sight optional

Frieze Art Fair. I've written about it both of the other years I've gone...and now, the third time around, it's an entirely different experience. 

Spectacle is a word used too often to describe art. I have a love/hate relationship with the word. To Merrium Webster it means this:

a : something exhibited to view as unusual, notable, or entertaining; especially : an eye-catching or dramatic public display

 b : an object of curiosity or contempt <made a spectacle of herself>

But in art its connotations are vastly more complicated. This very art fair is a perfect example of a non-spectacle within a greater spectable. The work itself is nothing to gasp over--it's what's chosen as "sellable" in the current art market, the chosen ones from the contemporary art realm that have been deemed by whichever higher power as having the ability to float in the equilibrium of mass appeal and artistic merit. It's a poor representation of what exists within this little niche world, but the prime example of where it all ends: when a piece of work is actually sold and consumed. That triumph when the gallerist checks a piece off their roster and the artist breathes a sigh of relief. 

All of this is something the average student or young artists scoffs at, but it's actually the harsh reality of the universe we are commiting our lives to. Most of them refuse to pay the £20 admission price to witness that reality in person and move on with the nightmare lingering in the back of their minds. 

It's not all negative though. It's kind of an incredible thing. This past Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the private view with an invited friend. Did I look at the art? Not really. What's more interesting is the people who are there to buy and the environment in which they do so. Never have I seen so many thousand dollar handbags going to work, nor have I seen so many bottles of Champagne being guzzled in such a serious setting. You could look at it in one of two ways: a celebration or a condemnation. Opportunities are given to the deserved, money is thrown at the damned and people like me are there to add to that impending checklist of future options and enjoy the ride for the time being. Most of all, what I've realized is that there are two types of artist: an artist, one who is happy just to be making and learning and paying the consequences of not selling out with the secret hope of being in those white and carpeted cubicles and circus clowns who make simply and purely to be in those exact same cubicles. It's a diffenence not dissimilar to that of a boutique hotel and the Four Seasons, or a produce stall and a supermarket. 

Maybe the joke's on us. That spectacle is really in the hands of the middleman--those people with glossy hair, dressed in black and behind the desk. 

Photo: A close-up of a David Altmejd piece at the Andrea Rosen (NYC) booth.