inside an auction house that sits in a structure that was once a museum, a nested image, a hall of mirrors, a jest about where the wealth lies. The collector class is drooling over the “undiscovered” treasures stuffed into the booths.
There is a lot of spectacular art on display, particularly by late women artists who were inadequately recognized in their lifetime. The Richard Saltoun Gallery is showing the paintings of Austrian-Italian Surrealist Manina. A Dadaist muse, she began painting in the 1940s after meeting Frida Kahlo in Mexico, filling canvases with mythic visions of femininity that combine minutely applied brushstrokes against explosive color passages.
The canvases she produced fall within the bounds of $40,000 and $160,000, and her biography is a familiar one: after the loss of her only child, she was left with nothing, not even an inheritance, for the gallery’s director Monica King explained. She exhibited with Magritte at the Hugo Gallery in New York and even showed at the Venice Biennale in the ’60s were gone. Yet despite this, Manina remains far from a household name.
The Fair’s Pitch
Independent 20th Century wants to change what counts as important in the history of modern art. The fair’s stated goal is to present a different view of the century’s avant-garde. The galleries are doing their part by bringing out works by artists who were neglected in their lifetimes.
This strategy is straightforward: uncover neglected artists, exhibit their creations, and leave it to buyers to judge if the marketplace has erred. The venue for this undertaking is the Breuer Building, while the event itself functions as the presentation.
Who Is On Display
Among the many tales told at the fair is that of Manina. Below is a brief glance at some of the artists who were present:
- Manina, the Austrian-Italian Surrealist whose work is shown at Richard Saltoun Gallery
- Rosalyn Drexler, the Pop artist whose painted sculptures are shown at Garth Greenan Gallery
Artists who were ignored during their own lives are now getting fresh bids for attention from galleries that are presenting their work.
A Monsterous Arrangement
Today’s art world finds its perfect metaphor in the mise en abyme: a fair sits within an auction house, which itself occupies a building that once served as a museum. Layer after layer accumulates until the entire arrangement folds back upon itself.
The building once served as a museum; now it plays host to an art fair, and the change has been fully realized.
If I were the Breuer Building, I’d need a vacation.
The fair argues that the market has misjudged these artists from the very start. The Breuer Building merely houses the deal, while the collector class purchases because they feel the market has undervalued these artists. Whether the market will adjust on its own is unknown.
Source material: “Independent 20th Century, the Mise en Abyme of Art Fairs,” Hyperallergic.
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