looks like everyone is getting in on the act!!!
source.the telegraph:
Frieze Art Fair and the contemporary art auctions in London this week have become the focus of media speculation that this might be the moment when the art bubble, which saw prices for some artists climb by more than 50 per cent last year, bursts.
Cut out and keep: Musician, performance artsist and collagist Linder made this photomontage for a flyer for the punk rock band Buzzcocks in 1977. It is now on sale for £10,000
Far from being a disaster, this could come as a relief for many.
At Frieze, which opens its doors for the fifth consecutive year to invited guests tomorrow, there will inevitably be works for sale by artists who epitomise the art boom. But there will also be those that question the very workings of the market.
Former dealer David Hickey will give a talk about how to sell art without selling out. This is an issue which obviously concerns the fair's organisers, Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp.
One of the remarkable things about the Frieze brand is its oblique relationship to the market. Frieze magazine, founded by Slotover and Sharp in 1991, never discusses art-market matters. All those gallery advertisements and no mention of money – as if it might sully the art.
Instead, Slotover and Sharp have mastered the art of the soft sell – in their magazine by giving the art critical kudos, and at the fair by including it in an elitist environment, frequently without descriptive labels and almost always without a plain-to-see price tag.
But how far has Frieze been sucked into the culture of "art fair art" – ie, art made for instant consumption at a fair? Are they aware of how many artists find the fair depressing?
One said to me last week: "For a lot of young artists, Frieze is the worst thing that has happened in London because it makes them feel excluded, and puts pressure on them to think commercially rather than creatively."
In his introduction to this year's Frieze catalogue, Neville Wakefield, who has organised several projects within the fair, asks: "Do art fairs have an influence over the kind of art that is made, as well as how it is sold?"
His purpose has been, he says, to "throw sand into the Vaseline-slick presentation of art".
One of the artists he invited is Richard Prince, whose work routinely fetches more than a million dollars. For the fair, Prince has produced a custom-made high-performance car, but is it art?
The answer, presumably, is yes, when it's a Prince.
Other projects commissioned by Wakefield include an invitation to the Queen to attend, and a regular loudspeaker request for a minute's silence. The Queen will probably not appear, but her absence will be greeted by daily sounds of applause.
With the announcements appealing for silence, Wakefield asks "whether art's traditional claims to gravitas can still be heard above the clamour of social networking and commerce". Probably not.
Among the shimmer and gloss, a healthy sense of irreverence for the market raises its head. New York dealer Gavin Brown, for instance, has invited artist Rob Pruitt to turn his stand into a flea market.
To live banjo music and the sound of old records from the collection of curator-turned-DJ Matthew Higgs, and against a background of impromptu fashion shows and performances, browsers can pick through a wide variety of objects associated with well-known figures in the art world.
There will be sculptures made for fish tanks; a selection of clothes owned by former Andy Warhol "superstar", "Baby" Jane Holzer; and a beaten-up old Eames couch from artist Elizabeth Peyton's studio. Have your photograph taken by Sam Taylor-Wood with Pruitt dressed as a panda.
And none of this will cost much. Rubber stamps made by Yoko Ono that read "Imagine(s) Peace" will be on sale for £10 or less.
On White Cube's stand, Jake and Dinos Chapman will draw on any English paper money you give them and hand it back for free. "We're reversing capitalism," says Dinos Chapman, admitting the stunt will come close to a fairground attraction.
But maybe on this occasion the Chapmans have been upstaged.
In the most radical departure from art fair commercialism, the Free Art Fair, held in central London this week for the first time, will show works by 25 artists or artists' groups, including artists in the Tate and Saatchi collections, with a combined value of £40,000.
All you have to do is register your interest in person, and then join a queue by 6pm on Sunday when the works will be distributed on a first come, first served basis.
Artist Jasper Joffe, who conceived the idea, says the fair "offers an alternative to the market frenzy which we see at this time of year, and opens a debate about the value of art".
well as I said, went and downloaded 'money' - not very good piece by either of them. Thought I'd post it up so those who missed it can have a gander and if want, download from here. Still sketching out ideas for its transformation............ looking at it on the site they look crap, not sure if I'll bother
