The art fair

the long version

The Art Fair tells the story of Richard Freely, whose mother is an aspiring painter, and whose conventional life of shimmering summers in the Hamptons and exclusivity on Manhattan's Upper East Side is suddenly and irrevocably shattered when the city's elite and fickle art world first embrace - and then coldly and abruptly reject - his mother's work. Seeing his mother as "a lovely and luminous star player, surrounded by an incompetent supporting cast," and consumed by the need to shield her from the social forces that threaten to grind her back in to obscurity, Richard lets his adolescent and young adulthood slip away unnoticed - until he is confronted by the terrifying but inevitable choice of pursuing his own uncertain future or clinging to the security of the past.