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"Yes, I like cats too," my friend responded as we reached the end of the aisle at the Park Avenue Armory this weekend.

"I meant Alex Katz," I said. Generally I do not attend a "big" art fair with expectation of being absorbed and transported, but straight ahead Pace Wildenstein's booth featured the artist's "Paintings of Maine," the liquid, lush luminosity of the smoothly complex works evoking a summer breeze and the chirping of birds on a brisk winter afternoon in Manhattan.

Yet the experience of being surprised, enlightened and entertained by the virtuosity of visual artists was the norm during time spent at ' The Art Show," the ADAA's Annual event benefiting the Henry Street Settlement. It is impossible to fully convey the visual depth and excellence brought to this venue by the 70 participating galleries, perhaps the most eloquent description on the event is -

A convocation of names. Names of the past and the present, names etched in history, full names, names that are just last names, names that you don’t need to read because the shout out form the wall to you, names that are etched in history, names we will all know soon, or should…Matisse, Picasso, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein, Milton Avery, Joan Mitchell, Reginald Marsh, Warhol, Duchamp, Alec Soth, Nevelson, Charlotte Solomon, Motherwell, Bill Jensen, Bonnard, De Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Mapplethorpe, Norman Bluhm, Lynn Davis, Krasner & Pollack, and yes, Alex Katz.

As for the cats, they were represented as well. Martha Parrish & James Reinish Inc had in their selection a 1953 Norman Rockwell work entitled "Walking to Church," in the foreground of which a captivating tabby reaches a paw off the curb. At the booth of gallerist Joan T. Washburn, I met a life-size bronze cat by Gwynn Murrill, sleek and minimal in detail, yet so life-like in energy that he seemed ready to follow me home. The subject was a house cat named George. Just George.

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