Just saw this post on bloggy about an upcoming art fair in NYC that was just cancelled. The Crain's story blames a saturated market and drops this little nugget:

"Art dealers say they don’t have enough good work to bring to all of the fairs and that artists simply can’t create on such a fast timetable."

To which Barry rightfully notes:

"I love this part too. Does anyone else know a huge number of un-represented artists?"

I'm going to pile more on to that - Does anyone else know a huge number of represented artists who aren't being shown in any of the fairs because their galleries can't get in? Or better yet, in all the recent fairs, how many times were people shown work by the same artist at different booths at the same fair? I was too busy running a booth in Miami this year to get the full picture, but I think last year the ratio of galleries showing at the fair to galleries showing Marcel Dzama works was about 3:1. But look at the bigger picture - of all the fairs in the US in the last 24 months, how many galleries had boths in all of them? In most of them? How many galleries had booths in none of them?

This is all part of a much larger situation. Fairs are picking galleries not because of what they are showing, but because of what other fairs they have done/are doing. If you think that's a bit of an exaggeration, pick any of the recent fairs and see how many of those galleries were showing work by artists they weren't the primary rep for, and then see of the primary rep for those artists wasn't able to get in. Many collectors aren't buying things from galleries because they are saving up to buy things from Fairs. This is a nasty circle that seems to be getting worse.

Maybe if the usual suspects run out of artwork by the usual suspects, fairs will be forced to show something everyone hasn't seen already, several times over. That might not be such a bad thing.