It is easy to take the art and antiques fair for granted. After all, thousands of them take place every year, from humble events in village halls — cardboard boxes, old newspaper and cups of tea — to fairs so glamorous that on opening nights the ticket alone can cost $5,000. It was not ever thus. That revered mother of all such selling exhibitions — what became known as the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair — was conceived in 1934 as a daring initiative to stimulate trade in the dark days of post-Depression London. As for the word ‘fair’, the late and much-lamented Frank Davis, who was still writing his Country Life saleroom column aged 97, recalled in 1961 that the very use of the term had caused unease when first mooted. Critics were concerned that its ‘undertones of popular, carefree amusement might give an impression of raucous irresponsibility, far removed from the cloisteral calm traditionally associated with the acquisition of works of art’.
Who could have guessed that this fair formula should prove so popular? Or that it would move from a one-off ‘stimulus’ for the art trade to its sharpest weapon in its fight for survival as the all-powerful auction houses continue their relentless incursion into the retail art business. Those Thirties trailblazers got it just about right, however, when they decided to call their exhibition a fair, for what have most of these top events become if not marketplaces and meeting places accompanied by perfectly medieval carousing, amusements and entertainment? There may never have been any dancing bears but even the otherwise sober Maastricht fair has its wandering purveyors of beer and oysters.
And The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht — it acquired its hideous acronym TEFAF in 1996 — is without doubt the greatest of all art and antiques fairs.
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