A survey of British painter Jenny Saville is on view at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach until March 4. Included in the exhibit are 15 of the artist’s large-scale oil paintings and 15 of her drawings.

This is the artist’s first solo in a museum in the United States, though she did have a one-woman gallery exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery in 1999. Other than this, Saville’s only solo exhibitions have been in London and Italy.

Cheryl Brutvan, the Norton’s curator of contemporary art was able to identify and secure Saville’s work because of a generous grant provided by the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund/MLDauray Arts Initiative. The grant funds a series referred to as “RAW: Recognition of Art by Women,” which will bring the work of six contemporary female artists’ work to the Norton over the course of the next six years.

It seems fitting that Jenny Saville was chosen as the first artist for RAW because “raw” is also an apt description of her work. Her paintings are large. Her subjects are people and her style is figurative. However, she doesn’t idealize them in a traditional way. Instead, she portrays a human form that is fleshy, obese, bruised, and disfigured. Yet, she evokes from these malformed figures inherent beauty. Her work has many layers of feminist nuance.

In Propped (1992) an obese woman sits precariously atop a stool that she’s evidently much too large for. Her nudity rebels against the “male gaze” and somehow there’s beauty in her repugnant fatness. The work demonstrates Saville’s natural talent as a painter. She was only 22 when she created this work. The subject’s stare is provocative. This type of stare is a repetitive theme throughout Saville’s oeuvre. Her color choices allude to Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, both of whom she counts amongst influencers.

Brutvan explained it this way: “She paints flesh and so she uses the tones that we find in the white body. She really looks at the color. I don’t think her work is idealized or romanticized at all. It’s very much reality. There’s a certain tone, but it’s full of color. You look at the fulcrum and it’s just an amazing passage to create that subtlety of the feeling of flesh.”

Saville is a young artist. She was born in 1970 in England, received her B.A. in fine art, with honors, from the Glasgow School of Art in 1992 and was discovered that same year by the iconic British art collector Charles Saatchi.

Saatchi commissioned her to create new work for a gallery show the following year and subsequently extended the commission for a period of three additional years.

“She’s an artist that became very well known very young — when she was still in her 20s. She had work exhibited publically and then a newspaper put her painting on the cover of their Sunday section,” Brutvan said. “Charles Saatchi saw that reproduction and pursued buying her work and then getting his hands on everything that was produced, even though it was her graduate show.”

As a result of her affiliation with Saatchi, her work was included in the notorious “Sensation” show of work from his collection, which travelled to the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, and also included work by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. At this point she met Larry Gagosian, who became her U.S. dealer.

Three subsequent life events shaped her future work. The first is that she received a residency in Connecticut that allowed her to study medical libraries and observe a local plastic surgeon. She embraced this opportunity because she saw it as a way to better understand human anatomy. She could now see behind the flesh, which already fascinated her. “The first face lift I saw was absolutely amazing because the doctor literally pulled the face off and then -- it was a deep-tissue one -- you could see how thick the flesh was,” Saville has said.

One wonders if Isis (2011), whose body seems marked into segments, awaits plastic surgery. She appears pathetically vulnerable, as though she’s looking to the viewer for approval, and this evokes sympathy. Soon, she’ll be cut through, like raw steak, in a quest for beauty. Apparently, the idea of flesh as an object apart from the person inhabiting it was compelling for Saville even as a child.

“Her mother remembers she was interested in, or didn’t mind the appearance of, liver that was being prepared to eat. She had openness to that kind of reality – to flesh and blood and doesn’t shy away from images that other people might find more difficult,” Brutvan said.

The second major life event to shape her work was her becoming a part-time resident of Palermo in Sicily. She bought a dilapidated 18^th-century palazzo and began to divide her time between there and London. Palermo had a profound effect on her. It’s a city of striking contrasts, where buildings decimated by war remain unaltered, yet subliminal natural beauty abounds.

One of the most engaging works in the exhibit is Rosetta (2005-2006), which she created in Palermo and is the portrait of a blind woman that Saville found beautiful. “Her eyes are like globes, planetary systems,” the painter said. Rosetta was emblematic of Italy’s gritty authenticity, which appealed to Saville.

“Things were more real and authentic than in a city like London. And that feeds into what she’s interested in with her own artistic process and subject, and what you learn by layers coming forward and how that informs the next move you’re going to make within a composition,” Brutvan said. “What she saw in Palermo was a manifestation of the ideas she already had as an artist.”

The other major life event that influenced her recent work is that she became a mother. In 2007, she gave birth to a son, and the following year a daughter. Shortly after this, in 2009, she began a series of charcoal drawings that are based on Leonardo da Vinci’s work, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, which is found in London’s National Gallery.

Her depictions of motherhood, as with all her work, are not entirely idealized. At times, the figures seem strained and awkward — yet the women’s faces do possess a marked serenity. Her skill as a draftsman shines through in these drawings where her raw talent is most visible.

There’s a tinge of irony to the Jenny Saville exhibition — with its provocative, feminist underpinnings — that’s noteworthy. Mounted in a plastic-surgery-and-appearance-obsessed locale like Palm Beach, probably one of the most image-conscious areas in the country, the exhibit will surely draw the ‘ladies who lunch” crowd.

Momentarily imagining these types of women strolling through the show after lunching at the Norton’s café, makes one want to be a fly on the wall to overhear their comments — and adds another layer of nuance to this thought-provoking show.

Jenifer Mangione Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. She studied art history and received her B.A. from Purchase College. Visit her blog at www.fineartnotebook.com

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Jenny Saville is on view at the Norton Museum of Art until March 4. Hours for this exhibition are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults, $5 for visitors aged 2 through 13, and free for children under 13. Palm Beach County residents receive free museum admission on the first Saturday of each month. For more information call 832-5196, or visit www.norton.org.

Any art exhibit containing “Old Master” in its title takes the gambling out of the museum visit. There is no question that the art is going to be good. And so it is with Offering of the Angels: Old Master Paintings and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery, in which the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale has given us an easy one, with plenty of drama and musculature.

More than 40 works, normally housed in the Uffizi Gallery, one of the oldest and most prestigious art museums of the world, are stopping by a few American cities following successful openings in Florence, Madrid and Barcelona a couple of years ago. Fort Lauderdale is the first stop.

The works, including one recent restoration of a Titian and a work by Sandro Botticelli, take us from the creation of Adam, the original sin and expulsion from Eden to the birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. We find annunciations, nativities and last suppers, all by skilled artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Not a bad way to start the year.

A seemingly deteriorated God extends his right arm toward a sitting nude man who seems shy and unable to walk. With his long white beard and wrinkles, this God appears less regal and closer in physical appearance to man. His soft, forgiving semblance seems to be saying I do not bite. This is Jacopo Da Empoli’s The Creation of Adam (1632). It marks the beginning of the show.

Following it are two representations of The Original Sin, the first of which is by an unknown Florentine painter from the 16^th century. Adam, sitting on a rock to the left, is about to receive the apple from Eve, who is standing to the right. The one single tree of knowledge appears in the center of the panel, forming the familiar triangle composition we will see many times here. Eve’s long voluptuous hair can almost be touched by the serpent-like devil curled up around the tree. The depiction of evil includes bat wings, long nails, horns and pointy ears. Also, notice the light focusing on the Roman-Greek inspired bodies of Adam and Eve while the creature watching them from the tree is in darkness.

This take is very different from the one dating to the early 17^th century by Frans Floris. This Original Sin on a square canvas features a darker mood as well as a more realistic approach to the bodies. The composition abandons the triangular format for a more relaxed, sensual stance. Eve is placed closer to Adam, who, again, is leaning on a rock playing the more passive role in accordance with the story. He has his left arm around Eve, who features porcelain skin and a hint of smile. In her face there is no sense of regret for what she is about to do. Even though the apple is intact and Adam has yet to grab it from her hand, there is no doubt the snake smiling in the dark has already won. The misty distant landscape depicts other animals and fruits. The whole spectacle is sort of chilling.

For a warmer, rosy-tone work, turn to The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (circa 1634) by Giovanni Mannozzi (aka Giovanni da San Giovanni), who depicts the moment of shame in lighter colors.

In Madonna with Child, Young Saint John the Baptist, Dominican Monk and Angels by Andrea Piccinelli (Il Brescianino), one of several Madonnas with Child here, a young Saint John, on the lower right, holds a scroll where Jesus’ mission is written down. A monk pointing to the sky with his index finger emphasizes the divine nature of that mission while looking directly at us. As soon as it makes eye contact, the work connects with the viewer and can easily make him/her feel as Tom Hanks does in Angels and Demons. Could the artist be trying to say anything else? Where else have we seen fingers pointing in some direction? For starters, in Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (the Louvre version), The Last Supper and his last painting, John the Baptist. The straightforward obvious gestures do little to appease the sensation of mystery filling the room –and our heads.

Facing the grandeur of some of these paintings, especially the larger ones, one can feel very small and powerless. Better to take a step back and fill the space typically reserved for interpretation of abstract and contemporary works, with humility and admiration. The museum has graciously placed benches for longer contemplation. Use them.

Pieces such as Pieta with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (circa 1621), by Fra’ Semplice Da Verona (Il Cappuccino Veronese) no doubt deserve your time. In it, the body of Christ appears resting on a white cloth; wound marks are seen on his hands. John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria accompany Mary in her grief. Mary extends her arms over the body telling humanity “look at what you have done.” Notice the lamb or ram in the foreground looking toward the lifeless body. This time, the animal has not replaced the human sacrifice, as we have seen earlier in the show.

Hanging in the first gallery room is Tintoretto’s Sacrifice of Isaac, which features the moment in which an angel stops Abraham from following God’s command and killing his son. The father, about to strike with the knife, listens to the angel as he relieves him of the terrible promise. The ram later takes Isaac’s place. Our eyes travel from the angel, on the upper left, to the ram, lower right, in a sharp diagonal line.

Do not walk out without stopping by Alessandro Turchi, aka L’Orbetto’s Christ in Limbo (circa 1620). Here we get Christ against a dark unpainted background and suspended in the air. He is holding a white banner and is accompanied by Adam and Eve. Holding a broken cross on the right is St. Dismas, the thief who was promised a seat next to Christ in Heaven. On the lower left is Hell. For me, it was the most unexpected piece of the entire show.

It is not easy to admire a value which one is not convinced of and that feels rather forced, because of popularity or loyalty or obligation. Offering of the Angels has that reassuring aroma of the ancient. Admiring its value should come easily for those who visit it from now until April 8.

Many times during the show I wanted to touch these creations to see if they were indeed real, but photographs are not allowed, not even pens; let alone touching. I thought about Eve and the way she must have felt, being around such a gorgeous forbidden fruit.

I must admit I was jealous when the National Gallery in London announced its fantastic exhibit on the master of the great masters: Leonardo da Vinci. Unable to fly there, I resigned myself to reading The Guardian’s interactive guides of his sketches and paintings.

Now, having seen the drama, the colors and compositions in Offering of the Angels, it would be a sin to feel anything but fortunate.

Offering of the Angels: Old Master Paintings and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery, is showing until April 8 at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Tickets: $18 adults, $15 for seniors and military, $10 children. Open Tuesday, Wednesady, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Call 954-525-550o or visit www.moafl.org.

Two adjacent exhibits, now on view at The Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach until Jan. 15, demonstrate why illustration should be given due consideration within the context of the history of art in America.

Yet also, as the complement to the journalism of their day, the works on view provide a visual thumbprint for our nation’s ideology during different times in our not-too-distant history, as well as demonstrate how rapidly this collective mindset has changed.

The Art of Illustration: Original Works of Howard Chandler Christy and J.C. Leyendecker and Andy Warhol: The Bazaar Years 1951-1964 are two shows that have been made possible by the Hearst Corp. Publisher William Randolph Hearst believed that illustration was an important tool for successful journalism. He hired the most talented illustrators. He invested in color printing technology as soon as it became available and he fully understood the power of imagery to elicit the reader’s imagination.

Illustrator Howard Chandler Christy was born in Ohio in 1873 and was actually a descendant of Capt. Myles Standish. He moved to New York when he was in his early twenties so that he could study at the Art Students League under the tutelage of the American Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase.

By 1895, he’d embarked on a career as a magazine illustrator, even doing many of the drawings of Theodore Roosevelt and the “the Rough Riders” during the Spanish-American War. By 1910 he was working primarily for Hearst, and mostly for Cosmopolitan, where he stayed until 1921.

Christy’s work shows the romanticism of the age in which he lived, which glorified the horrors of war by proffering heroes. Most of his work in this exhibit centers on soldiers. They are sturdy idealized figures. Christy is also known for creating the “Christy Girl,” illustrations of beautiful women that are also emblematic of their time, and often compared to the “Gibson Girl.” In works such as American Colonial Woman Watching Over a Wounded Man (Note: the titles used here are descriptions, as these works are untitled), we see one such beautiful woman depicted as an angelic caretaker.

Christy’s works were done in the early 1900s, yet their subject matter is the decade prior. Leyendecker’s work is mostly from the 1940s, a mere 30 years later, but we see a significant shift in how the American attitude towards war has changed. Men are still heroic, but romanticism has been replaced by a pragmatic optimism — one that acknowledges the sacrifices of war, as shown in Leyendecker’s Memorial Day.

Joseph Christian Leyendecker, who went by “J.C.”, was actually born in Germany but emigrated to the U.S. when he was eight. He returned to Europe to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, but then shortly after moved to New York and almost immediately became a successful illustrator. It’s very easy to see how his work influenced another great illustrator.

“Leyendecker influenced Norman Rockwell, who adored him,” said Nancy Mato, executive vice president and curator. Indeed Rockwell spoke in his autobiography about how he studied Leyendecker’s technique. But while Leyendecker also did many covers for The Saturday Evening Post, the ones on view here are from Hearst’s publication, The American Weekly.

Everyone knows who Andy Warhol is, but many people don’t know that this iconic leader of the Pop Art movement was first a successful illustrator. Between 1951 and 1964 he created hundreds of illustrations for Hearst’s Harper’s Bazaar. Warhol began working as an illustrator shortly after he arrived in New York in 1949 after graduating from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.

A delightful selection of the works Warhol created are on view here and even the most die-hard Warhol fan may not have seen some of them. The opportunity to see them shouldn’t be missed. Mato admits to accepting the works, sight unseen, as soon as Hearst called to offer them to Four Arts.

“I was excited when I heard. I didn’t know what they looked like, but I knew this would work with our audience. I was so delighted when they arrived,” she said.

Rightfully so, as these works reveal a side of Warhol that few would associate with the bizarre, angst-ridden, white-haired weirdo portrayed in films such as Basquiat and The Doors. This Warhol has a notable sense of humor as well as a sense of whimsy, aptly demonstrated in an illustration that accompanies a narrative called “Making Less of Oneself,” which extols the virtues of self-control, and throughout all of the works displayed, which are colorful and lighthearted.

If Christy’s work demonstrates bold romanticism, and Leyendecker’s work pragmatic optimism, then Warhol’s work heralds the origins of our nation’s obsessive consumerism and preoccupation with image, particularly the image of wealth, beauty and affluence. Here, the focus is not war, but fashion. As such, the images have no great depth, but they’re remarkably fun and are sure to bring a smile to anyone’s face. What you’ll see are shoes, purses, lipstick cases – all the accoutrements of fashion.
However, exactly what makes these two exhibits so impactful is that they’re presented simultaneously. While each could successfully stand on its own, shown together they present the viewer with the visual story of how Americans have viewed themselves over an almost 100-year period of time.

The progression from military boots and bayonets to purses and perfume certainly provides ample material for the contemplation of a profound shift in our national identity, and values, over the past century.

Jenifer Mangione Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. Visit her blog at http://www.fineartnotebook.com.

The Art of Illustration: Original Works of Howard Chandler Christy and J.C. Leyendecker, and Andy Warhol: The Bazaar Years 1951-1964, are on view at The Society of the Four Arts until Jan. 15. Hours for this exhibition are Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5. For more information call 561-655-7226, or visit www.fourarts.org.

Long yellow shoelaces make for a wonderful sun, there is a vice versa to shoes are made from animals and while I don’t know about the white elephant, the black bear in the room is not always ignored.

I learned all of the above during a recent trip to the Boca Raton Museum of Art to check out two ongoing exhibits that are proving to be very popular.

More than 90 highly personal works created by ordinary men and women with no formal artistic training are the core of Outsider Visions: Self-Taught Southern Artists of the 20^th Century, running through Jan. 8. The works here are humble in material and execution and, as we learn through the descriptions, often the results of a personal affliction, a divine revelation/vision or a favorite scenery.

Whether you are an art expert or only sat through a few credits of art history, you will feel that inner critic dying to point out that the proportions here and there are off, the composition seems boring and there is overall flatness. The temptation is especially irresistible with the first couple of works set against an intense red wall. They are perceived as childish; you can tell from the looks of those passing by.

John Henry Toney’s That Man Is in Love with that Cutting Up Hairdo (2000) is an example of this. The use of markers along with the basic facial features and body shapes remind you indeed of a child’s drawing, but a child would have probably stopped after composing the main figures. That elaborate background you see taking over the entire white surface, as well as the linear patterns on the clothing, would have never happened. A child would have grown bored long before completing it and moved on to a new drawing.

Forget for a moment what you thought great art looks like. This is folk art, or outsider art, as the self-taught art genre is called. It does not have to be great or bad. It just is. And it is truly unique.

Despite the infantile traits, I found myself liking two works by Florida-born Mama Johnson titled Two Girls (2002) and Guess Who (2002). In both cases, two dots appear in place of the nose while bold black circular outlines make for wide-open eyes. A classic red mouth completes the face. In Guess Who, the use of frenetic lines, some bold, some thin, in red, black and blue, remind me a bit of Amelia Pelaez.

Alabama-born Jimmy Lee Sudduth provides some of the pieces that stand out the most: Red the Weenie Dog (2000) and Sawmill in Red (2000). The use of color in them – watch for the variations of browns, greens and pinks -- along with the rich texture and raw finish, gives them a certain maturity and sophistication.

I love the irregular patches of blues and whites on the body of Weenie Dog. Here the animal appears horizontally stretched out against a bright green plain. If you read the description you will learn Sudduth, the son of a Choctaw Indian Shaman, grew up painting with mud and honey. For color he likes to use wild berries, grasses and coffee, among other materials.

Next to it is Black Bear (2006) by John “Cornbread” Anderson, a native of Georgia. The work, mostly in black, has a picture-book feeling to it. It seems to me perfectly fitted as an illustration for a children’s book. I suppose because I can imagine certain story line going on as the happy bear eats the honey and gets ambushed by the upset bees.

I found the strength of the show and its value to be precisely in the ability of these men and women to block knowledge and resist the traditional learning method that means sketching, cleaning brushes and having a group critique. It is a brave thing to resist the path that more or less promises systematic improvement. Come to think of it, improvement (as a goal) does not seem to exist for these self-taught artists. I got the impression they create because there is joy in doing so, not as a way to make a living and not expecting to become better.

But therein lays the good dilemma of Outsider Visions. One cannot be sure if an artist’s apparent disregard for the basic principles/rules of art is intentional or evidence of poor skill.

Even if the latter was the case, it does not necessarily mean we should dismiss the works. Actually, it could be interpreted as a sign of greatness. Pablo Picasso famously said: “In every child there is an artist. The difficulty is knowing how to hold on to this artist as the child grows up.” He also said: “…it has taken me my whole life to learn to draw like a child.”

In that case, these artists are masters at holding on to their inner child.

Does that mean knowledge ruins natural artistic ability? Not always. Before we get to Outsider Visions we have to walk through a jungle-like installation called The World According to Federico Uribe, by the Colombian conceptual artist.

Like the folk artists, Uribe is not a child. He is actually a very educated adult. He attended the University of Los Andes in Bogota and continued his studies in New York before moving to Miami. Yet he has managed to transform a 5,000 square-foot room into a silly uncomplicated world where alligators and leopards are made of sneakers, and leather and brown shoelaces become a monkey climbing a life-sized palm tree made of books.

This is what he is known for: giving every day objects unpredictable highly amusing new lives. The animals we encounter (a crocodile, a giraffe, a turtle, an ostrich, a zebra, a puma, etc.) all appear posing, as if suspended in the middle of an attack or reaction. This makes the show closer to real life.

For each of his inventive creations, such as the sheep made of ping-pong balls, we feel like rotating all around it to look at it from different angles. We want to decipher the recipe that gave it form. In most cases that recipe includes: Sneakers, pencils, shoelaces, books, discarded pieces of wood, corks, rubber soles and anything else you can imagine.

Also here are pieces from Uribe’s 2008 Animal Farm installation, which features a life-sized farmer family made of colored pencils.

Also running until Jan. 8, this is show that produces instant excitement. I watched adults and children enter and exit the room in complete amusement. Is it possible? Yes. Shoes are made of animals, so why not make animals of shoes?

I asked myself the same question and the answer was Yes, too. It is possible to go through formal education and have one’s imagination and innocence emerge intact.

The Boca Raton Museum of Art is at 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, in Mizner Park. Admission: $14 adults, $12 seniors, $6 students (through March 18). Hours: 10 am-5 pm Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 10 am-9 pm Wednesday; 12 pm-5 pm Saturday and Sunday. Closed Mondays and holidays. Call 561-392-2500, or visit www.bocamuseum.org.

On the first day of the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair (NADA), which took place during the recent Miami Art Week, young artists and art professionals gathered alongside established dealers, collectors and curators in the expansive grand lobby of the Deauville Beach Resort.

Young men with scruffy beards wearing blue jeans sat on couches and armchairs alongside polished art world mavens in Prada to watch Hennessy Youngman’s performance work, History of Art Part 1, a Joyce-like, stream-of-consciousness rap with wry observations about art-world elitism and racism.

The vibe was casual, and the comfortable mingling of emerging and established in what, at times, felt more like an über-cool art college because of the camaraderie, is one of the many things that made NADA unique among the large pack of art fairs that take place this week each year. In fact, in a week that brought every major art-world player to the Miami area, NADA proved to be the cream that rose to the top — achieving both record attendance and sales and garnering rave reviews in the art trades.

NADA, which began Dec. 1 and ran for four days, is inherently different from competing fairs because it’s not simply a fair. It’s a New York-based, not-for-profit membership organization, founded in 2002. And, as Heather Hubbs, NADA’s director, said, “We’re the only fair that doesn’t charge admission.”

The primary mission of NADA is to create a collaborative environment for contemporary art professionals. “We believe that the adversarial approach to exhibiting and selling art has run its course,” the group, which has individual and organizational membership tiers, says on its website.

“Some people are young gallery owners, some are gallery directors, and some are curators or writers. A lot of art advisers are members,” Hubbs said. Membership is by invitation only.

And while NADA’s primary focus is sales, the environment is not intimidating. “Part of it is about meeting the collectors and knowing them because ultimately the galleries want to sell work, but it’s also about creating a network in which you can share resources and knowledge,” Hubbs said. “You can’t really ever cut out the competition because ultimately everybody’s trying to do the same thing, but you can create a friendly environment that’s comfortable and open.”

Hubbs, who is both keenly intelligent and remarkably down-to-earth, has been NADA’s director since 2005. Both the organization and the fair have flourished under her leadership. She’s highly respected within the contemporary art arena and many of the gallerists see the show’s success being due in large part to her vision.

“I think Heather Hubbs as a director is artist-minded,” said John Riepenhoff, co-owner of Wisconsin’s The Green Gallery. “I think she sees the fair in a more artistic way than some that are run by people that are more corporate-minded, which has its own place. But we’re really happy in this environment.”

Another factor that distinguishes NADA is the venue. The Deauville Beach Resort, situated oceanside, is a good 20-minute cab ride from the convention center that houses Art Basel Miami Beach. Yet the distance seems a draw, rather than deterrent. Visitors can take a breather from the craziness here because it’s the perfect environment for that. The Deauville has historic charm, too. It was designed in the 60s in the Miami Modernist “MiMo” style and was a hangout for the Rat Pack. The cool ambiance lingers.

The auditorium-like grand lobby proved a perfect spot for performance art, which went on throughout the fair. In addition to the Hennessy performance, artist John Miserendino performed Pavilion each day, a work inspired by Dan Graham’s iconic architectural sculptures. It found the young artist squatting in a readymade alongside the entrance to two of the exhibit galleries conducting staged interviews with various art world players as visitors scuffled by, or stopped to observe.

There’s a misconception that NADA offers only new, or emerging art, but that was not necessarily the case. Though many of the galleries are new and do show new art, many are also quite established and showed mid-career artists. With prices ranging from affordable works under $1,000, to those well over $100,000 — and the most dominant price being around $20,000 — a few sales can cancel out what a gallery pays to participate.

“Art fairs are important for us because they give us a visibility that we tend to lack due to our geographic location,” said Jake Palmert, Riepenhoff’s partner in The Green Gallery. “Also we were introduced to a number of curators and museum board members from cities across the country.”

The gallery was showing works by painter Scott Reeder and mixed media artists Tyson Reeder and Amy Yao. “Everything is contemporary conceptual art. We’re working with living artists. Everything in the booth is pretty fresh and made for this exhibition, or recently,” Riepenhoff said.

The galleries represented a microcosm of the global art scene and wherever they hailed from, and whether they were showing new or established artists, all agreed on NADA’s significance.

“Certainly I think NADA is the most challenging and convincing fair among the younger fairs that happen along with Art Basel. It was a very easy choice,” said Johannes Vogt (no relation to the writer), who owns the Vogt Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea district. Vogt had work by Bo Christian Larssen, a mid-career, significant Swedish artist based in Berlin.

Chaira Badinella and her partner Fabrizio Affronti, who own Milan’s Brand New Gallery, which opened last year, chose to participate in NADA, “because we thought it was really important for young galleries and a good way to present our work to the American public,” Badinella said.

They were showing paintings by Shinique Smith and sculptures by Cristina Lei Rodriguez, both established artists.

Istanbul’s NON Gallery was participating in NADA for the second time and showing work by Asli Çavuşoğlu, who was just featured in Performa 11, New York’s biennial for visual performance art, and Annika Eriksson.

“We chose to show quite a young artist, Asli, who is 29, and Annika is quite established. So one emerging and one established,” said NON’s director, Derya Demir.

NADA was the only fair where Miami-based nonprofit art space Locust Projects had a presence outside their gallery. “We were excited about presenting Locust Projects in the context of so many wonderful galleries,” said Chana Budgazad Sheldon, Locust’s executive director. They brought a limited-edition series of photographs by Valerie Hegarty.

NADA’s sales met, or exceeded, participant’s expectations, ArtInfo reported. The positive sale results may be due in part to the collaboration NADA entered into this year with Paddle 8, an online auction platform.

Galleries were invited to preview work prior to the fair’s opening and the online auction ran for a week after the fair ended. For this reason, many collectors knew before the fair began what works they were most interested in seeing and made a beeline for those dealer’s booths during the preview.

Between the sales and the networking opportunities, NADA has positioned itself as the lifeblood for many participating galleries.

“For us, NADA is essential to keeping our program alive,” said The Green Gallery’s Palmert.