Five roads of winter show, exhibition of earthly joys

Some museums are encyclopedias. Will there be an art fair? In 2016, the venerable Winter Show at the Park Avenue Armory, known as the Winter Antiques Show for 60 years, began recognizing pieces made after 1969. Three years later, “antique” dropped from the name. Now in its 71st edition, this year's fair, a benefit of the Bronx's East Side house hamlet, feels like a mini-Mette for its geography and generous period.

From a medieval English baptismal font with its original stucco intact (Blumka Gallery, D7) to the bizarre jubilant gouache of an 1830 volcanic eruption (Hill Stone, D3), the fair still has plenty of weirdness. Resting on a proud museum-grade object beckons to the collector's wallet. You've probably never seen more expanses of inlaid mother-of-pearl than the gleaming veneers of two towering Spanish colonial Peruvian cabinets. (For them, see Zebregs & Röell, D13, a first-time dealer at the fair, visiting from the Netherlands.)

The weight of this fair's past, whether last year's photorealism (Jonathan Cooper, D11) of the giant tobacco sculpture at Oldenburg (Galerie Gmurzynska, E10), nourished by Oldenburg in the 1980s, It becomes hard to miss. Joan B. Mirviss, Ltd. Some booths, like the fine carved porcelain and stoneware brought in by (E5), show our century with a dedication more commonly associated with design fairs such as Salon Art + Design. Purists may alk and have their right, but these modern add-ons, especially the exquisite Japanese basket measurements at the Thomsen Gallery (C6), do little to illustrate the longevity of certain crafts. Helpful. Also, the best of these supports help you tinker with themes, even in browsers. Here are five:

Show off your mastery of play

For as long as the winter show has been held, Belgian land artist Jean Belame (born 1936) has amassed a collection of playing cards that is claimed to be the largest private hand in the world. Daniel Crouch Rare Book (E15), which offers his total collection “in a seven-figure sum,” brings some highlights and the booth could be the fair's biggest draw. Memorable improvisations include a 19th-century Apache deck with the shapes of swords, bells, and buttons painted on rawhide rectangles, and a deck of Paris Metro tickets painted by Alexis Poliakoff in the 1970s. Masu. A good example is the Tarocchi card, which was created long before the occultists gave life to the Tarot in the 1700s. One, from Renaissance Italy, with two cherubs lifting the bubble of the “world” into a field of gold, may have been cut from an illuminated manuscript.

True to form at this fair, furniture dominates Verame's collection. On display are two of the four known Bureaux typographies on a 1780s French portable flashcard trunk based on the educational philosophy of John Locke. These wooden hutches, similar to postal sorting desks, hang on the desktop so children can arrange and learn from the printed cards listed above: geography, grammar, and more. The flashcards themselves, recycled from the French royal family, are aptly reminiscent of that revolutionary decade.

our creatures, ourselves

This fair is also about meat and many of its animal objects are ready. A guillotine mouth whips out the end of a cigar as the owner of a circa 1908 Fabergé silver car squeezes its bulging glass eyeballs (Wartski, E13). A miniature and highly enriched Noah's Ark from Germany of 1860, although clearly unplayed, is one Biblical and Zoological Education (Robert Young Antiques, E4). Around 1900, the clock, made from a hollowed duck egg, rotates a fragile dome around its axis, like a solar system model.

These days, we work more for animals than the other way around. Check out two luminescent bird paintings by British painter Eisha Gamiet (b. 1982). Color with handmade color and an overdose of shell gold (Jonathan Cooper). They are part of a series interpreting the Sufi poem “The Conference of Birds”. One is a deep blue interpretation of Scape, the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal, Down Park Avenue, and a Victorian lithograph by ornithologists John and Elizabeth Gould, both appearing in the booth next to Peter Harrington (C12) I will.

“You are my bird,” reads the inscription on the brooch made by French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle from 1973. It's a strange kind of affection between lovers, but it can be sweet if you mean it. And it suits her work. Didier, Ltd. (D6), an artist's jewelry specialist, this enamel-perfect gold brooch takes the form of a stinky creature with bright pinwheels and zebra stripes. Direct address is also the strength of the Posy ring at Les Enluminures (A6), a dealer known for medieval and Renaissance miniatures. They brought the outstanding gimmel ring from England, circa 1750, and hinged it so that three hoops swing in a trefoil arrangement and then swing back into one ring. The closing action of the three bands unites the two small hands enamelled in beige to a central cluster of rubies and diamonds in the center of the ring. Thought to be an engagement ring, the inside reads “Gage d'Amitie” or “Token of Friendship”. For skeptics, it can be as much a handshake as a love affair. After all, marriage is a contract.

in your arms

Another symbol of harmony, the Japanese moon, or heraldic coat of arms, adorns the case of Japanese lacquered swords, the protective sheath for the blade, from one family of the Edo period. Brought to you by antique arm dealer Peter Finn (A3), these deceptively sophisticated objects resemble elongated bowling pins, with six-dot monts adorning the top lid and steel clasp. . A near-contemporary token of Death, much less subtle, is an ivory Old Testament figurine by the 18th-century German sculptor Simon Troger (European Decorative Arts Company, A11). Cain steps into his brother's groin and hugs him hard in the face. Regarding the fir (carved from fruitwood) that covers the man's body, equal care is given to the teeth of Abel and the glass pupils of the cry. It's hard to imagine Troger making two, but he did. This copy is located in Bavaria.

In an exhibition of much implicit violence (don't miss the Greek Helmet at Hixenbaugh Ancient Art, E11), by painter Hermann Nitsch, the basic gesture comes in Burlap's acrylic deep red splatter from 2014 I'm telling you that. , ironically hanging onto the Austrian delicacy in Kunsthandel Nikolaus Kolhammer (D14).

Art and pathos: sadness and pathos

Lend a sickening double meaning to Nature Morte, a 17th-century portrait of death by Spanish still life painter Juan Juan Hamen Ileón. In it, a small baby lies in a red velvet grave, her skin and clothes rocky gray (Eguiguren Arte de Hispanomerica, D10) and eye sockets blank. It's a tension that will probably come or at least relate to memory, in a way that Auguste Rodin would exploit much later.

Commissioned by the city of the same name in 1884, Rodin's bronze “Burger of Calais” imagined six noblemen who offered their lives as hostages to the King of England in order to end the siege of Calais in 1346 . Winter show veteran Bernard Goldberg Art (C1) has acquired a rare complete run of lesser-known miniatures of these victims. (Only five of the six total were cast in miniature.) Compare this to the full-size cast of the 1985 Met. These miniatures carve out collective suffering into distinct emotions. A variety of patinas, from dark chocolate to leather.

The sacrificial burgers were not spared at the last minute, as French legend has it, making Rodin's recovery from the dead symbolic. He found his spiritual sequel, at least for this viewer, in the abstract etchings by Ed Clark (Dolan/Maxwell, D12) from 1982.

winter show

Through February 2, Park Avenue at the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue, Manhattan, TheWintersHow.org.