A Sibling for a Shiny Art Show in London
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12/5/12 11:40 AM Frieze Art Fair in London Adds Masters Show - NYTimes.com Page 1 of 5 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/arts/design/frieze-art-fair-in-london-adds-masters-show.html?pagewanted=all Search All NYTimes.com Multimedia Frieze Art Fair A Sibling for a Shiny Art Show in London Andrew Testa for The New York Times Art fairgoers at Frieze London, which runs through Sunday, and a work by Georg Baselitz. More Photos » By ROSLYN SULCAS Published: October 12, 2012 LONDON — Soon after the Frieze art fair opened its doors on Wednesday morning to those who are solemnly known as “serious collectors,” a man stood in the White Cube booth contemplating Damien Hirst’s silver and black “Destruction Dreamscape.” After a few moments he turned to his smartly garbed companion. She looked at him expectantly. “Shiny,” he said. He probably wasn’t the buyer who snapped up “Destruction Dreamscape” for $800,000, but his comment nicely summed up the glamour of the theatrical art world circus that is Frieze. There is much that is shiny — people, money and splashy art — at this annual contemporary-art fair in Regent’s Park, which has been a nonnegotiable must-do, must-see for art world insiders since it opened in 2003. But a decade on, it still Despite Bob Dole’s Wish, Republicans Reject Disabilities Treaty Jewish Congregation Applauds U.N. Vote on Palestine Log In With Facebook MOST E-MAILED RECOMMENDED FOR YOU 70 articles in the past month All Recommendations Log in to see what your friends are sharing on nytimes.com. Privacy Policy | What’s This? What’s Popular Now The latest Theater news from Broadway and beyond. [email protected] Change E-mail Address | Privacy Policy Get Curtain Up E-Mail Newsletter 1. A Forlorn Shuttle Points to Progress in the Rockaways 2. Most New Yorkers Think Climate Change Caused Hurricane, Poll Finds HOME PAGE TODAY'S PAPER VIDEO MOST POPULAR Art & Design WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS ART & DESIGN BOOKS DANCE MOVIES MUSIC TELEVISION THEATER VIDEO GAMES EVENTS FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ SAVE E-MAIL SHARE PRINT REPRINTS Slide Show Subscribe to Home Delivery Help cross3... U.S. Edition
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A Sibling for a Shiny Art Show in London
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12/5/12 11:40 AMFrieze Art Fair in London Adds Masters Show - NYTimes.com
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Multimedia
Frieze Art Fair
A Sibling for a Shiny Art Show in London
Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Art fairgoers at Frieze London, which runs through Sunday, and a work by Georg Baselitz. More Photos »
By ROSLYN SULCASPublished: October 12, 2012
LONDON — Soon after the Frieze art fair opened its doors onWednesday morning to those who are solemnly known as “seriouscollectors,” a man stood in the White Cube booth contemplatingDamien Hirst’s silver and black “Destruction Dreamscape.” After afew moments he turned to his smartly garbed companion. She lookedat him expectantly.
“Shiny,” he said.
He probably wasn’t the buyer whosnapped up “DestructionDreamscape” for $800,000, but hiscomment nicely summed up theglamour of the theatrical art worldcircus that is Frieze. There is muchthat is shiny — people, money and splashy art — at thisannual contemporary-art fair in Regent’s Park, which hasbeen a nonnegotiable must-do, must-see for art worldinsiders since it opened in 2003. But a decade on, it still
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seems to have a coolness cachet that is all its own.
“Frieze has a distinct point of view,” Thelma Golden, thedirector of the Studio Museum in Harlem, said onWednesday. “You get a lot of information here, a realconnection to what artists are doing, what’s out there.”
But the big news at Frieze this year wasn’t really anyparticular artist, notable trend or spectacular sale, althoughbusiness was brisk on the first day, with Paul McCarthy’senormous Kleenex-pink “White Snow Head” selling for$1.3 million within 10 minutes of the opening. Instead thebuzz was all about the previous day’s opening of FriezeMasters, a separate show across the park, exhibiting workmade before 2000.
It’s a clever expansion of the Frieze brand by the fair’sfounders and directors, Matthew Slotover and AmandaSharp, capitalizing on the thousands of collectors, dealers,
curators and art world personalities who arrive in London every October for Frieze week, afrenzied round of gallery openings, big museum exhibitions, auctions and parties.
In an interview a few days before the opening, Mr. Slotover and Ms. Sharp didn’t contestthe commercial interest in cornering the rest of art history for Frieze, but they maintainedthat their inspiration was as much curatorial as market-driven.
“Frieze has always been super-contemporary, art fresh from the studio,” Mr. Slotover said.“But we became very aware that our friends who are artists aren’t just looking at workmade now but are inspired by work from the past. We thought a Masters show wouldcontextualize the contemporary art and that we could do it in a Frieze-type way.”
Victoria Siddall, the director of Frieze Masters, said that they were also very aware of thegrowing museum trend of juxtaposing contemporary and older work to show lineage andinfluence.
“We were getting applications for the contemporary fair from all over the world,” she said.“For many of the galleries trying to show with us, it didn’t make sense, but it made usrealize how much demand there was.”
The Masters fair has certainly been organized in a Frieze-type way. With its 101 standsgiven a serenely modern, gray-and-white setting by the New York architect AnnabelleSelldorf, it offers an intriguing juxtaposition of styles and aesthetics, as well as atantalizing, kaleidoscopic view of art history.
“It is the lineage of ideas throughout history that makes the present so relevant,” saidRoseLee Goldberg, the director of the Performa festival in New York, who had come toLondon to see both Frieze fairs. “It was exciting to stand in front of a Lynda Benglis and aLouise Bourgeois and to see a 12th-century painted Madonna and Child nearby. The rangefrom 200 or 300 B.C. to 2000 A.D. created a stunning panorama of ideas.”
Although a few Frieze regulars expressed doubt that there would be a great deal ofcrossover between die-hard contemporary collectors and those with more eclectichistorical tastes, there were buyers for big, blue-chip art as well as more obscure fare.Picasso’s 1969 “Buste d’Homme,” hanging next to “L’Ilyssus du Parthénon,” by Matisse, atAcquavella Galleries, sold for $9.5 million, while the London gallery Sam Fogg, which
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12/5/12 11:40 AMFrieze Art Fair in London Adds Masters Show - NYTimes.com
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specializes in medieval art and was exhibiting enormous stone gargoyles, among otherthings, sold several pieces “in the region of $50,000,” according to a gallery spokesman.
There were real old masters (Poussin, Canaletto); an enormous Calder mobile, swaying toBrazilian music, at Helly Nahmad; and a trove of 16th- and 17th-century paintings at theDavid Koetser gallery from Zurich, notably Giovanni Stanchi’s gorgeously Baroqueallegories of the seasons and Sebastien Stoskopff’s “Vanitas With a Vase of Theriac.”
“There is a lot of interest; we already have reserves on several pieces,” a gallerist at Koetsersaid not long after the fair had opened.
Several of the big-name galleries, like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and Victoria Miro, alsohad stands at Frieze London (as the contemporary tent is now called), and the overlap incontent between the two fairs was sometimes surprising.
“There’s a great deal of work here that could be at Masters, and vice versa,” said the NewYork art adviser Elisabeth Wingate, as she studied a bronze by the American feministartist Hannah Wilke at the Alison Jacques Gallery.
“You can still buy art by women that is so undervalued, compared to their male peers,” sheadded.
Whether the fairs’ overlap becomes a problem for the Frieze identity remains to be seen;first impressions of Masters were generally positive, and there was certainly some of thecollector crossover that the organizers were hoping for.
On Wednesday the contemporary collector Beth Rudin DeWoody said she had bought“quite a few things” the previous day at Frieze Masters. “I found some really interestingpieces,” she said, “two John McLaughlins, a Hannah Wilke and a small Gavin Turk.”
At Frieze London sales at the 175 stands were strong, if not quite reproducing the feedingfrenzy of a few years ago that Frieze regulars recounted.
“The people who come into the morning preview know what they want,” said AnnaGavazzi, a sales associate at the London gallery Sadie Coles HQ, where an eye-poppingSarah Lucas hanging chair, seemingly made up of breasts, was going for $150,000, andwhere less expensive work, “in the $20,000 range,” by the Turner Prize finalist SpartacusChetwynd was exhibited.
“We’ve sold almost everything,” she said late on Wednesday, as the party crowds poured infor the evening session.
Alissa Friedman, a director of Salon 94 in New York, said her impression was that “there isa similar energy to previous years, but I think a lot of galleries have brought youngerartists with lower price points.”
“But then, that’s what this fair is for, living artists,” she said.
A new section, Focus, for galleries established after 2001 (there is also Frame, for galleriesunder six years old), may well have added to that younger feel, with its vibrant solopresentations that included a video, “West Hinder,” by the Turner nominee ElizabethPrice, and Torsten Slama’s slightly sinister pencil drawings of empty buildings.
Few gallerists were willing to admit that the European economic crisis was affectingbusiness, although Andrew Silewicz at Sprueth Magers said he thought buyers were morecautious. “It’s all a bit more considered now,” he said.
12/5/12 11:40 AMFrieze Art Fair in London Adds Masters Show - NYTimes.com
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A version of this article appeared in print on October 13, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ASibling for a Shiny Art Show in London.
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Max Wigram, the director of the London gallery of that name, said works being shown byLuiz Zerbini and Jose Dáavila had sold well. He was emphatic about the strength of the artmarket.
“Buying is strong, and there is a reason for that,” he said. “The center of the art market isrich people taking advice, collecting well. Most collectors are sophisticated people whoinvest in art as carefully as they invest in other areas. It’s not this crazy, booming, nuttything in a parallel world.”
Frieze London and Frieze Masters run through Sunday in Regent’s Park, London;friezelondon.com.
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