Pavilion of Art & Design Promises Quality

LONDON— A number of the 45 international exhibitors at Pavilion of Art & Design London, ensconced this year in large pink tents in Berkeley Square, were still tweaking their stands during today’s late-morning press preview.

At one, London’s Richard Nagy, a small painting was resting against a wall, its backside showing a history of gallery labels. The Fauve-period painting by Andre Derain, Portrait of a Woman in Yellow (1904–05), with an asking price of £600,000 ($950,000), had sold to a collector in a phone negotiation just before the VIP gala party the previous evening, according to Nagy. He had swiftly replaced the sold work and was waiting to have it wrapped and removed.

There were few hints of further early transactions, though New York exhibitor Todd Merrill had sold Irish furniture-maker Joseph Walsh’s 13-foot dining table, in bent and curved burr olive ash and olive ash from a single tree, to an Irish client for $150,000, again, just before the fair opened.

 

It’s a unique work for now, though a small edition is planned. And both it and a similarly elegant bent wood and upholstered chair, available at $10,000, have yet to be named, according to the 30-year-old Walsh, who was standing guard over the table.

There was also a bit of action at London’s Gordon Watson, which sold a pair of 1950s Fontana Arte side tables in brass and deep blue colored glass for £12,000 ($19,000) and several cut-glass pieces from the 1960s by Swedish glass designer Vicke Lindstrand, priced in the £500 ($800) to £3,000 ($4,800) range.

Although pre-fair sales were modest, it was obvious that the fair’s organizers, the French dealers Patrick Perrin and Stephane Custot, were vigilant in assuring top quality and authenticity throughout the tents, with the help of a sophisticated vetting committee.

The fair is a reincarnation of last year’s DesignArtLondon, and the organizer’s third outing. This year, modern and contemporary art were added to the eclectic design mix, and plenty of expensive canvases were on hand for both tire-kickers and more serious visitors.

Topping that elite group was a large 78-by-58-inch Francis Bacon estate picture, Study for the Human Body After Muybridge (1988), on offer for $9 million at the booth of London’s Faggionato Fine Arts, where it was installed alongside one of titular English photographer’s iconic black-and-white motion studies. Faggionato represents the Bacon estate along with New York’s Tony Shafrazi.

Nearby, London’s Lefevre Gallery had a stunning Pablo Picasso oil in pale gray, Portrait de Sylvette(1954), at a serious £4 million ($6.34 million).

At the tag-team booth shared by Vedovi Gallery from Brussels and New York’s Van de Weghe, a wall of small-scaled Andy Warhol paintings hummed with potential. Among them were a 1978 self-portrait with a green background for $950,000 and a vibrant “Dollar Sign” painting from 1981 for $425,000.

“I like to quote in dollars,” said Paolo Vedovi, “because I understand the currency.”

Pavilion of Art & Design London opens to the public tomorrow and runs through Oct. 18.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.