March 2011 Archives

Art Fairs

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Mata Moana by Robert Henri, 1920

Mata Moana by Robert Henri, 1920

I regard the salons of Paris and the big annuals as institutions detrimental to art. Art should not be segregated to a certain six weeks in the year. Art should be persistent; exhibitions should be small. Everyone enjoys Fifth Avenue, because there a series of very small exhibitions occur in the dealers' galleries. We enjoy them all, for they are not beyond our endurance and because they are divided into groups, a group in each gallery; we are thus enabled to see more and enjoy more than were they smashed together in one great hodge-podge. And on Fifth Avenue art is persistent; we can always find something there in all seasons.

The Big Show should not be desired. All over the world art has been made into a three-ringed circus with salons. All who are familiar with modern art history know the "salon pictures" as a special and very overgrown and mongrel breed.

--Robert Henri, 1926

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