The best of Frieze
Raphael Roy Taylor
200 million year old rock formation at David Aaron - Freize Masters.
Art should be in some ways, a social reckoning. A way to come to terms with the state of the world and offer positive solutions, not just to it, but also to shape collective perceptions of how to exist within it.
To be surrounded by a contemporary art scene that is still so focused on individuality and attention (perhaps embodied by Frieze) can make one question the existence of art in the way that I outlined above.
However, there are still some sparks within, albeit mostly at Frieze Masters.
Takashi Murakami at Perrotin - Freize London.
Murakami here recalls the twodimensionality of historical Japanese representational imagery, with gold grounds, muted colours and imagined features. These characters seem a play on the past in the light of the present - we can imagine them reacting to modern life, infinitely perplexed.
Frieze Sculpture outside would have been far better if it had been a single installation- Douglas White’s Black Palm.
From afar, it’s perplexing- a palm in the park? It’s crafted with astonishing accuracy; tyres shredded perfectly to recall the fronds of a palm tree.
Constructing a form so evidently natural from a material responsible for the destruction of nature makes for an impactful statement; this drew by far and away the largest crowd.
Egon Schiele, Thunderstorm Mountain, 1910, at Hauser & Wirth - Freize Masters.
At Hauser & Wirth, an exceptional and rare landscape by Schiele pulls one in- the settlement in shadow & the peculiar framing contribute to a sense of dour gloom that both is similar to and is different from his more famous portraits.
Chagall’s 1954 La famille at Colnaghi is a wonderful embodiment of the artist’s fascination with blue. The figure of the Madonna becomes ghostly and ethereal; Christ is depicted as a strangely distorted figure, odd in the same way Renaissance depictions are.
Bruegel (albeit the Younger) is well represented by Johnny Van Haeften with The Flemish Proverbs - the original by the Elder is at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and this is one of the 16 known copies by his son- but even if it is nowhere near to capturing the dramatism and colouring of the original, it’s enticing and painterly enough to satisfy.
Saloman van Ruysdael, the uncle of Jacob- the most known Dutch 17th century landscape painter, is represented by a beautiful if perhaps imaginary scene in which the clouds seem to be the subject. It’s a wonderful glimpse into the future of landscape painting, foreshadowing some of the great experiments of Constable and Turner.
Finally - the atmosphere of Frieze is once again totally different at each fair; Masters feels like a balmy spa compared with the sheer size and scale of London.
A few interesting decisions have been made in the Spotlight sections of London, including some early works from Pacita Abad, whose relative Pio Abad was nominated for the 2024 Turner Prize, but this feels like a relatively similar selection compared with last year.