The Art Newspaper

Spirits lifting

Frieze shows signs of confidence returning

By Lindsay Pollock. From Frieze daily edition
Published online: 17 October 2009

Frieze exhibitor José Freire, of New York’s Team Gallery (F11), smiled as he hustled around his stand, hung with a solo show of gory paintings of defaced movie stars, the work of London artist Dawn Mellor. The selection didn’t seem especially commercial, but the work had whizzed off the stand. “This is the best Frieze we’ve ever had,” said Freire, reporting sales of 11 paintings portraying a bloodied Charlotte Rampling, Helena Bonham Carter, Kristin Scott Thomas and other beauties. The paintings sold by Friday afternoon, priced around £5,500 apiece. This was a drastic improvement from Frieze’s last edition. Autumn 2008 was not kind to Lehman Brothers, and certainly not to many Frieze exhibitors. “Last year was an unmitigated disaster,” said Freire of the 2008 edition of Frieze. “We lost our shirts.”

This Frieze week, including important museum, gallery and ancillary art events, has brought a renewed confidence to the contemporary art market. “We didn’t expect a dead fair,” said dealer Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth (C10), with branches in London, Zurich and New York. “But we didn’t expect it to be as lively as it is.” Wirth has changed his fair strategy, mingling the more affordable with works such as a $1.5m Louise Bourgeois. He used around 40% of his stand to showcase work by 70-year-old New York painter Ida Applebroog, who was hot in the 1980s but then faded from the limelight. He sold five of her works, including a haunting orange painting Monalisa, 2008, for $350,000—his highest priced sale by Friday afternoon. “I’m not losing any business [by relaunching her career],” said Wirth. Now, he suggested, galleries can take more risks. “The older artists are the ‘new younger artists’,” he added. “They are the risk-takers and they are entirely focused on their work.”

Prices at Frieze start at a few thousand pounds and climb into the hundreds of thousands. This year, there seemed to be a threshold at around $100,000. Higher sales were rare. Exceptions included John Baldessari’s 2007 witty oversized Beethoven’s Trumpet (with Ear) Opus 133, priced $400,000 at Berlin’s Sprüth Magers (B8), which sold to a European client. His new show at Tate Modern ensured that Baldessari was well represented at the fair. New York’s David Zwirner (G15) sold Neo Rauch’s 2002 oil on canvas Harmlos to another European collector. The asking price was $1m.

Greek businessman and collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos made one of the fair’s biggest buys, with a David Hammons’ 2009 installation from Salon 94 (B11), priced at $1.5m.

The work is made from a wall-sized sheet of red paper, drawn with gold ink in repeating abstract patterns, hung with wire and tiny orbs of African American hair. “The catalytic factor is if it speaks to your soul: this one really spoke to my soul,” said Daskalopoulos. Some of his collection will be shown at the Whitechapel Gallery next year.

The fair attracted collectors who have only recently come into the market, taking advantage of lower prices and greater supply. “There was a general correction: asking prices are down 40% in some cases,” says hedge fund manager Thomas Sandell, who purchased works by Glenn Ligon and Barnaby Furnas on his first trip to Frieze.

Fair organisers responded (camouflaging the weak market and fewer exhibitors) by transforming a section of the fair into “Frame”, a platform for younger dealers showing cheaper art by less well known artists in solo presentations. “Frame is a good move to introduce new voices,” said Matthew Higgs, head of New York’s non-for profit White Columns space. Dealers were pleased with the results. “People who are on top of things came here,” said San Francisco dealer Claudia Altman of Altman Siegel (R25). “Plus, prices are low.” Altman featured Trevor Paglen’s poetic images of US surveillance satellites priced $6,000 to $9,000. She sold three.

While sales have not returned to anywhere near 2007 levels, the fair has elevated the moods of both buyers and sellers. “The spirit is infinitely better than last year,” said New York art adviser Stefano Basilico. “There’s more pep in people’s walk.”