Art, Commerce, and Bewilderment at Frieze Art Fair

Written by Charlene Fellingham Thursday, 09 February 2012 20:12

LONDON - “I thought it was some kind of strange feminist piece,” said Jessica Stockdale, a 21-year-old photography student, pondering “Untitled (Original)” by the American artist Richard Prince at the Frieze Art Fair. “But I do like her boots.” The boots in question were adorning the shapely legs of a young woman in the installation, whose job is to rub Mr. Prince’s bright yellow, souped-up 1970 Dodge Challenger provocatively with a cloth while the whole thing rotates on a silver disk.

While the Frieze program describes Mr. Prince’s work as offering “the ultimate vehicle in which to pursue the combined fantasies of upward and lateral mobility,” it is equally true to say that interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

So it goes, the search for meaning at Frieze, Britain’s largest contemporary art fair, now in its fifth year. The influential event opened on Wednesday for the usual coterie of serious buyers and collectors, but let in the rest of the world on Thursday: students, artists, tourists, gawkers and members of the noncollecting public eager to take in the riotous jumble of art, even if they were not always sure what it was.

At one point a tour guide — there are tour guides at the fair, and art appreciators can hire private ones — herded his charges, a group of American women, past a work called “Project for Some Hallucinations.” ...“This tree is by ... ,” he said, rifling through his notes.

In fact, it was by Lara Favaretto, an Italian artist who had invited Queen Elizabeth II to visit the fair. The queen had declined; Ms. Favaretto had affixed the letter of regret to a tree as an exercise in “living surrounded by the empty set of a show, from which the main character is missing,” she explains in the Frieze catalog. The women tried to keep up. “Is this a real tree?” one asked.

Some 151 galleries from 28 countries were chosen to take part this year, drawn from 450 applicants; each has a booth displaying its best pieces — or at least pieces it hoped would sell or provoke. The fair, which continues in Regent’s Park through Sunday, is enormous, noisy and occasionally carnival-like, and the mood in one section of the building can be very different from the mood in another section.

Several dozen artists are selling donated old records, old clothes, old knick-knacks and objects that they have turned into art, sort of, including freshly laid hen’s eggs, brownies, paperbacks and nails (the kind hammered into things) signed by the artist.

The artist Jonathan Horowitz was peddling little 1970s greeting-card figurines whose messages he had altered: from “Congratulations on your new job,” for instance, to “Suicide bombers are people too.” (He also had one that said, “Larry Gagosian is a person too.”)

On Wednesday the artist Sam Taylor-Wood could be found in the booth, photographing members of the public alongside Mr. Pruitt, dressed in a panda suit, at £200 ( about $406) a shot. Why the panda ? Mr. Pruitt took off the head for a moment. “I’m a vegetarian, they’re vegetarians,” he said. “I like the equal parts black and white.

This being a contemporary art fair, there were a fair share of people from all sides of the “Is it art, or what?” debate. Some purists said they felt the work at Frieze had become too obvious, too geared to the market. “It’s interesting, but not as progressive as we thought it would be — it’s more of a commercial event selling for broader tastes,” said Andrew Kinmont, 35, a classmate of Ms. Thompson. “Although, I suppose if you’re not an artist, a lot of it is very avant-garde.”

One such nonartist was John Harvey, an interior and graphic design consultant. “Many of these things are almost theater,” he said. He peered at Mr. Prince’s car, surrounded by people photographing its busty sidekick. “It’s ironic,” Mr. Harvey said, “although I have no idea what it means.” He said he had not been able to find the sign explaining what it was (“The Moment of Regeneration,” by the celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama).

Seven artists were commissioned by Frieze to create projects that “respond to the social and economic dynamics of the fair,” according to its catalog. These included Mr. Prince’s car, Ms. Favaretto’s note and a piece by Gianni Motti, “Pre-Emptive Act,” in which an actor dressed as a police officer does yoga as a way to subvert expectations about authority and security.

Another commissioned artists, Kris Martin, hit on a novel concept: stop Frieze for an entire minute on Wednesday, the day the fair was all but groaning with important art-world figures and important collectors like Charles Saatchi, Frank Cohen and Eli Broad. The idea was to “succeed in temporarily stilling the wheels of commerce,” the catalog said.

By ... Sarah Lyall