I’ve said it more than once: The world’s art fairs have far more in common with souks than with museums. That’s why I shot this photo of the booth of a New York gallery called Canada, at the NADA fair in Miami, which happily set out to prove me right. Owner Phil Grauer invited Yousef Idia, the Moroccan-born husband of one of the gallery’s artists, to sell Berber rugs from the floor of the booth. “Come peddle your rugs, and I will peddle my pictures,” Grauer remembers saying. The dealer feels that “the structure of the rugs matches the structure of many of the paintings I’m interested in.” And, he says, given the pain everyone suffers at art fairs, having rugs on the floor “kind of softens the blow”.
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