11 OCTOBER 2023, ISSUE 1 The Art Newspaper

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THE ART NEWSPAPER| FRIEZE ART FAIR|11 OCTOBER 2023

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Analogue to iPad: how Frieze London has changed

Baby T rex seeks new home—for £20m

It is 20 years since the art fair first opened its tent flaps. In its evolution, we can see the whole art market’s. By Tim Schneider

DINOSAUR: © DAVID OWENS. FRIEZE ADVERTISEMENT: COURTESY OF GRAPHIC THOUGHT FACILITY. REMBRANDT: COURTESY OF DAVID KOETSER

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hat were you doing in 2003? If you were ultra-wealthy, you might have booked a seat on the f inal flight of the supersonic Concorde. If you were techsavvy, you might have posted a profile on the freshly launched social-media website Myspace. And if you were in the art trade, you might have toured the first ever Frieze Art Fair in London. Despite its long-held status as a global art capital, London did not have a major contemporary art fair until Frieze launched in 2003. This shows how dramatically the trade expanded in just one generation. By 2018, the number of international art fairs totalled almost 300, according to Art Basel and UBS’s Art Market report, but back in 2005 it was only 68. Even fewer were staged when

Frieze debuted in Regent’s Park two years earlier. The fair grew out of frieze magazine, established in 1991 by friends Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover. The duo hoped the publication could widen the appeal of serious contemporary art with the type of approachable writing, lush imagery and smart design found in popular music and style magazines. Once Sharp and Slotover saw the international art crowd swarm to London for the opening of Tate Modern nine years after frieze’s first issue, founding a fair with the same spirit became an obvious way to continue the mission. The unusual venue set London’s upstart event apart from the beginning. “An art fair in a tent in a park was a bit like a fairytale,” says Millicent Wilner, a senior director at Gagosian. At the same time, the inaugural Frieze felt “serious, dynamic and super relevant, much like the contemporary art scene in London at the time”. No wonder it was one of only three fairs in which Gagosian exhibited in 2003, when the gallery operated just four spaces worldwide (it now has 19). Although the setting was an act of imagination, it was also a matter of necessity. Sharp says the buildings available in London in October 2003 were not suitable for a serious contemporary art fair. A tent erected atop a large green space seemed like the only solution. “I don’t think we understood what a folly it was. You’re doing more than half your work before a gallery even walks in the door,” she says. The purpose-built tent, now synonymous with Frieze London, was ambitious from the start. The first

Everything but the tent: Frieze London’s first advertising campaign, in 2003

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D OW N LOA D THE A P P

A dinosaur skeleton is “something all humans can relate to” says Salomon Aaron, who is selling the piece , named Chomper for its well-preserved set of teeth

A baby dinosaur named Chomper is looking to take a bite out of the top end of the art market at Frieze Masters this year. The exceptionally well-preserved specimen is priced at £20m, making it the most expensive juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever known to come to market (Stan, an adult T rex, holds the record at $31.8m—£27.5m). “It’s a oncein-a-lifetime discovery,” says Salomon Aaron, the director of London’s David Aaron gallery, which is presenting the skeleton at the fair. Having taken nearly three years to remove the bones from the ground, Chomper is approximately 55% complete and its skull is more than 90% intact. Above and beyond the industry standard, David Aaron gallery provides a “bone map” that allows collectors to see the percentage completeness of each bone. “In this case, it’s just a very complete specimen,” Aaron says. Among Chomper’s distinguishing features are a strong bone colour (less well-preserved skeletons are often faded) and a high number of original teeth—hence Chomper, which is also the name of the baby dinosaur in the 1988 cartoon The Land Before Time “When we exhibit a triceratops or a T rex, the impact is incredible. It’s something all humans can relate to, irrespective of culture or age,” Aaron says. Anny Shaw

Rembrandt’s ‘emotional masterpiece’ tribute to his blind father on sale at Frieze Masters AN EARLY WORK BY REMBRANDT, thought to represent his father’s descent into blindness, will go on sale today at Frieze Masters for a price of £24m. Described by the seller, the Swiss art dealer David Koetser, as “among the most important, Leiden-period Rembrandts remaining in private hands”, Blind Tobit with the Return of Tobias and the Archangel Raphael has been in the same American collection since 1978. The painting, completed with the assistance of his pupil Gerrit Dou, was created around 1628-29 and is believed to illustrate Rembrandt’s concern for his father, Harmen Gerritsz van Rijn, who went blind in his final years. It was restored this summer. Scholars have for centuries debated whether the work can be recognised as a pure Rembrandt, and the gallery admits

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that it has a “mixed attributional legacy”. In the late 20th century, the Rembrandt Research Project, a scholarly initiative, “expressed reservations” about Rembrandt’s authorship of the work after affirming it 12 years earlier. But since then, a “group of well-respected scholars and connoisseurs” has asserted that the painting is indeed a Rembrandt, the gallery says. “Having weighed all the evidence in the entire attributional dossier in its consideration, [the gallery] adjudges Tobit as Rembrandt with Dou,” it said in a statement. Rembrandt would have created the painting while still in his early 20s and living in Leiden, where he was born. His father died in 1630. It depicts a scene from the Old Testament’s Book of Tobit, which tells the story of a son’s quest to restore the sight of his ageing, frail father. The

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Rembrandt created the work as a young man, a year or two before his father died tale fascinated Rembrandt, who executed numerous works on the subject. David Koetser says Blind Tobit is “a wonderful piece of painting, in great condition and a really emotional masterpiece by Rembrandt”. Tom Seymour

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THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

BUYER’S GUIDE TO... Marina Abramović Marina Abramović: auction sales in £ Photographs

3D, Video & VR

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Abramović’s auction record came in October 2020 when Christie’s sold The Life (2018-19), a mixed-reality installation first shown at the Serpentine Gallery, London, in 2019. It achieved £287,500, well below the £400,000£800,000 estimate and a snip of the £1m it reportedly cost to make—a reminder that the art market is slow to adopt innovation. (It was the first time a mixed-reality work had come to auction.) Consigned directly by Abramović and Todd Eckert, who directed the piece, The Life was acquired by the Faurschou Foundation in New York. A key turning point in her market came in 2010, says Claus Robenhagen, a director at Lisson Gallery. That was the year of The Artist is Present, Abramović’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As part of the show, for eight hours a day for three months, Abramović sat at a table, silently holding the gaze of whoever was sat opposite her. The artist Antony Gormley and the actor Alan Rickman were among the thousands who queued for the experience. That was also the year Lisson began to represent the artist, though the gallery’s relationship with Abramović dates back to the 1970s. “She went from being an important figure within performance art to becoming possibly the most famous and celebrated woman artist of her time,” Robenhagen says. “There was a big shift in the market; she created these large photo editions, and they started selling for good amounts of money.”

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Data shows hammer prices (auction fees removed). Sales in different currencies have been converted to GBP on day of sale.

Robenhagen notes that, unlike a performance artist such as Tino Sehgal, who sells his performances via verbal instructions, Abramović’s performances are not for sale. “Marina prefers to keep ownership of the performances herself,” he says. “Institutions can exhibit them on loan, but that is done in dialogue with her in her studio.” In terms of her legacy, Robenhagen says Abramović’s studio will define how her performances will be re-staged for posterity. At present, there is no catalogue raisonné of her work. Instead, collectors can acquire photo or video documentation; early performances are most coveted. At auction, stills of her best-known performances range in price from $30,000 to $100,000. Photographs of Balkan Baroque (1997), the critically acclaimed performance in which Abramović sat amid a pile of cattle bones, scrubbing them methodically with a metal brush, have fetched between $21,590 and $44,121. Winning her the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, the work was created in

response to the war in former Yugoslavia. Primary market prices for Abramović’s more recent works are much higher. In 2021, Lisson Gallery mounted two related shows by the artist, originally scheduled to coincide with the RA show, which was postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions. One featured a cinematic film, Seven Deaths, in which Abramović enacts the deaths of seven protagonists in famous operas—usually at the hands of a man, played by the Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe. The installation, which exists in five editions, starts at €250,000. The second show consisted of seven alabaster wall sculptures, each relating to a death scene in the film. Prices range from €250,000 to €400,000. Alongside Lisson, Abramović is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, though she also has more fluid working relationships with Luciana Brito Galeria in São Paulo, Lia Rumma in Milan, Vienna’s Galerie Krinzinger and Galleri Brandstrup in Oslo. 

Above: despite Abramović’s star status since the 1970s, only six of her works have sold above £50,000 at auction (marked above by a blue line) Below: the artist’s film Seven Deaths (2021), is available in five editions, starting at €250,000

Collectors Abramović’s work is gaining traction with a newer generation of collectors. According to Robenhagen, in more recent years private museums and patrons in China and Brazil have begun to acquire her work. Historically, the artist has had a big following in Europe and the US, particularly among institutions. They include the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent. The Tate in London owns a single work by Abramović: one of three editions of Rhythm 0 (1974), a table draped in a white cloth set with 69 objects, the remnants of a harrowing six-hour performance in which the audience was instructed to use the objects on Abramović as they wished. Another edition was sold at Sotheby’s in March 2022 for £52,920. The German collector Julia Stoschek first acquired a work by Abramović in 2004. Today she owns 33 videos and photographs dating from 1975 to 2001, 26 of which were made together with Ulay. Stoschek notes how Abramović was one of the very first artists to have entered her collection, adding: “Building a media and performance art collection, you simply can’t ignore Marina’s pioneering work.”

Critics Some reviewers criticised the RA show for its use of actors to re-stage her performances, which raises vital questions about the meaning of a practice so rooted in the artist’s own body, but also about how Abramović’s estate might be handled. Like her nebulous market, it is no mean feat to present work that largely exists as documentation. But, as Robenhagen puts it, “Marina is without a doubt one of the big, big artists of art history. And as that history is re-written, her importance will only become even more apparent.” Anny Shaw

PORTRAIT: PHOTO: MARCO ANELLI; © MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ. SEVEN DEATHS: © MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

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erbian superstar Marina Abramović has achieved cult status in the art world over the past decade or so, culminating in her current major retrospective at the Royal Academy (RA)— the first time a woman has had a solo show in the historic Main Galleries in the London institution’s 255-year history. Her market has yet to reach such highs though; according to data provided by Art Market Research, only six works have achieved more than £50,000 at auction. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the chronic undervaluing of female artists throughout history as well as the fact that her practice has been chiefly rooted in performance, a deliberately temporary and transitory medium that fell out of fashion several decades ago, only to see a mini-revival in the 1990s. As she says on The Art Newspaper’s The Week in Art podcast: “At the end of the 1970s, performance was not popular any more […] Galleries weren’t selling it and museums weren’t showing it. There was huge pressure on artists to start making paintings and objects.” Abramović’s RA show demonstrates how her work cannot easily be pigeonholed; there is video, photography and re-stagings of her performance art. There is also sculpture, which Abramović began to produce in the late 1980s with her “transitory objects”, pieces that ask for the audience’s participation in the absence of the artist’s body. Then there are the works she created with Ulay, her former partner and collaborator. Her market is similarly kaleidoscopic. For example, she might sell a clay pillow and then a small edition of photographs and an iron chair, all within two years.

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Everything you need to know about the artist’s market before you start building your collection

THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

THE GRAY MARKET Unorthodox art market views by Tim Schneider, acting art market editor

Why we will never stop art fraud

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mid the current art market downturn, two cases have brought fraud to the industry’s foreground. Lisa Schiff, the onceprominent New York-based adviser, became the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits in May, and two law-enforcement bodies are conducting investigations into her business. Robert Newland, the UK-based dealer and consultant, was sentenced in September to 20 months in prison for his role in convicted fraudster Inigo Philbrick’s criminal schemes. Hardliners are using these cases to once again decry the art trade’s

lack of industry-specific regulations. But what they miss are the structural reasons why no amount of legislation can eliminate fraud from the art market—ever. Only by examining these under-recognised factors can we add nuance to the conversation around double-dealing and minimise the incentives around it. The first factor is practical: being connected to frauds or forgeries seldom ends a once-legitimate dealer’s career. Ask Ezra Chowaiki, who dealt bluechip secondary-market work from his Manhattan gallery for 14 years before being convicted of wire fraud in 2018. After serving more than 13 months is prison, Chowaiki was paroled in January 2020 and was immediately

back in business, according to a piece he wrote for the digital newsletter Air Mail in March. “From the minute I was released, I kept getting phone calls from people wanting to buy paintings from me, or wanting me to sell their paintings, or even partner with me,” he wrote. “I couldn’t help it: I’m good at dealing art, just terrible at managing money.” In a recent interview, Chowaiki (who is writing a book about his experiences in the art trade) said the phenomenon now makes sense. “Access is king,” he says. “It’s very slim pickings in terms of who you can deal with in this industry. How many people know stuff that is actionable? A lot of people pretend like they know it.” The business opportunities that have come to Chowaiki since his release give the lie to one of the most well-worn adages about how to succeed in this industry. “People in the art world always say, ‘It’s about your word, it’s about your reputation,’ and then no one gives a shit about your word or your reputation,” he says—provided you can get results. History supports this in terms of gallerist reputations, too. Remember Ann Freedman, the longtime director of the Knoedler gallery, which became synonymous with forgery by selling

$70m-worth works to its esteemed collector base over the course of 14 years? She settled the last of the lawsuits against her in 2017, was never charged with a crime and still operates a private dealership in Manhattan. (Freedman maintained throughout that she was the “perfect mark” rather than a co-conspirator.) How about Perry Rubenstein, the disgraced gallerist who served six months behind bars for embezzlement charges related to a trio of six-figure resale transactions? “After his release from prison, Mr. Rubenstein worked as a consultant to art collectors,” according to his 2022 obituary in the New York Times. But these examples clarify a vital distinction: whether in art or other markets, frauds are committed by two fundamentally different categories of person. The first intends to con clients from the start, and their success depends on a talent for strategy and deception; the second builds a career by operating cleanly but slides into malpractice, often because of a sudden

London-based Robert Newland was sentenced to 20 months in prison

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“The most regulated markets are all still rife with scams” misfortune or a bad stretch of business. Chowaiki includes himself in the latter category, describing a type of fraudster who is “a little more bumbling, because you’re desperate and you need to figure something out quickly”. Overshadowed by the high prices of secondary-market deals is their low volume. Every deal is relatively rare, and only a few of them will make or break an art reseller’s year. This dynamic supercharges the temptation for dealers to do anything—even break the law—to keep the most promising transactions together. The slim margin for error comes partly from another unusual void in the art trade: that of accessible financing options. In the US, modestly sized dealers can seldom secure the types of small-business loan that position their equivalents in other industries to survive hard times or level up in good times. Regulation won’t solve this problem. The larger, scarier truth is that the most rigorously regulated markets in the world are all still rife with scams. Finance, banking, real estate, healthcare—each is governed by thousands of pages of legislation, dedicated enforcement agencies and strict licensing regimes. Yet people are defrauded in them every day, sometimes colossally so. The nefarious and the desperate will always find vulnerabilities to exploit. No law can change human nature.

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THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

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COLLECTOR’S EYE Art lovers tell us what they’ve bought and why

THE ART NEWSPAPER: What was the first work you ever bought? LIESL FICHARDT: I think most collectors start with a work on paper, and my first major acquisition was a wonderful blue iris by William Kentridge. In those years Kentridge was still pretty unknown in most of the world, but he was quite an interesting artist in South Africa because his work was not always easy. It was quite political and I grew up in a very heavily politically loaded environment.

young artists, possibly a lot of work we’ve not seen previously, which is always exciting. One thing that was a bit frustrating at the last Art Basel was that there was, for me, a Yayoi Kusama overload and, I think, real Kusama fatigue. What I’m looking for is these younger voices. I’m looking for abstract voices, with a new take on the world and the political environment.

Liesl Fichardt The international lawyer, who is a member of the Contemporary Art Society’s Frieze acquisitions committee, on her love of blue paintings—and Pimlico pastries What was the last work you bought? I think it’s a work by Sahara Longe. If you look at Sahara’s painting, it’s very minimal, very restrained, but the pigment is beautiful. I think that blue in the Kentridge iris was certainly the starting point of a long journey. I always tell gallerists that it’s the blue paintings that find me, but I have to connect with it, too.

What are you looking out for at Frieze this year? There’s one very interesting pattern that I see with galleries taking on artists just out of grad school or maybe one or two years into their careers. I think we are going to see a lot of really

What tip would you give to someone visiting London for the first time? The first tip is to plan your gallery visits, because if you want to go to Victoria Miro during Frieze, whether you take the tube or car it’s going to be a nightmare. If you want to get around in the evenings to some of the gallery shows or openings, in particular on the Tuesday pre-Frieze, it is chaotic. Also, often people just focus on what is happening inside the tent at Frieze, but what they never look at is what goes on outside in Regent’s Park. There is a wonderful sculpture garden, so I’d suggest people make some time when they walk, perhaps, between Frieze and Frieze Masters. Where do you like to eat and drink in London? If you just really want to escape the hubbub there is this great new coffee shop in London called Hagen. It is on a little square on Pimlico Road, halfway between Sloane Square station and Victoria. And on the Saturday, if you’re post-Frieze and want to go to a little organic market, pick up a nice pastry and have a really good coffee, that is your spot. Interview by Alexander Morrison

Fichardt’s collecting journey—and love of blue works—began with her acquisition of William Kentridge’s Dutch Iris (1996)

Frieze Art Fair editions THE ART NEWSPAPER Editor, The Art Newspaper Alison Cole Deputy editor and digital editor Julia Michalska Managing editor Louis Jebb

FRIEZE LONDON EDITIONS EDITORIAL Editors Lee Cheshire, Julia Michalska Deputy editor Alexander Morrison Contributors Georgina Adam, Louisa Buck, Alison Cole, Gareth Harris, Catherine Hickley, Kabir Jhala, Chinma Johnson-Nwosu, Chibundu Onuzo, Riah Pryor, Ben Luke, Scott Reyburn, Tim Schneider, Tom Seymour, Anny Shaw Production editor Hannah May Kilroy Design James Ladbury Sub-editing Andrew McIIwraith, Vivienne Riddoch Picture editor Heike Bohnstengel Photographer David Owens

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What do you regret not buying when you had the chance? One artist is Oscar Murillo. I saw his work many years ago. I loved it—for me, the bigger, the more abstract, the better. I tracked him and could never find the right piece. He then became quite important and I missed out because he became so expensive. If you could have any work from any museum in the world, what would it be? I would probably take every one of those Giacomettis at the Louisiana Museum. They have this incredible section where you walk down a passage and they are there. Sculpture is an area which I am starting to explore and those works stuck with me.

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PORTRAIT: COURTESY LIESL FICHARDT. KENTRIDGE: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST. REGENT’S PARK: GREG BALFOUR EVANS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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he South Africa-born, London-based collector Liesl Fichardt has a penchant for painting. Since starting to buy art as a university student, the international lawyer—currently a partner at Quinn Emanuel—has built up a considerable collection of works by painters including Chantal Joffe, Idris Khan and Sahara Longe. She also owns sculptures and tapestries by Yinka Shonibare and Igshaan Adams, among others. Her involvement in the art world runs deeper, too. Among other things, she is a member of the Frieze acquisitions committee of the Contemporary Art Society, which supports one British institution every year in purchasing a work at Frieze London. Fichardt has applied her legal knowledge to the industry, leading on Quinn Emanuel’s European art disputes practice and developing the London edition of the firm’s artist-inresidence programme (QE AIR), which will launch in early 2024.

Georg Baselitz, Ach, der Morgen, ok (detail), 2010. Oil on canvas. 250 x 200 x 4 cm (98,42 x 78,74 x 1,57 in) © Georg Baselitz. Photo: Charles Duprat

Georg Baselitz at Frieze London Booth B4

Booth C17

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Robert Longo, Untitled (Northwest Woods), 2023, charcoal on mounted paper, 177.8 × 350.5 cm, Courtesy of the artist

Frieze London

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THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

FEATURE Art market

COURTESY OF PARIS+ PAR ART BASEL

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he international art fair circus is on the move again, testing the relative strengths and weaknesses of the world’s premier cities as places to see, buy and sell serious contemporary art. After Frieze Seoul last month, October’s major stops are this week’s 20th anniversary edition of Frieze London, followed next week by the second iteration of Paris+ par Art Basel. For decades, London has been the undisputed capital of Europe’s art market. A year ago, opinions were split on whether the city’s momentum was flagging. But now, seven years on from Britain’s momentous vote to leave the European Union, art market attention is fixated on Paris, even as international wealth still largely favours London. The Paris gallery scene is clearly gathering strength. Since Brexit, David Zwirner, Gagosian and White Cube have all opened branches in the City of Light, boosting its primary market. Hauser & Wirth is next; it is due to debut an imposing four-floor, 400 sq. m gallery there on Saturday. Even cutting-edge British dealer Stuart Shave will expand his gallery, Modern Art, to Paris this month, although the new space will stage only three shows a year and operate by appointment for now. “I see Paris as the capital of the European art market, or at least its primary market,” says the respected Paris-based dealer Jocelyn Wolff, who is also celebrating his business’s 20th anniversary this year. “We have a bigger local clientele here, and bigger institutions that buy art,” he adds, alluding to the purchasing power of museums like François Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce and the large pool of collectors who spend at least €10,000 a year on art in Paris. But leading London dealers Pilar Corrias, Stephen Friedman and Alison Jacques are all opening prestigious new spaces in Mayfair during Frieze. Corrias, who represents several international women artists with

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CONCERN With Paris+ par Art Basel establishing itself in the October fair calendar and more leading galleries opening outposts in the French city post-Brexit, could London’s attractiveness to the market be on the wane? By Scott Reyburn lengthy waiting lists, says that “the discrepancy in business between London and Paris is still huge”. For her, London is a more “outward-looking” city whose dealerships and institutions attract a “proper international audience”. As for Brexit, she adds: “I don’t see it as a problem at all.” Shave is sensitive to the nuances in the debate over Europe’s art capital. He agrees with Wolff’s view of the Parisian market, saying: “I love the city and its energy. It has some of the most ambitious private collectors today.” But, like Corrias, he also contends that Brexit “has not discernibly affected sales in London”; it has only disheartened him personally and made his registrars’ jobs more difficult. Not every sector of the British art trade concurs. In a July filing with Companies House, Sotheby’s blamed the resulting

welter of extra taxes, administrative costs and other red tape incurred in Brexit’s aftermath for having “a negative impact on the appeal of selling property in the UK”. The auction house’s profits in Britain fell a bracing 24% in 2022, according to the filing. Sotheby’s plans to inaugurate a new flagship salesroom in Paris in 2024. Sotheby’s results probably surprise readers of the most recent Art Basel and UBS Art Market report, which ranked the British trade second in the world in 2022. The report found the UK amassed an 18% share of all sales by value, dwarfing the 7% accrued by fourth-place France. Reliable data on private dealer sales remains elusive, making meaningful comparisons between the nations’ art trading difficult. However, these figures reflect the continuing strength of London’s high-end auctions, even during a significant

Paris calling: the launch last year of Paris+ par Art Basel (above), coupled with a number of major gallery openings, indicates that the city’s art market is on the rise

down year for one of the two most consequential sellers.

Energy versus power So, is London’s auction market losing steam, or is it still the most lucrative in Europe by a comfortable margin? Is Paris’s gallery scene the most energetic around, or is a substantial charge still needed before it becomes the consensus choice for the region’s most powerful? Has Brexit meaningfully diminished returns even for some of London’s top art sellers, or do outside observers tend to overestimate its real costs to the British market overall? What makes it so difficult to sort London and Paris in the art market hierarchy is that it is possible to answer yes to both sides CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 

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THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

FEATURES  CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11 of every question above without contradicting oneself. The cities have been moving in opposite directions in the art-fair sector lately. In January, the Swiss-based MCH Group, owner of Art Basel, the organiser of Paris+, announced that it was scrapping London’s upscale Masterpiece fair  in June, citing “escalating costs  and a decline in the number of international exhibitors”. The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia, held annually since 1972, axed its summer edition later the same month. Meanwhile, last October’s inaugural edition of Paris+, replacing the long-in-thetooth FIAC as France’s flagship fair, created positive mood music. Former FIAC stalwart Galerie 1900-2000 sold 10 works priced between €3,000 and €100,000 within the first two hours of the fair. Mega-gallerist David Zwirner, who had previously told the media that Paris had been an underperforming fair venue for him, found a buyer for a Joan Mitchell painting priced at $4.5m en route to $11m in opening-day sales, adding that these were “certainly numbers that we weren’t able to achieve here in Paris in the past”. Frieze London and Paris+ are of course the centrepieces of much bigger weeks offering

“It’s easier to deal with the rest of the world in Paris. There are more up-andcoming galleries” Cyril Moumen, Gallery Nosco

high-quality satellite fairs, dealer exhibitions, auctions and museum shows. But more and more market players are behaving as if Paris itself, not just “Paris+ Week”, is a worthier competitor to London than ever. Heather Flow, a New York-based adviser who specialises in emerging artists, will be visiting Paris with clients in October—but not London. “Paris is a convenient city for the rest of Europe, and it’s more affordable. I’m there not so much for the galleries but for pop-up spaces doing weird stuff,” she says. But what about London? “There are so many barriers that make it difficult to transact,” she adds. “I know more artists who have moved to Paris than London.” “Sadly, Paris will probably take the place of London,” says Cyril Moumen, the French founder of Gallery Nosco. “It’s easier to deal with the rest of the world in Paris. There are more up-and-coming galleries. It’s a hot spot,” he adds. Before relocating to Marseille in 2019, Gallery Nosco, which is now based in Brussels, showed international contemporary artists in London for 23 years. “Things became very complicated with shipping and temporary importing,” says Moumen, who has at least returned to London for Frieze Week to exhibit at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair and hold a pop-up show in Great Titchfield Street, Fitzrovia. At last year’s edition of 1-54, Gallery Nosco sold out its stand of impastoed paintings by the French-Algerian artist Isabelle.D, priced from £4,000 to £15,000. For a smaller gallerist like Moumen, who says that 70% to 80% of his sales come from art fairs, London still has its occasional uses. It also has a firm lead among the wellheeled. A huge amount of international money still pauses or resides in London, directly or indirectly underpinning businesses that sell high-value art. According to

Passing London by? With British business dented by Brexit, organisers of Frieze London will be hoping for a strong turnout this week

Statista.com, London currently has 87 billionaire residents, the fifth highest concentration of any global city; Paris has just 49. So it was little surprise that London was the venue for Gustav Klimt’s 1918 portrait Dame mit Fächer (lady with a fan) to set the record for the priciest work of art ever auctioned in Europe, when it sold for £85.3m at Sotheby’s in June.

Europe in flux Apart from the Klimt record, however, London’s auction dominance has been tempered by signs of a Europe in flux. Eyebrows were raised around Britain when Sotheby’s announced its forthcoming sale of 300 works of contemporary art and design owned by the Manchester-born collector Pauline Karpidas would be held in its Paris auction rooms. A renowned supporter of young artists, Karpidas bought the works for her idyllic home on the Greek island of Hydra, where she entertained names like Tracey Emin, Sarah

Lucas and Damien Hirst. The material will be offered in an evening and day sale on 30 and 31 October and is expected to raise at least €11m. A Sotheby’s spokesperson insists red tape and taxes have nothing to do with the house’s choice of sales venue for the Karpidas collection. “Though there are some great British names in that group, the bulk of the value lies in Pauline’s extraordinary collection of Lalanne,” they say, referring to Karpidas’s holdings of the quirky creations of the French designers Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, whose market pivots on Paris.  Nonetheless, the sight of so much Young British Art being auctioned in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, opposite the Élysée Palace, will leave many thinking that this is yet another example of Paris’s ongoing Brexit dividend, whose value continues to climb. • This article originally appeared in the October 2023 edition of The Art Newspaper

PHOTO BY LINDA NYLIND; COURTESY LINDA NYLIND AND FRIEZE

Art market

Liu Ye, Phoebe, 2021. © Liu Ye

Liu Ye

Naive and Sentimental Painting

David Zwirner

24 Grafton Street London

Opening October 10

THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

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INTERVIEW Artists

El Anatsui

‘I have a hidden aim of waking up the artist in everybody’ The Ghanaian sculptor explains why his latest work examines sugar’s roots in slavery. By Louisa Buck

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misled people because I gave the first two pieces of this work the titles Man’s Cloth and Woman’s Cloth, and the colour scheme of these bottle-cap works replicated the colours of kente fabric. It was difficult to take people’s mind away from kente and textiles but I was always thinking about sculpture.

l Anatsui, who this year has been commissioned to make work for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, is best known for his metallic sculptures constructed from thousands of recycled liquor bottle caps, sourced from local recycling stations and joined together using copper wire. These often massive cascading works fuse local aesthetic traditions with the global history of abstraction as well as political, social and environmental concerns around consumption, national identity and trade. Born in Anyako, Ghana, in 1944, Anatsui has spent most of his career in Nigeria both as artist and educator, serving for more than four decades as the professor of sculpture and departmental head at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As well as the bottle-cap works he has been making since the late 1990s, Anatsui has developed a highly experimental approach to sculpture, also embracing wood, ceramics and found objects. In 2015 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale and his 2019 solo show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich was the last to be curated by the late Okwui Enwezor, who was one of Anatsui’s greatest champions. To coincide with the Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern (until 19 April 2024), El Anatsui is also showing new works using both wood and bottle caps at the October Gallery in London.

Yet your bottle-cap works can also be very painterly: sometimes monochrome, sometimes densely patterned, sometimes translucent like watercolours, and with colour playing an increasingly central part. To start with I was using the inside, which is just the silver of the metal. It was like me starting off as a sculptor not paying any attention to colour, and then all of a sudden finding something I’d been ignoring: the colours of their caps. I had to start thinking like a painter as well, grappling with how to match colours and what to do with colour to carry some meaning

“When something has been used there is a certain energy that has to do with the people who have touched it”

THE ART NEWSPAPER: How did you approach making work for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall? EL ANATSUI: I started with the name Tate, which is not a strange name to me. I grew up in the Colonial Gold Coast and the sugar that we used was Tate & Lyle. My first idea was to plant sugar cane in the Turbine Hall but I realised that it wouldn’t work because sugar cane is a tropical plant, and also the curators told me that another artist, Abraham Cruzvillegas, had worked with plants in the Turbine Hall. Although the context is different, I didn’t want to work with plants again, so I had to think of something else.

Over the past decades you’ve used a wide range of materials. But whether it’s old wooden mortars, metal cassava graters, the lids of evaporated milk cans or the aluminium bottle caps

El Anatsui, who was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2015, served as the professor of sculpture and departmental head at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka for which you are now best known, you’ve predominantly chosen to work with objects that have all had a previous use before being given a new purpose in your art. Why is this past history so important? When something has been used there is a certain charge, a certain energy, that has to do with the people who have touched it and used it and sometimes abused it. This helps to direct what one is doing, and also to root what one is doing in the environment and the culture.

El Anatsui’s commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Behind the Red Moon, uses bottle caps to explore the sugar industry’s relationship with the slave trade

You’ve been working with metal bottle caps for more than 20 years. What is so special about them? From the beginning I was aiming at a form that doesn’t have a description. Like a sheet of cloth, it is versatile enough to do so many things and be described in many different ways. But I think I

And also rich layers of content. Every one of these thousands of elements recalls a bottle drunk, and there’s also the environmentally pertinent fact that you are repurposing these discarded elements of commerce and consumption into art. Then there are all the socio-political-historical resonances in these expanses of bottle caps. Yes, there are aspects of the bottle caps that I don’t think anybody has paid any attention to. The names of the drink brands are all on the caps, and doing a study of those names alone gives a glimpse of the sociology and current political and historical issues. For example, the drink called Black Gold resonates with the fact that drinks were exchanged for slaves that were then transported to America. Or there’s a drink called ECOMOG, which is the same name as the military force sent by the Economic Community of West African States during the war in Liberia and Sierra Leone. When your bottle-cap works are installed, you usually leave it up to the curators to decide how they will be folded, draped and hung. Why do you let other people interpret your work? Is it like playing a musical score? In an unconscious way, my works are about the freedom for people to do things. I have a hidden aim of waking up the artist in everybody. If you give people the challenge and say, here is something folded and you can open it and do whatever you want to do, it wakes up the artist in them and frees the imagination. Freedom is so very important; it can ameliorate so many things. • A longer version of this interview appeared in the October edition of The Art Newspaper

ANATSUI PORTRAIT: PHOTO © ALIONA ADRIANOVA; COURTESY OF OCTOBER GALLER. ANATSUI INSTALLATION: PHOTO: JOE HUMPHRYS, © TATE

Tell me about the journey that led to what we see now. I started thinking about things which have a resonance or links to the transatlantic slave trade. Tate did not take part but it benefited from its aftermath, and I wanted to do something with this. Ghana has the largest concentration of “slave castles”—close to 40 or so—on its short coast [where enslaved people were held before they were transported across the Atlantic]. When I visited one of the most iconic castles at Cape Coast, what struck me was that there were dungeons underground and then on top of them a chapel, in a kind of heaven-and-hell combination. I wanted to recreate the portion of that castle which showed this configuration made in a simulacrum of sugar. But despite my feeling that the Turbine Hall was a huge space that anything could go in, it was too small for this, so we had to drop that idea. Then I decided that, with the bottle caps, I’m already working with something that has links with the transatlantic slave trade, and sugar, and drinks and everything—and it’s also a very versatile medium that can fit into any space. So, that’s what I’m working with.

or message. In the end, I’m doing a combination of sculpture and painting because I don’t show them like a painter would show a work stretched on canvas; I give them three-dimensional folds and forms as well. So, you have form and colour all coming in.

20TH/21ST CENTURY: LONDON EVENING SALE AUCTION

•

13 October 2023 • London

PUBLIC VIEWING CONTACT

•

•

6–12 October 2023 • 8 King Street • London SW1Y 6QT

Claudia Schürch • [email protected] • +44 (0) 20 7389 2889

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960–1988) Future Sciences Versus the Man, 1982 Acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on canvas with tied wood supports 60 x 60 in (152.5 x 152.5 cm) Estimate: £9,000,000–12,000,000 © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.

Auction | Private Sales | christies.com

Other fees apply in addition to the hammer price. See Section D of our Conditions of Sale at the back of the Auction Catalogue

London Creates Me (2023) by Bob and Roberta Smith Today at Frieze London sees the launch of “London Creates” — a campaign led by London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, to celebrate and draw attention to the city’s cultural riches (see page 20 for our interview). To mark the launch, we asked the artist Bob and Roberta Smith to create an exclusive work for The Art Newspaper. “I am a Londoner,” Smith says. “My parents were Londoners, they took me to the Tate where my dad would draw for hours and we went to the Royal Academy on Sunday mornings. I was very lucky but in looking at art in museums we were looking and studying the world. Everyone one is here; Londoners are truly world citizens. London did create ME.”

T Y L E R H AY S

October 6 - November 24 BDDW, 50 Vyner Street, London

9-12 NOV 2023 GRAND PALAIS éPHéMèRE

Eddie Martinez, Medium Loggia, 2023 © Eddie Martinez

Eddie Martinez Enough 15 Bolton Street, London 12 Oct – 18 Nov 2023

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Studio Wall Redux Frieze London, Booth A14 11– 15 Oct 2023

THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

with Art on the Underground and Transport for London, we launched a major new series of works by top UK and international artists, which featured across the Tube network. One memorable moment was joining Shrigley outside Southwark tube station to hand out “London is Open” Oyster Card holders to Londoners.

FEATURE London

‘Accessing culture is a right for all’ As London Mayor Sadiq Khan launches a creativity campaign, he explains what art means to him

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oday at Frieze London, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, will launch “London Creates”. This promotional campaign will “celebrate the capital’s worldleading cultural and creative industries following a challenging few years due to the impact of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis”. Its initial focus is the promotion of London’s visual arts sector, with the ambition to extend to other areas of the arts in which London leads: fashion, film, theatre and music. To mark the launch, we asked Khan to share his London cultural highlights.

THE ART NEWSPAPER: Which artist(s) do you think has best captured the spirit of London, past and present? SADIQ KHAN: I love the bright, vibrant colours of artists like Yinka Ilori or Camille Walala, who capture the capital’s spirit of creativity, diversity and inclusion, the sense of pride found in our great city, and how in London you are free to be who you want to be. I was very proud to see a Londoner, Sonia Boyce, become the first Black woman to

represent the UK at the Venice Biennale and win the most prestigious award for her installation Feeling Her Way. I also enjoyed Steve McQueen’s portraits of thousands of schoolchildren from across London at Tate Britain. How cool for all those children to be featured at the Tate! It’s a visual representation of the future of our city. There are also countless artists who capture our city’s proud history of activism. Last year, as part of my London Borough of Culture in Lewisham, I attended the launch of Dryden Goodwin’s Breathe:2022, which was a multi-site commission combining drawings of six Lewisham residents and clean-air campaigners. It was a great example of how art isn’t just there to entertain, but to educate us, too. Tell us about your first London museum experience On rare days off, my dad would take my siblings and me to the museums in South Kensington. We’d hop on the bus full of energy and head for a full day out, enjoying the interactive and educational exhibitions at the

As a child, Sadiq Khan enjoyed travelling by bus to the museums of South Kensington Science Museum, and then marvelling at the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. There’s a reason the Natural History Museum has been the most visited indoor attraction in the UK for a second year in a row. What favourite posters or art have you hung on your walls? David Shrigley’s London: Everyone

Welcome is proudly displayed on the wall of my office at City Hall. One of the first things I did as mayor was launch the “London Is Open” campaign to show that after the bitterly disappointing Brexit referendum our city would still be a beacon of hope, a city that is open to business, culture and talent from around the world. As part of that campaign,

What do you think every child needs to feel that they have true cultural capital? Accessing culture in London shouldn’t be a privilege for a wealthy few, but a right for all. That’s why we are doing so much to ensure young Londoners can access culture through initiatives such as the London Borough of Culture. Since its launch in 2017, the programme has been a catalyst for creativity across the city, brought people together in pride and celebration, and provided a springboard for boroughs’ long-term cultural ambitions. Each year I also look forward to seeing the Fourth Plinth Schools Awards Exhibition at City Hall. The competition is open to all London students aged 5-15, and has inspired over 30,000 entries from schoolchildren across every London borough to create art and think about what it can say about our city. It’s also really important that children have access to a proper creative education. Culture has a remarkable power to bring people together, broaden horizons and even change lives. That’s why it’s so vital that all young Londoners have the opportunity to access London’s incredible cultural offering.  Where’s the best place in London to spend time? I still say that the best view in the world is sitting on the top deck of a London bus. As a kid, I remember running upstairs to the top deck of the No. 44 bus from Tooting to Victoria that my dad used to drive. Interview by Alison Cole

SADIQ KHAN: PHOTO: CAROLINE TEO; GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY

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Art week, every day.

Learn more about this work on the National Portrait Gallery guide. Bloomberg Connects puts hundreds of arts and cultural institutions DW\RXUɡQJHUWLSV'RZQORDGQRZ

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THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

WHAT’S ON Frieze week

Bruegel, Marvel and warrior women: the inventive art of Nicole Eisenman The German-born artist’s retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery captures her diverse influences Nicole Eisenman: What Happened Whitechapel Gallery

TRIUMPH OF POVERTY: COURTESY OF LEO KOENIG INC, NEW YORK. ECON PROF: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH

public galleries 180 The Strand 180 Strand, WC2R 1EA • UVA: Synchronicity 12 OCTOBER-17 DECEMBER

Auto Italia 44 Bonner Road, E2 9JS • RM Collective: A Story Backwards UNTIL 3 DECEMBER

Barbican

UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024

Nicole Eisenman became successful as a painter, but the vast range of media and materials she employs is an aspect of her work that the curators of her show at the Whitechapel Gallery are seeking to emphasise. There are sculptures, prints, drawings, murals, paintings and a complex new installation, Maker’s Muck (2022), featuring a giant sculpted figure beside a rotating potter’s wheel, surrounded by maquettes for some of Eisenman’s best-known works. Maker’s Muck incorporates plaster, silicone, foam, trainers, tin foil, bamboo skewers, wax, dried flowers, crochet and seashells, to mention just a few of the materials listed in the catalogue. “She is one of the most inventive artists in the world at the moment, and one of the most ambitious artists in terms of how many mediums she works in,” says Mark Godfrey, who curated the exhibition with Monika Bayer-Wermuth. Even within the medium of painting, Eisenman’s work is extraordinarily diverse, spanning Bruegel-like wimmelbild images with dozens of figures engaged in a variety of activities and some surreal elements, like the enormous 2006 work Progress: Real and Imagined; spongy fantasy heads painted in oil on foam, such as the 2007 work Devil; and contemporary genre scenes of beer gardens and dinners. Some works carry a clear political message, such as The Abolitionists in the Park, a 2022 painting of a protest rally demanding a cut in police funding after the death of George Floyd. Born in 1965, Eisenman found success in the early 1990s, and the Whitechapel exhibition spans three decades of her career. Earlier works on show include rambunctious graphic drawings, such as Captured Pirates on the Island of Lesbos (1992), a gruesomely funny depiction of warrior-like women cutting the penises off their captives, which challenges conventional portrayals of sexual violence in art. Another 1992 ink drawing, Lesbian Recruitment Booth, shows a queue of women at a stand with a sign bearing the title of the work and the slogan “Try it, you’ll like it.”

○ Museums and

Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS • RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024

British Museum Great Russell Street, WC1B 3DG • Ed Ruscha: Roads and Insects UNTIL 28 JANUARY 2024 • The Genius of Nature: Botanical Drawings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues UNTIL 28 JANUARY 2024

Camden Art Centre Arkwright Road, NW3 6DG • Tamara Henderson: Green in the Groves UNTIL 31 DECEMBER • Marina Xenofontos: Public Domain UNTIL 31 DECEMBER

Chisenhale Gallery 64 Chisenhale Road, E3 5QZ • Benoît Piéron UNTIL 12 NOVEMBER

The Courtauld Strand, WC2R 0RN • Claudette Johnson: Presence UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024

Design Museum 238 Kensington High Street, SW8 6AG • Rebel: 30 Years of London Fashion UNTIL 11 FEBRUARY 2024

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Above: The Triumph of Poverty (2009) demonstrates the influence of German Expressionism in Nicole Eisenman’s work. Below: Econ Prof (2019), made from bronze. After early success as a painter, the artist has gone on to employ a range of media “Eisenman used humour in a very raucous way at the beginning to make new kinds of representations of lesbian life,” Godfrey says. “They weren’t that common in contemporary art.” Later works, like Morning Studio (2016), show domestic scenes. “You can see her engagement with lesbian life in New York with queer couples throughout the exhibition, in different, simple ways—like how she might present a pair of people relaxing, how she presents romance,” Godfrey says.

Transient state Eisenman’s murals were by definition temporary: she painted ten between 1992 and 2003 on the walls of exhibition spaces, then painted over them when the shows ended. For this exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, she has worked with

the artist Ryan McNamara to create an animation of them that will be shown for the first time. During the early 2000s Eisenman felt that, after a period of success, she had fallen out of favour. Some of the more introspective paintings on show address her response to this perceived fall from grace—with the same dark humour that is apparent throughout her work. In From Success to Obscurity (2004), Obscurity is a blue monster akin to Marvel Comics’ Thing, who is forlornly reading a letter, presumably from Success. “It shows how productive a moment a dip in confidence or public profile can be for an artist,” Godfrey says. “You can see as you go through the show that that dip was very productive for her in

terms of making her think about art and about how she made art. I hope that’s an indication for younger artists that there are great benefits of looking at the long run in terms of their career, and moments when things are very much in vogue and moments when they’re not.” Eisenman’s influences range from comics and soft porn to Pieter Bruegel the Elder and even Renoir. But a German Expressionist influence stands out, particularly in paintings depicting the hardships of contemporary life, such as the 2008 Coping and the 2009 The Triumph of Poverty. She has indicated that this might reflect her family history: as Jews persecuted by the Nazis, they were forced to leave Vienna. “I grew up in a family with a sense of nostalgia”, she has said, and “this sense of longing for another time and place comes through in my paintings… I think it’s part of my job as a human on earth to process the sadness of my family.” Catherine Hickley

Gallery Road, Dulwich, SE21 7AD • Rubens and Women UNTIL 28 JANUARY 2024 • Sara Shamma: Bold Spirits UNTIL 25 FEBRUARY 2024

Estorick Collection 39a Canonbury Square, N1 2AN • Lisetta Carmi: Identities UNTIL 17 DECEMBER

The Foundling Museum 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ • The Mother & The Weaver: Art from the Ursula Hauser Collection UNTIL 18 FEBRUARY 2024

The Freud Museum 20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 5SX • Tracing Freud on the Acropolis UNTIL 7 JANUARY 2024

Hayward Gallery Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX • Hiroshi Sugimoto 11 OCTOBER-7 JANUARY 2024

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, SE1 7LB • Frank Walter: Artist, Gardener, Radical UNTIL 25 FEBRUARY 2024

Gasworks 155 Vauxhall Street, SE11 5RH • Trevor Yeung: Soft Ground UNTIL 17 DECEMBER

Goldsmiths CCA St James’s, New Cross, SE14 6AD • Esteban Jefferson UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024 • Karrabing Film Collective UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024

 CONTINUED ON PAGE 24

Bring

Clothes No

Bloomsbury and Fashion 13 Sep 2023–7 Jan 2024 charleston.org.uk Dior Men Summer 2023 at Charleston; photographer: ShuoShuo Xu. Image courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar China

THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

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WHAT’S ON Frieze week ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts The Mall, SW1Y 5AH • Gray Wielebinski: The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low UNTIL 23 DECEMBER

National Gallery Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN • Frans Hals UNTIL 21 JANUARY 2024 • Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden UNTIL 29 OCTOBER

National Portrait Gallery St. Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE • Yevonde: Life and Colour UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

South London Gallery

Hauser & Wirth

65 Peckham Road, SE5 8UH • Lagos, Peckham, Repeat UNTIL 29 OCTOBER

23 Savile Row, W1S 2ET • Avery Singer: Free Fall UNTIL 22 DECEMBER

Studio Voltaire 1a Nelsons Row, SW4 7JR • Solomon Garçon: Arms UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024 • Unearthed Collective: Where can we be heard? UNTIL 29 OCTOBER

Van Gogh House

18 Ramillies Street, W1F 7LW • Daido Moriyama: a Retrospective UNTIL 11 FEBRUARY 2024 • Mino Kajioka: How Long is Now? UNTIL 19 NOVEMBER

87 Hackford Road, SW9 0RE • The Living House UNTIL 17 DECEMBER

Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD • Marina Abramović UNTIL 1 JANUARY 2024 • Herzog & de Meuron UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

Serpentine North West Carriage Drive, W2 2AR • Third World: The Bottom Dimension UNTIL 22 OCTOBER

Serpentine South Kensington Gardens, W2 3XA • Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011-2015 UNTIL 7 JANUARY 2024

45 Maddox Street, W1S 2PE • Kate Gottgens: A String of Signs UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Huxley-Parlour, Swallow Street 5 Swallow St, W1B 4DE • David Benjamin Sherry: Mother UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

indigo+madder 12- 4 Whitfield St, W1T 2RF • Leo Robinson: On Exactitude UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Josh Lilley 40-46 Riding House Street, W1W 7EX • Gareth Cadwallader: Let Me See The Colts UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Lehmann Maupin

Victoria & Albert Museum Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL • Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto UNTIL 25 FEBRUARY 2024 • Diva UNTIL 7 APRIL 2024 • Prix Pictet Human 2023 UNTIL 22 OCTOBER

The Wallace Collection Manchester Square, W1U 3BN • Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

Wellcome Collection 183 Euston Rd., London NW1 2BE • Larry Achiampong and David Blandy: Genetic Automata UNTIL 11 FEBRUARY 2024

Whitechapel Gallery

63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ • Marianne Keating: An Ciúnas / The Silence 12 OCTOBER-13 JANUARY 2024

82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX • Nicole Eisenman: What Happened 11 OCTOBER-14 JANUARY 2024 • Anna Mendelssohn: Speak, Poetess 11 OCTOBER-21 JANUARY 2024

Somerset House Studios

William Morris Gallery

Strand, WC2R 1LA • Sonya Dyer: Three Parent Child UNTIL 12 NOVEMBER

Lloyd Park, Forest Road, E17 4PP • Radical Landscapes 21 OCTOBER-18 FEBRUARY 2024

The Showroom

Huxley-Parlour, Maddox Street

Tate Modern

The Photographers’ Gallery

The Perimeter

1 Cromwell Place, SW7 2JE • Kader Attia & Mandy El-Sayegh UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Lisson Gallery, Lisson Street Philip Guston’s self-portrait Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973) depicts a tragic side of the artist’s existence, painted at a time when his smoking and poor diet were beginning to affect his health

UNTIL 25 FEBRUARY 2024

A vast survey of Philip Guston’s work has finally opened at Tate Modern after it was postponed in 2020 in a row over the late CanadianAmerican artist’s Ku Klux Klan imagery. Philip Guston Now was originally due to open in June 2020 at Washington, DC’s National Gallery of Art, before travelling to the

○ Galleries:

46 Mortimer Street, W1W 7RL • Amber Pinkerton—Self Dialogues: Hard Food UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Alison Jacques 22 Cork Street, W1S 3LZ • Sheila Hicks: Infinite Potential UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Amanda Wilkinson 1st Floor, 47 Farringdon Road, EC1M 3JB • Derek Jarman: Queer UNTIL 16 DECEMBER

Annely Juda 23 Dering Street, W1S 1AW • Elizabeth Magill: By This River UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER • Philipp Goldbach: Verso UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Thursday 12 October Sotheby’s 6pm The Now Evening Auction 7pm Contemporary Evening Auction

Phillips 1pm 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

Friday 13 October Sotheby’s 1pm Contemporary Day Auction

Phillips 3pm 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Christie’s 5pm 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale 7pm Masterpieces from the Collection of Sam Josefowitz: A Lifetime of Discovery and Scholarship

Saturday 14 October Christie’s 1pm Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale

Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Houston, Tate Modern and finally the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston in autumn 2021. The museums said that they were postponing the exhibition “until a time we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the centre of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted”.  The Tate Modern show addresses the issue of the Ku Klux Klan at the start of the

show with panels outlining that “Guston depicted racial injustice in his art from early on… Guston focuses on the perpetrators of racist violence [in the work Drawing for Conspirators made when he was 17], placing a Klansman in the foreground.” In the later section, Hoods, “Guston raises questions about who is behind the hood and how their violent ideologies are masked in society,” says a wall text. Gareth Harris

27 Bell Street, NW1 5BY • Ryan Gander: PUNTO! UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Luxembourg + Co 2 Savile Row, W1S 3PA • Katsumi Nakai: Unfolding UNTIL 9 DECEMBER

Lyndsey Ingram 20 Bourdon Street, W1K 3PL • Katy Stubbs: Smoke and Mirrors UNTIL 10 NOVEMBER

Mamoth 3 Endsleigh Street, WC1H 0DS • Ted Gahl: Café Nervosa UNTIL 3 NOVEMBER

Marlborough

Alice Black Damien Hirst’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? (2000) is up for auction at Phillips on 12 October

67 Lisson Street, NW1 5DA • Li Ran: Waiting for the Advent UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Lisson Gallery, Bell Street

Philip Guston Now  Tate Modern

Central Auctions

38 Bury Street, SW1Y 6BB • Maggi Hambling: Maelstrom UNTIL 24 NOVEMBER 2 Warner Yard, EC1R 5EY • Siobhan Liddell: Been and Gone UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Millbank, SW1P 4RG • Sarah Lucas: Happy Gas UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024

20 Brownlow Mews, WC1N 2LE • Anna Uddenberg: Home Wreckers UNTIL 22 DECEMBER

1 Newport Street, SE11 6AJ • Brian Clarke: A Great Light UNTIL 31 DECEMBER

Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert

Hollybush Gardens

Tate Britain

Bankside, SE1 9TG • Philip Guston UNTIL 25 FEBRUARY 2024 • Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui UNTIL 14 APRIL 2024 • A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography UNTIL 14 JANUARY 2024 • Capturing the Moment UNTIL 28 JANUARY 2024

Newport Street Gallery

Postponed Philip Guston survey finally opens at Tate Modern

12a Savile Row, W1S 3PQ • Arnaud Adami: The Visible Turn UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

• Simeon Barclay: At Home, Everywhere and Nowhere UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Castor

Ginny on Frederick

12-14 Whitfield Street, W1T 2RF • Des Lawrence: Oh my absolute complete and utter everlasting days! UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

93 Charterhouse St, EC1M 6HR • Choon Mi Kim: ACID—FREEEE UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Cristea Roberts

26 Cork Street, W1S 3ND • Shirin Neshat: The Fury UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

43 Pall Mall, SW1Y 5JG • Yinka Shonibare: Ritual Ecstasy of the Modern UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

David Zwirner 24 Grafton Street, W1S 4EZ • Liu Ye: Naive and Sentimental Painting UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Edel Assanti 1B Little Titchfield Street, W1W 7BU • Sylvia Snowden: M Street on White UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Flowers, Cork Street 21 Cork Street, W1S 3LZ • Aida Tomescu: With the Crimson Word UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Arcadia Missa

Frith Street Gallery

35 Duke Street, W1U 1LH • Phoebe Collings-James: bun babylon; a heretics anthology UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

18 Golden Square, W1F 9JJ • Małgorzata Mirga-Tas UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Belmacz

17 Davies Street, W1K 3DF • Richard Prince: The Entertainers UNTIL 16 NOVEMBER

45 Davies Street, W1K 4LX • Women of the 20s UNTIL 22 DECEMBER

Bernard Jacobson 28 Duke Street, SW1Y 6AG • William Tillyer: The Mulgrave Tensile Wire Works UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Ben Brown Fine Arts 12 Brook’s Mews, W1K 4DG • José Parlá: Phosphene 11 OCTOBER-17 NOVEMBER

Carl Kostyal

Goodman Gallery

Grimm Gallery 2 Bourdon Street, W1K 3PA • Anthony Cudahy: Double Spar UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Grosvenor Gallery 35 Bury St, SW1Y 6AY • TALPUR UNTIL 18 OCTOBER

Hamiltons Gallery 13 Carlos Place, W1K 2EU • Albert Watson: SKYE UNTIL 17 NOVEMBER

Michael Werner 22 Upper Brook Street, W1K 7PZ • James Lee Byars & Seung-taek Lee: Invisible Questions that Fill the Air UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Modern Art, Bury Street 7 Bury Street, SW1Y 6AL • Michael E. Smith UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

No. 9 Cork Street 9 Cork Street, W1S 3LL • Story, Place UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Offer Waterman

25 Savile Row, W1S 2ES • Francis Bacon & Andy Warhol: Endless Variations UNTIL 15 DECEMBER

Pace 5 Hanover Sq, W1S 1HE • Robert Irwin & Mary Corse: Parallax UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

20 Grosvenor Hill, W1K EQD • Richard Prince: Early Photography 1977–87 UNTIL 22 DECEMBER

Phillida Reid 10-16 Grape Street, WC2H 8DY • Prem Sahib: The Life Cycle of a Flea UNTIL 8 NOVEMBER

Galerie Max Hetzler

5 Warwick Street, W1B 5LU

15 Old Bond Street, W1S 4PR • The Paradox of Proximity: Agostino Bonalumi and Lee Seung Jio UNTIL 30 NOVEMBER

Ordovas

Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill

Gathering

Mazzoleni

17 St George Street, W1S 1FJ • On Foot UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Gagosian, Davies Street

41 Dover Street, W1 4NS • Eleanor Swordy: Busy Signal UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

6 Albemarle Street, W1S 4BY • Alexander James: Tuck Shop for the Wicked UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER • Deanio X: Symphony of Storms UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Pilar Corrias Rubens’s portrait of his daughter (around 1620-23) is on show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

51 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YT • Christina Quarles:

 CONTINUED ON PAGE 26

GUSTON: © THE ESTATE OF PHILIP GUSTON, COURTESY OF HAUSER & WIRTH. HIRST: COURTESY OF PHILLIPS. RUBENS: COURTESY OF DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY.

 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23

ISAAC JULIEN ORGANIZED BY

Yale Center for British Art Yale School of Architecture ON VIEW

Yale Architecture Gallery New Haven, Connecticut August 24 to December 10

Isaac Julien, Lina Bo Bardi — A Marvellous Entanglement (2019). © Isaac Julien 2019. Installation view, Yale School of Architecture, 2023. Photo by Michael Ipsen, Yale Center for British Art.

Lina Bo Bardi — A Marvellous Entanglement

THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

26

WHAT’S ON Frieze week  CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

Sound to Eye UNTIL 2 DECEMBER

Tripping Over My Joy UNTIL 16 DECEMBER 2 Savile Row, W1S 3PA • Cui Jie: Thermal Landscapes UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Nicoletti Contemporary

Pippy Houldsworth

PUBLIC Gallery

6 Heddon Street, W1B 4BT • Wangari Mathenge: A Day of Rest UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

91 Middlesex Street, E1 7DA • Group Show: The last train after the last train UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

12a Vyner Street, E2 9DG • Josèfa Ntjam: Limestone Memories— un maquis sous les étoiles UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

PM/AM

Raven Row

37 Eastcastle Street, W1W 8DR • Raelis Vasquez UNTIL 31 OCTOBER

56 Artillery Lane, E1 7LS • Lutz Bacher: AYE! UNTIL 17 DECEMBER

Richard Saltoun

Rocket

41 Dover Street, W1S 4NS • The Resistance of Pen and Paper UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

4 Sheep Lane, E8 4QS • Martin Parr: Sports and Spectatorship UNTIL 29 FEBRUARY 2024

A major retrospective at The Photographers’ Gallery of the Japanese artist Daido Moriyama, includes this work For Provoke No. 2 (1969)

Seventeen 276 Kingsland Road, E8 4DG • Andy Holden: Song of Songs UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Gus Casely-Hayford, the director of the east London outpost of the V&A, due to open in 2025, talks with artist Thomas J. Price today

Saatchi Yates

South Parade

UNTIL 27 OCTOBER

Tabula Rasa Gallery

14 Bury St, St James’s, London SW1Y 6AL • Will St. John UNTIL 22 OCTOBER

Griffin House, 79 Saffron Hill, EC1R 5BU • Ellie Pratt: Taste Maker UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Waddington Custot

The talks are taking place in dunhill’s design-led space at Frieze Masters

Sadie Coles HQ

Stephen Friedman

99 East Road, N1 6AQ • Tant Yunshu Zhong: When Does a Wanderer Seek Rest at Night UNTIL 17 NOVEMBER

62 Kingly Street, W1B 5QN • Alvaro Barrington: They Got Time - Grandma’s Land UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

5-6 Cork Street, London W1S 3NY • Yinka Shonibare: Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

The Approach

Wednesday 11 October

47 Approach Road, E2 9LY • John Maclean: New Paintings UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Sadie Coles, Bury Street

Thaddaeus Ropac

8 Bury St, SW1Y 6AB • Urs Fischer: Flea Circus UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

37 Dover Street, W1S 4NJ • Daniel Richter: Stupor UNTIL 1 DECEMBER

Sadie Coles, Davies Street

Thomas Dane

1 Davies Street, W1K 3DB • Martine Syms: Present Goo UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

11 Duke St, SW1Y 6BN • Xie Nanxing: Hello, Portrait! UNTIL 16 DECEMBER 3 Duke St, SW1Y 6BN • Igshaan Adams: Primêre Wentelbaan UNTIL 16 DECEMBER

3pm Thomas J. Price in conversation with Gus Casely-Hayford Known for his large-scale figurative sculptures, confronting preconceived attitudes towards representation and identity, artist Thomas J. Price speaks with Gus Casely-Hayford, director of V&A East.

Sarah Myerscough Gallery 34 North Row, London W1K 6DH • Silver Jubilee: Collections UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Skarstedt 8 Bennet Street, SW1A 1RP • Cristina BanBan: La Matrona UNTIL 25 NOVEMBER

Somers Gallery 96 Chalton Street, NW1 1HJ • Six Artist Group Show curated by Sacha Craddock: Full House UNTIL 14 OCTOBER

Sprüth Magers 7 Grafton Street, W1S 4EJ • Sylvie Fleury: S.F. UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

11 Cork Street, W1S 3LT • Yves Dana: Un autre regard sur la sculpture UNTIL26 NOVEMBER

White Cube, Mason’s Yard 26 Masons Yard, SW1Y 6BU • Marina Rheingantz UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Workplace 50 Mortimer Street, W1W 7RP • Simeon Barclay: At Home, Everywhere and Nowhere UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

○ Galleries: East

Timothy Taylor

Carlos/Ishikawa

15 Bolton Street, W1J 8BG • Eddie Martinez: Enough 12 OCTOBER-18 NOVEMBER

88 Mile End Road, E1 4UN • Josiane M.H. Pozi: Through my fault UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Unit London

Daniel Benjamin

3 Hanover Square, W1S 1HD • Dreamscape Estuary UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER • Jason Boyd Kinsella: Anatomy of the Radiant Mind UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

68 Compton Street, EC1V 0BN • Melania Toma: As soon as the Sun Sets UNTIL 1 NOVEMBER

Vigo 8 Masons Yard, SW1 6BU • Leonhard Hurzlmeier: Kissing Shores

Doyle Wham 91A Rivington Street, EC2A 3AY • Angèle Etoundi Essamba: Africanesse UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Ed Cross Fine Art 19 Garrett Street, EC1Y 0TW • Abe Odedina: I’m a Believer UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Emalin

Fairs

1 Holywell Lane, EC2A 3ET • Nikita Gale: BLUR BALLAD UNTIL 9 DECEMBER

Flowers, Kingsland Rd 82 Kingsland Road, E2 8DP • MATTER UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Gagosian Open 4 Princelet Street, E1 6QH • Christo: Early Works UNTIL 22 OCTOBER

Guts Gallery 10 Andre Street, E8 2AA • Shadi Al-Atallah: Fistfight UNTIL 25 OCTOBER

Hales Pad Design + Art, the fair dedicated to 20th century and contemporary design, celebrates its 15th London edition this year

Frieze London

Women in Art Fair

Regent’s Park, NW1 4LL UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

Mall Galleries, The Mall, SW1 UNTIL 14 OCTOBER

Frieze Masters

Start Art Fair

Regent’s Park, NW1 4HA UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

Saatchi Gallery, King’s Road, SW3 4RY UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair

The Other Art Fair

Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 1LA 12-15 OCTOBER

Truman Brewery, 85 Brick Lane, E1 6QL 12-15 OCTOBER

PAD Design + Art Berkeley Square, W1J 6EN UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

7 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA • Anthony Cudahy: Double Spar UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Herald St 2 Herald St, E2 6JT • Pablo Bronstein: Cakehole UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Kate MacGarry 27 Old Nichol Street, E2 7HR • Florian Meisenberg: What does the smoke know of the fire? UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Maureen Paley 60 Three Colts Lane, E2 6GQ • Eduardo Sarabia: Prologue UNTIL 22 OCTOBER

Modern Art 8 Helmet Row, EC1V 3QJ • Justin Caguiat: Dreampop UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Mother’s Tankstation 64 Three Colts Lane, E2 6GP • Yuko Mohri: Sweet to Tongue and

Union Pacific 17 Goulston Street, E1 7TP • Kevin Brisco Jr: But I Hear There Are New Suns UNTIL 18 NOVEMBER

Victoria Miro 16 Wharf Road, N1 7RW • Paula Rego: Letting Loose UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER • Ali Banisadr: The Changing Past UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

○ Galleries:

North Art Space Gallery 84 St Peter’s Street, N1 8JS • Jeffery Camp: A Visionary UNTIL 20 OCTOBER

Thursday 12 October 12pm Arlene Shechet in conversation with Sheena Wagstaff Arlene Shechet’s work embraces improvisation to examine the humour and pathos of the lived human experience. Shechet speaks with curator Sheena Wagstaff, exploring the studio space and its role in an artist’s career and creative practice. 3pm Rachel Whiteread in conversation with Briony Fer In Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures and drawings, everyday settings, objects,

and surfaces are transformed into ghostly replicas that are eerily familiar. She speaks to Briony Fer, Professor of Art History at University College London.

Friday 13 October 3pm Maggi Hambling, Sarah Lucas and Louisa Buck in conversation Maggi Hambling speaks with fellow artist and friend Sarah Lucas, moderated by Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper’s contemporary art correspondent.

Saturday 14 October 3pm Mandy El-Sayegh, Flavia Frigeri and Valerie Cassel Oliver in conversation London-based artist Mandy ElSayegh talks to the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘Chanel Curator for the Collection’ Flavia Frigeri and Valerie Cassel Oliver of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the US.

Bobinska Brownlee New River 38 Tower Court, London N1 2US • Sarah-Joy Ford: HARE UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Cob Gallery 205 Royal College St, NW1 0SG • Tomo Campbell: Spitting Feathers UNTIL 14 OCTOBER

No 20 Arts 20 Cross Street, N1 2BG • Kimberley Burrows, Euan Evans, Elena Njoabuzia Onwochei-Garcia & Heiyi Tam: ADDENDUM UNTIL 15 OCTOBER

James Freeman 354 Upper Street, N1 0PD • Janpeter Muilwijk: One Foot in Heaven UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

○ Galleries: South Cabinet 132 Tyers Street, SE11 5HS • Primitive Tales: Atiéna R. Kilfa UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

Cecilia Brunson Projects

Corvi-Mora

UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

1A Kempsford Road, SE11 4NU • Anika Roach: Limbo Along Brass Tacks UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

The Sunday Painter

Kristin Hjellegjerde 2 Melior Place, SE1 3SZ • Charlie Stein: Virtually Yours UNTIL 25 NOVEMBER • Ken Nwadiogbu: Fragments of Reality UNTIL 25 NOVEMBER

Queercircle Soames Walk, SE10 0BN • Rafal Zajko: Clocking Off UNTIL 26 NOVEMBER

Matt’s Gallery 6 Charles Clowes Walk, SW11 7AN • Nina Davies: Precursing UNTIL 5 NOVEMBER

Sid Motion Gallery 24a Penarth Centre, SE15 1TR • Remi Ajani: It’s not what you look at... It’s what you see UNTIL 21 OCTOBER

Sundy 63 Black Prince Road, SE11 5QH • Daphne Ahlers: Hum

119 South Lambeth Road, SW8 1XA • Ernesto Burgos: When a bird lands on the ground it invariably stops singing UNTIL 28 OCTOBER

Turps Gallery Taplow House, Thurlow Street, SE17 2UQ • Cherry Pickles: I Killed a Hitchhiker Back in 86 UNTIL 12 NOVEMBER

White Cube 144-152 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3TQ • Julie Mehretu UNTIL 5 NOVEMBER

○ Galleries: West Cromwell Place 4 Cromwell Place, SW7 2JE • Displays from International Galleries VARIOUS DATES

Flow Gallery

3G Royal Oak Yard, SE1 3GD • Claudia Alarcón & Silät: Nitsäyphä: Wichí Stories UNTIL 3 NOVEMBER Janet Sobel: 1940s, at the Heart of the New Vanguard UNTIL 3 NOVEMBER

1-5 Needham Road, W11 2RP • Oliver Cook UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Cooke Latham Gallery

HackelBury

41 Parkgate Road, SW11 4NP • Francisco Rodriguez: The Weight of the Night UNTIL 2 NOVEMBER

4 Launceston Place, W8 5RL • Medium & Memory UNTIL 21 NOVEMBER

Copperfield

50 Golborne Road, W10 5PR • Antonia Nannt, Murat Önen, Victoria Pidust and Lola Stong-Brett: Canon of Beauty UNTIL 11 NOVEMBER

6 Copperfield Street, SE1 0EP • Narges Mohammadi & Laila Tara H: Hastan UNTIL 10 NOVEMBER

Frestonian Gallery 2 Olaf Street, W11 4BE • Tim Braden: La Coloriste UNTIL 4 NOVEMBER

Roman Road An image from a 1972 Judy Chicago performance work, in the RE/SISTERS show at the Barbican

MORIYAMA: © THE ARTIST/DAIDO MORIYAMA PHOTO FOUNDATION. CASELY-HAYFORD: © VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM. PAD FAIR: COURTESY OF PAD. CHICAGO: © THE ARTIST/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK; PHOTO COURTESY OF THROUGH THE FLOWER ARCHIVES, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; SALON 94, NEW YORK; AND JESSICA SILVERMAN GALLERY, SAN FRANCISCO

Robilant + Veona 38 Dover St, W1S 4NL • Daniel Ambrosi: AI and the Landscapes of Capability Brown UNTIL 15 DECEMBER

Frieze Masters Talks in collaboration with dunhill

Contemporary African Art Fair London 12–15 October 2023 Somerset House 1-54.com

29

THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

NEWS Frieze Analogue to iPad: how Frieze London has changed structure made liberal use of glazing and incorporated a translucent ceiling, which welcomed natural light into the fair throughout the day and emitted a warm glow of its own come nightfall. Its designer, fresh from working with Chris Ofili on the British Pavilion at 2003’s Venice Biennale, was described by this publication at the time as a “hot young architect” called David Adjaye. For all the tent’s design virtues, however, many of Frieze’s first exhibitors recall some room for improvement in its practical elements. “In 2003, if you took up your carpet to create a less corporate look to your stand, creepy crawlies would come in from the ground below, and you prayed it would not rain. Otherwise it was time to wear your thermals,” says London dealer Alison Jacques. “Now, it’s slick and insect-proof.” The grand ambitions of the original Frieze fair belie the humble resources available to actualise it. Asked about the staff assembled to produce the 2003 event, Sharp says: “It was a skeleton team.” She remembers the dedicated, full-time fair staff consisting of no more than five people. The rest of the workforce was made up of on-site temps and an array of sub-contractors, some of whom were as new to staging art fairs as Sharp and Slotover. The company hired to build Frieze’s walls, Sharp says, had never worked an event like this one. “They built theme parks,” she adds.

Print-outs and fine dining The technological limits of Frieze’s 2003 debut now sound almost primeval. “Everything was analogue, from the application process, to the invitation of the VIP guests, to the presentation of the art,” says Gisela Capitain, the founder of the namesake Cologne gallery. There was no public wifi, and possibly no private wireless network either. (The Frieze spokesperson says the records

“In 2003, creepy crawlies would come in from the ground below” Alison Jacques, dealer

to buy

Visitors to the first fair, which attracted 27,700 people, included (clockwise from top) the fashion designer Pam Hogg; Princess Rosario of Bulgaria and the actor Hugh Grant; and the artist Tracey Emin. Today, attendance at Frieze and Frieze Masters combined has tripled are inconclusive on this last point.) Anyway, smartphones and tablets were niche products at the time; Apple did not launch the iPhone until 2007 or the iPad until 2010. Marianne Boesky, the New York dealer, unknowingly speaks for Frieze’s entire first cohort of exhibitors when she says she “spent significant time and effort” ahead of the event assembling physical binders on each of the gallery’s artists containing print-outs of current press and works available offsite. Unholy amounts of artist monographs were also delivered to the tent to hand out to clients during the run of the show. Frieze even printed a “yearbook” featuring capsule profiles of two to three artists selected by each participating dealer. More rudimentary communications tech translated into radically different strategies to entice buyers, too. “We didn’t send previews like you see now. We reached out to people for sure, but at the fair on the opening day it was

more of a surprise for the visitors,” says Thaddaeus Ropac. One defining trait of Frieze was present from the start, however. Sharp and Slotover bucked convention by working with Mark Hix, then the chef director of beloved London restaurants Le Caprice and The Ivy, to ensure that there would be high-calibre dining to match the high-calibre art in the tent. Sharp says it was part of a plan not only to “keep people enjoying themselves” so they would stick around but also to instil a local identity by “bringing the city into the fair”. The move made an impression on exhibitors used to stomaching less inspiring options at rival expos. “This was really the top end of London food at an art fair,” says the London-headquartered dealer Timothy Taylor. “I think it was unique. You go to the Basel fair and you get raclette, if you’re lucky, or a sausage. In Miami you get a Cuban sandwich.” Frieze’s approach to food reinforces

that the company has risen to the apex of the art-fair sector, partly thanks to 20 years’ worth of savvy choices about which of its elements it should maintain and which it must evolve as the global art market has grown and professionalised around it. Now owned by the US entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, the company operates Frieze-branded fairs in Los Angeles in February, New York in May and Seoul in September in addition to London in October. It also recently struck deals to acquire US regional art fairs The Armory Show and Expo Chicago, with more changes sure to arrive. Yet what motivated Sharp and Slotover to risk producing their first fair may be the simplest explanation for Frieze’s two subsequent decades of success. “Our theory was that if you had good galleries, then collectors would come,” she says. “It was pretty unsophisticated, actually. But it was proven true by the fair.”

A podcast by The Art Newspaper

A brush with… YINKA SHONIBARE // CLAUDETTE JOHNSON SARAH LUCAS // TORKWASE DYSON Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, 2023, Photo (detail) by Tom Jamieson. Courtesy Yinka Shonibare CBE and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Claudette Johnson, Photo (detail) © Anne Tetzlaff; Sarah Lucas: Portrait of Sarah Lucas (detail) (Framlington, Suffolk, 2023) © Sarah Lucas. Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Katie Morrison; Torkwase Dyson: Photo (detail) by Weston Wells

FRIEZE LONDON: © REX SHUTTERSTOCK

 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

This motley crew nonetheless managed to create an event that drew 27,700 visitors, according to a Frieze spokesperson, with general admission costing £12 (around £21 today, after adjusting for inflation). For comparison, a general admission ticket to the 2023 edition of Frieze London is priced at £46 (though early-bird and student tickets are cheaper), and in 2022 the combined attendance at Frieze and Frieze Masters—the tandem fair launched in 2012 for objects made from antiquity until the 20th century—totalled around 90,000 visitors. No one was more surprised by the first fair’s popularity than Sharp. “Nowadays, if we build a new fair in Korea or L.A. we can work out pretty accurately how many people will come out on day one. Then, we had no idea,” she says. “There was no algorithm for it.”

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THE ART NEWSPAPER FRIEZE FAIR EDITION 11 OCTOBER 2023

DIARY

Gilbert & George light up the West End

Frieze Week

Anonymous reports from behind the scenes at the fair

Here comes the sun: legendary Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto apparently finds inspiration in music by the Beatles

Sugimoto’s surprising inspiration Visitors caught up in Frieze fair week frenzy should pop into the Hayward Gallery for a soothing display of photographs by the master of the art, Hiroshi Sugimoto. On the opening day of his largest retrospective to date (until 7 January 2024), the Japanese artist was spotted walking through the show listening to The Beatles’s Let It Be on his iPhone, while singing along. The song, something of a British anthem, apparently helps Sugimoto to tune into the ambience of his own images, each a sublime, intricate study of colour, light, water, horizon and sky. Indeed, photography that sings: “When the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me.”

ARTOON by Pablo Helguera

Larger-than-life East End artists, Gilbert & George, have created a “living sculpture” that can be seen on the huge screen in Piccadilly Circus every night throughout October In a very public ceremony beamed live across the giant billboard in Piccadilly Circus on Monday, artists Shirin Neshat and Michèle Lamy presented the Circa Prize 2023 to the German artist Cemile Sahin for her film about a Kurdish family living between Paris and Istanbul. In front of a crowd that included luminaries from the art and music worlds, Sahin was presented with £30,000 to support her practice and create a work that will be presented on Circa’s network

Marina spills the tea…

“I have learned so much from this fair over the years— VRPXFKVRWKDWQRZ,RQO\FROOHFWWHQWVSHFLÀFDUWµ

The Undercover Gallerist

of illuminated billboards next year. She also received a new Circa Prize trophy fashioned out of Lego by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The ceremony included on-screen tributes from Circa Prize judges Marina Abramović and Pussy Rioter Nadya Tolokonnikova. A new “living sculpture” work made especially for Circa by the British artist duo Gilbert & George was unveiled, too—it will appear at Piccadilly at 8.23pm (20:23) every night this month.

… and Thom hits the heights

London is awash with glitzy parties this week, with Marina Abramović is the first woman in the Royal one highlight so far being the Victoria and Albert Academy’s 255-year history to have a solo show in Museum bash on Monday celebrating the 20th its main galleries and on Monday she dealt a anniversary of fashion designer Thom further blow to the patriarchy by staging Browne’s company. Browne, known Marina Abramović’s Extraordinary for his jaunty jumpers and shorts, Women’s Tea. In attendance was also launching his lavish new were artists Rachel Jones and monograph, published by Phaidon. Alison Wilding; actress Phoebe Browne’s star wattage was Waller-Bridge; fashion designer reflected in the top-notch calibre Roksanda Ilinčić; writer Bernardine of guests, including the Game of Evaristo and vaccine pioneer Dame Thrones actress Maisie Williams. Professor Sarah Gilbert. Despite But top billing went to mega pop star some disappointment that the spread Janet Jackson, a big buddy of Thom’s. was not served by topless men, as According to Vogue, the singer calls promised, most guests were mollified Marina Abramović with by party bags containing Marina’s famous chums Roksanda the fashion supremo “Thom Up” Blend tea, created by the artist and Ilinčić (left) and Phoebe because of his “ability to consistently elevate and innovate”. Bless. experts at Fortnum & Masons. Waller Bridge (right)

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Bonjour. I’ve been tasked with writing a little column for The Art Newspaper this week as an anonymous gallerist taking part in the fair. In our first (and only) meeting about this column, the team suggested I should probably avoid anything potentially libellous. They already know me too well. This will also be made easier by the simple fact that Gail’s has now put up glass screens, most likely a bygone Covid measure, meaning I am unable to eat my favourite chocolate chunk cookies and cheese straws for free all week long, or report on all the other gallerists with sticky fingers.  I always get nervous the few days before a fair as something inevitably goes wrong with shipping, or your booth neighbours could be unfriendly. Nothing beats the time the unnamed dealer at a fair in Basel asked us to draw an imaginary line between our booths and try our best not to cross it at any point. We are now all installed, and beyond a few too many daddy-long-leg visitors, it all went rather smoothly. I haven’t got the whole picture of my neighbours properly yet; either we will be great new friends or I’ll have some wonderful anecdotes to share here—a win-win.  I’ll report back any sales or make some up if it turns out the collectors really are skipping out to head for the bright lights of Paris. (Insert a few inevitable bed bug jokes here.) Frankly, we need to sell loads or I won’t be able to pay the hefty extra booth lighting fees…

SUGIMOTO: SUGIMOTO STUDIO. BILLBOARD AND ABRAMOVIC: LOUISA BUCK

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