Downtown, An Uptown Art Fair

The Asian art and antiques market is changing quickly, a fact that is made clear by a visit to the New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show. Open through Saturday and now in its 16th year, it is the oldest such specialty show in Manhattan. Staged at the Gramercy Park Armory on Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, the fair boasts top international dealers, finer-quality objects, and higher attendance than ever before.Because of its downtown zip code, the fair has yet to attain the notice paid to this week’s 11 auctions of Chinese, Southeast Asian, Indian, Korean, and Japanese art (estimated to take in $136.4 million), 17 Asian art gallery exhibitions in the Fuller Building, and the Haughton International Asia Art fair at the Park Avenue Seventh Regiment Armory. But the Arts of Pacific Asia Show merits uptown status.“It’s gone more global, as Americans still aren’t traveling,” the show’s organizer, Bill Caskey, who heads up the California-based fair organization Caskey & Lees, said.Because of strong overseas currencies compared with the still weak dollar, even more dealers than usual have headed to New York. Dealers hailing from Europe, Asia, and Australia far outnumber the American contingent. This year’s roster is made up of 41 international dealers and 46 from America.This year’s 87 dealers include the São Paulo, Brazil, gallery Augusta 664, offering Chinese art, and the Malaysian Private Gallery, with contemporary Asian painting. Tokyo-based Nankai Art Gallery is touting Vietnamese ceramics dating from between the 16th and the 19th centuries. That kind of far-reaching international cast means the fair offers a wider range than most that focus on primarily Chinese and Japanese art and antiques. The Haughton fair, by contrast, showcases more contemporary Asian painting and sculpture than in past years.“The quality has gone up wildly, and I see all the curators from major museums,” a Manhattan Buddhist and Hindu antiquities dealer, Arnold Lieberman, said. In recent years past, he has sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rubin Art Museum as well as fine arts institutions in Asia including the Palace Museum in Taipei. Spotlit on his stand will be a modeled red sandstone headless torso from the Kushana Dynasty (1st century) for $850,000. “There isn’t another one like it,” Mr. Lieberman said.Leiko Coyle Asian Art, a gallery in Portland, Oregon, offers 14thcentury Tibetan mandalas. Elsewhere on the floor, Himalayan and South East Asian mandalas, as well as Islamic examples, can be found.Textiles of all kinds — including lavish Chinese Imperial court costumes, embroidered badges worn by lower court figures, and antique carpets — seem to be the new darlings of the decorative arts world as four new specialists are attending the fair this year, meaning textile dealers account for 20% of the roster. Thomas Murray, who owns Asiatica Ethnographica of Mill Valley, Calif., is showcasing a particularly unusual garment, a kawa baori, or fireman’s coat, in smoked deerskin with graphic markings. The price is $15,000.That kind of piece, combining ethnography, art, and textile, is increasingly popular. “With a greater awareness of Asian arts, more clients are seeking textiles that demonstrate historic transcontinental shifts,” a London textile dealer, Joss Graham, said. He is showing a 19th-century Gara silk sari in a rich indigo with lavish white floral embroidery studded with peacocks also picked out in white thread. The sari was woven and sewn in China for a member of the Bombay-based Parsee trading community, indicating the reach of those traders across Asia. It boasts a $10,000 price tag. “Five years ago, the 9-yard-long sari would have gone for only $2,000,” Mr Graham said. Also on Graham’s stand are embroidered and tiedyed ikats from Central Asia, long collected by photographer Annie Leibovitz.Jewelry is also strong this year, with an unprecedented six specialists, including Joe Loux Ethnographic of San Francisco and Asiatic Fine Arts of Singapore. Early jade, coral, and amber necklaces, bracelets, and rings abound.

Downtown, An Uptown Art Fair

Downtown, An Uptown Art Fair

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