Last weekend, I bravely made my way down to NYC’s trendy SoHo area to visit the annual Affordable Art Fair, being held in the Metropolitan Pavilion. I attended with the hope that I’d come away with some inspiration, or maybe some ‘affordable’ art. At the very least, I’d be able to shoot a watergun into a clown’s mouth, inflate a balloon, and win an flammable Spongebob doll, because really, how can you use the word ‘Fair’ without including that clown balloon pop game? It would be a travesty.

Being entrenched in the art world as a creator of moderate success, my perspective on art sales probably isn’t the purest, objective thing out there. I’m embittered by the sheer mess of confusion, luck, cronyism and coincidence that swirls at the core of the art world, giving me no clues about what to expect, what to produce, and where to show it off. As a result, many of my thoughts were dominated by ‘they’re charging HOW much for that junk?’, but the fact remains : as obvious, unaesthetic or pretentious as an artwork may be, THEY did it and I didn’t. I accept my defeat… but I retain my undying soul. I’m looking at YOU, poorly Photoshopped ‘art’ print of the Mad Tea Party. There’s no forgiving you. If there’s an art Hell, I damn thee to it.

Handsome, clean booths with moveable partitions and walls were erected by various galleries - every wall full of prints, paintings and photographs of every size and style - mostly traditional, framed, square stuff - with the occasional strange sculpture peppering the fair. There were a few paper works that seemed to be painted onto the walls themselves, or tattered to a point of absurd delicacy, leaving me wondering exactly HOW one would display these things in their home.

The purpose of the fair was to acquire - there was never any doubt about that. No one was there to show off things that they liked - they wanted to sell things. One can’t get around the word ‘Affordable’ without evoking the idea of collecting and purchasing - an act which (some would argue) cheapens the value of art itself, but remains an essential thing if the lowly artists want to survive. Let me just state early on that the word ‘affordable’ has never had a wider definition than at The Fair, with the median price for an artwork resting somewhere around $3000. Interestingly, that price didn’t apply to a single medium or size - original oil paintings of photorealistic pool balls, awkward collages and drawings on wood, photographic prints of underwear clinging to youthful female behinds, lithographic prints of squiggly lines - all were fair game for the multi-thousand dollar price tag.

Having heard of precisely none of these artists, one can only assume that even an ‘accessible’ art fair such as this involves a lot of insular self-referencing, and since ‘aesthetic quality’ is one of the most variable properties a thing can have, it would be impossible to price such works based on ‘how pretty they are’. Prices, I’d like to conjecture (and I say this as a painter), are usually based on how much money the artist has conned out of a previous client, thereby setting a standard price point for all subsequent similar artworks. Other points of relevance include previous gallery showings, other noted art collectors who might have this person’s work in their private collections, if this artist has been mentioned in an art journal of note, the astrological year, the color of socks you happen to be wearing, and how many leprechauns live in said artist’s yard.

To describe the incomprehensible pricing structure, one object of particular note was a series of simple, crocheted food items set into shadow boxes and under glass. These sold in the multi-thousand dollar range. The very next day, I saw a series of similarly themed and constructed items at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, selling for about $20 each. I remain unable to identify the real disconnect.

One thing that does NOT seem to influence the price of an artwork is ‘effort’. The artist’s time-consuming layering of dozens of media and meticulous attention to their craft would easily cost the same as a bizarre pencil scrawl on an old wooden block, and there were many examples of this. Regardless, beauty is still in the eye of the beholder. I liked some of those wooden scrawls, darnit - but I also have a Home Depot and a pencil. See, that’s me being bitter.

Other reviews of the AAF have been far more critical than I could be, calling the work mediocre and the dealers ignorant. I’d have to disagree with those assessments. Let’s make an analogy.

Let’s say ‘art’ is a washing machine. When you go to Sears, the salesman (‘art dealer’) is going to sell you a washing machine, and he’s going to sell it based on the formal and superficial qualities of it - what it looks like, what it does, its efficiency, and maybe a little bit of its history. Still, he won’t begin to have a clue about what goes on inside the machine (‘art’) - which wires go where, how much power each component needs to run, which gear turns which belt. That’s the job of the mechanic (‘artist’), who knows the heart of the machine itself. The salesman does their job just fine, and their inherent distance from the truth behind the product is something that can never be completely bridged, and that’s something that us as artists, and collectors as collectors, need to understand. It’s an inefficient, frustrating system, but it works for some. Everything, even things as potentially pure as love and art, is a business.

I didn’t buy anything, but it wasn’t for lack of falling in love with some of the works there - a life-sized sculpture of a dog made entirely of toys, a series of astute oil portraits of twenty-something slackers on boards (by Ian Strawn), a wall of mini-robots (and larger oil paintings of other robot toys), a bizarre Superman painting by Steven Skollar, Amy Hill’s businessmonster portraits. There was genuinely something for everyone, no matter what your art preference might be - abstraction, figural, surreal, pop, landscape - The Fair brought together a staggering variety of works, which is a rarely seen thing. I came away with at least $17 worth of inspiration (as well as frustration and confusion) - so the $17 price of admission just about balanced itself out. Check out our community for a bunch of photos from the event!