Frieze Day One: Pre-Frozen

It's a sunny week in London, without rains, without chills, and still, for a few days at least, without Frieze.

Before the main fair preview Wednesday, before even the major gallery previews Tuesday, there is Monday–in the US a holiday that signifies the beginning of the end of British world dominance, so perhaps a time when London should take stock of itself. The economy seems to have settled (thanks surely to the re-payment of Gordon Brown's $20,000 in expenses) and dealers seem reservedly upbeat. As the typically quiet Frieze founder Matthew Slotower would say on this night, "You can't sell just anything, like you might have two years ago. You've got to bring something good... or you're dead." Giddy London, indeed.


            Three Color Curl (2008), Walead Beshty. On view at Thomas Dane Gallery through Nov. 14.

En route to the charity auction for GRAFF auction for FACET (For Africa's Children Every Time: fairly self-explanatory in its intentions), at Christie's, we fell onto Walead Beshty's show at Thomas Dane. There the gallerist was happy to explain the exhibition, which consists of the artist's signature abstract photographs in bright if rather industrial colors rendered through a complicated magnetic procedure, but also copper boxes that the artist ships to the gallery and in some cases stacks, once there. The boxes (Beshty showed glass versions at the last Tate Triennial) bear every mark of their transfer from the studio (or the fabricator's, as it were) to the gallery: that means packing tape and shipping labels, and oxidization every time the box is touched, primarily in the form of fingerprints. Was FedEx freaked out by the shipping order? "They were, but they'll take anything," explained Dane, and we'll take his word for it.

Nearly next door was Christie's, and a celebration of the preview of the coming auctions–both the charity event this night and the post-war sales to come. A blue foil work by Anselm Reyle was tucked, in a vitrines, into a corner, and there was a nice looking Raqib Shaw (all real jewels, perhaps not the most PC of materials for a fund for Africa). Paul Kasmin was there representing David LaChapelle and his new photographs of Michael Jackson as an angel. "It could feed a few Africans," said Marc Quinn of his own effervescent screen print. We don't know if it did as we left before the sale began, for the two openings at Tate Modern.

Miroslaw Balka filled the Tate's Turbine Hall with a massive steel installation that sits on stilts at just about the height of the average man. Visitors face its rectangular bulk head on, proceed around it to a ramp, and then enter. The entire mass is dark; one enters the void before inevitably smacking the wall, turns, and voila: a vista that includes the wall of the Hall, with a vertical stack of air ducts, slightly off-center, for variety. Deadpan as it may seem, the contrast of light and dark and the wide-angel viewing lens of the masses' entrance is a beautiful site that seamlessly blends image into architecture and sculpture.  Upstairs a comprehensive Baldessari retrospective proved that in spite of the artist's name recognition and seemingly endless series of exhibitions and commissions, there is much work to be done, particularly regarding the early works. The show begins in one ear, a painting reminiscent of Van Gogh's self-portrait featuring only the ill-fated ear, and a shoulder–and the show doesn't go out the other, but rather ends with a giant brain, a 2009 commission for the Guggenheim. Such is the power of Baldessari's absorption, and his synthesis of images into words and processes into linguistic structures. Artists as diverse as Ed Ruscha (incidentally, honored at Gagosian tomorrow) and Cory Arcangel have obviously taken heed.

Center: Rhodes, Right: Quinn; Second Photograph, Right: Matthew Stone. Photo by Andrew Logan

The night ended, as they should, in a less art world way, at the home of Zandra Rhodes, which is improbably south of the river, but typical for an eminent fashion icon who inhabits a world of her own. That world begins in the lobby, where the floors include glitter, Stars of David, and pentacles. Rhodes made the entire dinner herself, which didn’t give her too much time to show us around. But Andrew Logan, creator the Alternative Miss World Contest, did explain that this was only one-half his portrait of Gandhi. The other half, the base, never came back from exhibition. Meanwhile, former Interview West Coast editor Joan Quinn showed us her photographs from a visit to David Hockney, where he demonstrated an entirely new procedure of painting that won't be on view next week at Pace Wildenstein, and which is decidedly technophilic. Matthew Stone told us about his Free Art Fair at the Barbican this week, where lottery-lovers will wait on line for works to grab, gratuit: "And there’s a Marlene Dumas, so someone will walk away with a very expensive painting." Does he have any concerns about pulling it off? "My own painting is quite large. I'm just worried I'll have to drag it home myself."