Frieze Day Two: Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection

The first stop of the day was James Richards at Hauser and Wirth's project space. The youngest artist at Hauser and Wirth is Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, at age 29; that doesn't put Richards, who is 26 and was recently featured in the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus show, so far out of the league of this bluer-than-bue,-chip gallery. His show here updates minimalist forms by using books that you can pick up and read as their constituent materials. The silver spine of A Woman in Your Own Right, Assertivenes and You advertised on its back cover, like so many works of art, as something that can "change your life."

Life is the void for Anish Kapoor–such is the measure of success. Michael Govan, director of LACMA on a brief break from fundraising for the Tate openings (he's back in LA today), characterized the show as "quite a production." Indeed, in its most recent sculpture, Kapoor has computer programs drip cement in spirals and curls that invoke mind grindings and turds.The centerpoint is a train, shown previously in Nantes and Munich, that traverses the Royal Academy's longest stretch of arched doorways at an imperceptible slowness, pushing a bloody, fleshy mass of wax over the edges. In the catalogue, Norman Rosenthal likens it to the slow-burning terror; it reminded me of Hostel or some equivalent Japanese film. Elsewhere there is more yellow than the eye can possible bear, in the shape of a concave void. If all the exhibition doors were open, would you open the show with a giant, vagina-like wooden sculpture? What kind of trauma has this man endured? [Left: Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection. Photo by Mary Barone]

The next stop was Pete and Repeat, an exhibition of works from Anita Zabludowicz's eponymous collection, installed here by assistant curator Ellen Mara de Wachter. A highlight was the ground floor installation by David Blandy, which is half reading room, half seedy theater, in which Blandy plays a black harlequin. The artist, who was watching from outside the theater, explained that the video came from his trip to Lima, Peru, a place with "little understanding of race relations"; the subsequent reception there was similarly ambiguous. Blandy was also eager to show us his video "I Am," in which his father lip synchs Darth Vader's famous "Luke, I am your father" line. It's the first time Blandy has worked with his father, who is also an artist; his mother, who is a psychologist, was understandingly concerned about the implications.

The evening openings began at Ugo Rondinone. There were trees and nutmegs on the floor, and what looked like a soggy Gedi Sibony–all very arte povera. Gallerist Sadie Coles explained that they were, instead, cast copper filled with lead. Making light of bear means, indeed. Next was Lisson Gallery where, quite remarkably, they've renovated the back room into yet another showroom to fit even more Anish Kapoors. Here, he showed his hulking, sparkling reflective masses–not what the gallery or the artist's friends anticipated, as he's ben working on a more delicate scale of late. There was also a rather divisive Ryan Gander show featuring the artist's densely conceptual works and works by his girlfriends, among them Turner Prize nominee Lucy Skaer.

But the night's coup belonged, yet again, to YBA, as Jay Jopling had managed to get his bread and butter artist, Damien Hirst, into the Wallace Collection. The Wallace home and foundation is London's version of the Frick, but with more Fragonard than the Louvre. How did the new Hirsts, which match self-reflexive references to the artist's earlier bodies of work, among them sharks and skulls, match up against the Rococo, British, and Dutch masters? They're moody oil paintings in blues and blacks, mostly featuring variously luminescent skulls with flat, geometric charts. There was a bold striped silk wallpaper–if it still qualifies as wallpaper–that competed with the works themselves. The reviews have not been good thus far. The director, Rosalind Savill, who brought in the show, joked that her "head was on the plate." But the museum had other concerns, as well: Hirst's were the only works encased in glass, and yet his hall was the only one in the museum into which one could not bring a drink.

The Hirsts looked particularly strong next to the front door at the dinner Jopling hosted at his home-cum-showroom. This was a thinner crowed, but Lucien Freud, clearly a great idol of Hirsts, managed to come by and share his opinions about the painting. Antony Gormley was there on the last night before his famous plinth at Trafalgar runs out. He said that Bianca Jagger had suggested she might be a back-up, although she never came through. And, as we left, who should crash the party but Larry Gagosian, with three of his top sales directors.