12/9/2023 0 Comments Stack of books to drawIt can’t make sense of the senseless but it can take a stand and make us look beyond the rolling news to envision a different version of life. I withdrew the guns from the photographs of fighters because I wanted to deprive them of the main purpose of taking the picture.” Suddenly it feels as though the world outside this glorious bubble isn’t so far away after all, that art will eventually be able to reflect on this week of terror and have something to say about the killers, their guns, the victims. I find an interview in which Zaatari explains that, during the war, “West Beirut fell into the hands of gangs under the pretext of the liberation of Palestine. The series is called Victims of Prolonged Struggle. They are of militiamen posing with their weapons and were taken during the Lebanese civil war – except Zaatari has erased the guns, leaving white space where they once were. On one wall of the Sfeir-Semler Gallery’s stand is a set of old studio photographs manipulated by renowned Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari. The atrocities in Israel and Gaza make you think about the power and relevance of art – about bathing in all this often mad, daring, whimsical creativity when your TV screens are full of such terror. There’s something else this week that makes looking at all of this work, cocooned inside white canvas of the tent, feel strangely detached. An embroidered map of the world by Alighiero Boetti and Grayson Perry’s tapestry of a car crash, “Lamentation”. And it’s why all that some folk can say after seeing a painting is, “I like where he’s coming from.”Īnd yet, things do make you pause: a painting by Ben Nicholson, another by Paule Vézelay. At some point, your brain starts flashing, “Memory full.” It’s why many find the Masters event – less harried and with better-designed stands – so soothing. Frieze is vast, every booth firing off ideas in different directions. The march north to the Masters area feels like a world of colourful beasts heading back to the zoo after a day out.īut understanding the art that you are seeing (let alone grappling with what you make of this Large Hadron Collider-style collision of beauty and money) is oddly hard. It makes for a glorious walking parade: Italian Old-Master gallerists in Neapolitan suits, confident displays of gender-defying dressing, the richly coiffured and a lot of very cool kids. To switch locations, many attendees walk through the park, though there are many drivers hovering around to ensure that their employers can be shuttled away without the fear of having to come across any mud. Frieze has two tent encampments in the park: to the south is Frieze London, home of the contemporary art galleries across the park, near the zoo, is Frieze Masters, where you’ll discover everything from medieval church sculptures and Elisabeth Frink statues to dinosaur skeletons and Joan Mirós. I like the swagger of London when it’s in Frieze-hosting mode – it feels a little like Milan when furniture fair Salone del Mobile is on. Not only does it pull in the world’s best galleries and collectors but, beyond the marquees in Regent’s Park, it’s the touchpaper for many of the city’s auction houses, museums and smaller art operations to get in on the act with shows, lunches and soirées. “I like where he’s coming from,” she says.įrieze London, the art fair’s original iteration, is celebrating its 20th anniversary and its effect on the British capital over the past two decades has been immense. After several minutes of fascinating explanation – and yours truly eavesdropping for a free lesson in art history – the woman’s response is less referenced but to the point. As he does so, he begins to tell the story of the painter’s life, from his time in New York to the contemporaries who shaped his oeuvre. The gallery owner retrieves a canvas from his booth’s storage space at the Frieze London art fair and then holds it aloft for his potential client to inspect.
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