Park Avenue Armory Art Fair: Prints, Drawings, and Changing Tastes at IFPDA

For close to 40 years — a long time — I’ve been going to the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA), and I enjoyed my visit on Thursday to this preeminent art fair known for Old Master to contemporary prints, held at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. I can’t say I enjoyed it any less, but it’s sad to see the fair change its membership criteria. Once the realm of print dealers only, it’s now expanded to include drawing dealers, so the fair has both. I know, it’s not Russia 1917, but it’s among the many signs of the times I don’t exactly love. Call me Colonel Blimp.

Yes, both prints and drawings revolve around surface, pressure, and line, but prints are nearly always mechanical reproductions with a printing press huffing and squeaking and clanking. A drawing is a unique work of art. Tools are different. Connoisseurship is very different. So the merger isn’t an event on the order of the Golden Spike, linking the East and West by rail, with routes built to align. In this case, the train has left the station. Most Old Master print dealers are floating on clouds in an aquatinted sky or nearing retirement, as are most prints-only dealers. Many of our best artists move eagerly and easily among media, as do many dealers these days. As I walked through the fair, though, I decided that the change was a work in progress but fine and inevitable.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

For close to 40 years — a long time — I’ve been going to the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA), and I enjoyed my visit on Thursday to this preeminent art fair known for Old Master to contemporary prints, held at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan. I can’t say I enjoyed it any less, but it’s sad to see the fair change its membership criteria. Once the realm of print dealers only, it’s now expanded to include drawing dealers, so the fair has both. I know, it’s not Russia 1917, but it’s among the many signs of the times I don’t exactly love. Call me Colonel Blimp.

Yes, both prints and drawings revolve around surface, pressure, and line, but prints are nearly always mechanical reproductions with a printing press huffing and squeaking and clanking. A drawing is a unique work of art. Tools are different. Connoisseurship is very different. So the merger isn’t an event on the order of the Golden Spike, linking the East and West by rail, with routes built to align. In this case, the train has left the station. Most Old Master print dealers are floating on clouds in an aquatinted sky or nearing retirement, as are most prints-only dealers. Many of our best artists move eagerly and easily among media, as do many dealers these days. As I walked through the fair, though, I decided that the change was a work in progress but fine and inevitable.