Frieze Online Viewing Room

Eclectic online version of this annual London art fair.

I’ve spent a fun afternoon wandering though the galleries in this online version of the prestigious London Art fair. Some of the galleries have physical shows in their galleries as well but it was a bit unclear which these were. Not all works lend themselves to the online presentation so it doesn’t replace seeing art in person, but it is a great way of getting an overview of the market.  I’ve never been brave enough to go through the real show so this was a good introduction and maybe next year I’ll pluck up the courage to go.

The show was split into two, Frieze itself for contemporary art and Frieze Masters which covered pieces from Ancient Greece to the end of the 20th century. I thought a fun approach to blogging the show would be to pick my favourite five items from each section.

Let’s start with the contemporary show. Oddly when I checked back on my list four were sculptures and one was a video installation. The video was by Jennifer Steinkamp called Blind Eye which was a time lapse of trees going through the seasons which I think had been in recent Trees exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. I loved Curtis Talwst Santiago’s tiny sculptures in vintage jewelry boxes.  Lauren Halsey has fun wall piece using fringes of brightly coloured synthetic hair and Theaster Gates had bound themed books on aluminum shelves which of course appealed to a librarian. My favourite, shown here to the right, is 20 glass bottles of brick dust by Brigida Baltor.

Over to Frieze Masters where I picked paintings and drawings including a gentle Gustave Caillebotte of Sailboats on the Seine from 1893. I liked a Tom Wessleman still life with Andy Warhol’s Liz Taylor screen print in the back ground from 1992 in muted colours. There was a beautiful 1951 drawing by Lucian Freud of a boat on the beach at Connemara with fine detail on the cliffs behind and another wonderful drawing by Gustav Klimt of a dancer from 1907, which had a wonderful sense of movement. My favourite though was “Evening in London” by Frederick Cayley Robinson from 1920. A delightful picture of a woman reading at a table in front of a window with a girl standing next to her with a cropped sideboard and sculpture to one side.

 

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