July 13 (Bloomberg) -- Marie Case, an upstate New York art dealer, brought 39 paintings and sculptures to the ArtHamptons fair in Bridgehampton, Long Island.

She made one sale. Someone offered her $1,000 for the 1940s rattan loveseat she was sitting on.

“Everyone is on the beach,” Case said yesterday, a few minutes before the three-and-a-half day event ended. “If it had rained this weekend we might have had more people. We just had three beautiful days in a row.”

While the economic contraction hasn’t unseated the Hamptons as a playground of the well-heeled -- traffic was heavy on the roads and at fashionable restaurants such as Nick & Toni’s -- the anemic response from buyers suggests the Hamptons won’t rival Miami or Basel, Switzerland, as an art mecca any time soon.

“This is a giant fair and Bridgehampton is a small town,” said Mark Borghi, who has a gallery on the Upper East Side and another a few doors down in Bridgehampton. “Logistically it’s very difficult. You can’t get the volume of people to make everyone happy.”

Fair-goers spotted among the 68 dealers in five white tents, according to dealers, included Jon Bon Jovi, the rock star; several “housewives” from reality television program “The Real Housewives of New York City;” actor Kelsey Grammer; and Russell Simmons, the hip hop entrepreneur.

East Hampton’s Vered Gallery, which originally planned to complete a silent auction of a Michael Jackson portrait by Andy Warhol at the fair, withdrew it from sale late last week. The artwork sold at Sotheby’s in New York in May for $278,500 and the gallery was offering it for a minimum of $800,000. Janet Lehr, a gallery partner, said there was interest but collectors needed more time to assess the value.

Due Diligence

“When you’re in it for big money you do your own due diligence,” she said. “When something comes up at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, the catalog is printed a month in advance.”

The fair, in its second year, attracted several well-known galleries like Manhattan’s D.C. Moore, Hirschl & Adler Modern and Borghi. They were outnumbered by regional businesses from Connecticut, California and beyond, often displaying art of dubious merit. While half the galleries that attended the first event didn’t return, the total number of exhibitors increased by about a third this year, organizers said.

Borghi’s stand was stocked with colorful modern works, including a 1962 fleshy pink $3.5 million painting of a man and woman by Willem de Kooning. He said the fair was a key promotional opportunity and his gallery would be back.

“Our clients expect us to be here,” he said.

Booth Price

Case, of Windham Fine Arts, in Windham, New York, was remarkably upbeat given that her $20,000-plus investment to exhibit hadn’t paid immediate dividends.

“It’s not just about getting your booth price back,” she said. “It’s about cultivating relationships.”

She said she met a collector and two consultants who are interested in commissioning work by Peter Diepenbrock, a sculptor she represents.

Peter Marcelle, a Southampton dealer clad in red pants and loafers, seemed to have closed one of the bigger deals. His stand featured watercolors and temperas by famed Maine artist Andrew Wyeth, who died earlier this year. The works were presented in conjunction with dealer Warren Adelson. A red dot indicating a sale was affixed to a watercolor of a lonely white house on a hill. The asking price was $975,000. Marcelle said the buyer was a local builder, who intended to hang the work in his Hamptons home.

Richard Friedman, the fair’s president and founder, said it attracted some 5,000 people. For some, that was worth the fees for booths, which cost from $9,000 to $20,000, because fewer people were visiting galleries in New York City.

“Under the current situation, we’re not getting the traffic in Chelsea we used to get,” said George Henoch Shechtman of New York’s Gallery Henoch.

He said he sold enough to cover his costs.

To contact the writers on this story: Philip Boroff in New York at pboroff@bloomberg.net. Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com;

Last Updated: July 13, 2009 01:42 EDT