30th edition – From May 18 to 23, 2022 at the Palais Brongniart
The Salon du Dessin welcomes 39 galleries, specializing in old, modern or contemporary drawings and among the most prestigious in the profession. There are more than 1000 drawings of the most beautiful works of ancient, modern and contemporary art in the historical venue of the Palais Brongniart, for your viewing pleasure.
Tom Christopher’s reportage sketches from an era of Covid confinement:
I went in on the train to NYC fully masked up and often found myself the only one walking around. Certainly the only artist drawing on street corners. Save for the workers, the trash collectors and street sweepers, there was no one walking around or going to work.
The quiet was unsettling. I asked a lone Sabrett hot dog vender on Sixth Avenue, how it was going. He said “fine”. I asked again , No really, how is it? So it turns out pre pandemic he would sell over 400 hot dogs a day. Now lucky to sell 10. I bought two. And he went back to standing on a blue plastic milk box scrubbing his umbrella.
The lone cake decorator in window of the only shop open on the lower level of Grand Central spinning the chocolate and layering a beautiful cake. No one was buying but she proudly kept right on making it the best.
The writer Raymond Chandler once said “There is nothing more empty than an empty swimming pool.” He was right but I would add Times Square with only two people in the street. One of them yourself, the other sleeping curled up in a suitcase in the traffic island. Just like the guy in Ocean’s Eleven, a guy completely inside a Samsonite suitcase.
These journalistic drawings come from the deep Covid era in New York City. Streets were deserted except for the workers, steel and cement, delivery people here and there, traffic cops watching absolutely nothing in the streets. All carrying on.
