The Frieze Generation

A decade after Saatchi and the Young British artists caused a sensation, Pernilla Holmes and Stephen Wallis report on London’s new art and design wave.

By Stephen Wallis and Pernilla Holmes

September 2008

https://www.departures.com/letters/features/frieze-generation

Saturday, October 13, 2007: It was the final night of Frieze Week, the bacchanal of art fairs, auctions, gallery openings, and nonstop cocktails that takes over London each fall. Phillips de Pury auction house, which had spent most of the previous nine hours selling off $85 million worth of recent art, was celebrating with a jam-packed after-party in its still-under-construction Howick Place headquarters. Out on the makeshift dance floor—where an 18-foot, $9.6 million Damien Hirst “Butterfly” painting lined one of the walls—the crowd grooved to the disco and funk band Chic. With ebullient auctioneer Simon de Pury urging collector Jean Pigozzi to join him onstage, Chic broke into “Good Times,” its Studio 54–era classic: “Good times, these are the good times / Our new state of mind, these are the good times.”

One could easily imagine the song as a kind of anthem for the entire weeklong fest that revolves around the Frieze Art Fair, an event that, since its debut in 2003, has energized London’s contemporary art scene and served as a beacon for the rest of the world. Last year Frieze attracted almost 70,000 visitors. During that week the contemporary art sales held by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips totaled $360 million. Galleries threw parties at the Ritz for star artists and hosted boozy dinners for VIPs at St. John and Claridge’s. Despite escalating concerns over the global credit crunch, real estate woes, roiling stock markets, and the tanking dollar, there are few signs any of this is slowing down.

Not only do galleries put on highly anticipated shows and the auction houses stage major sales during Frieze, but concurrent fairs such as Zoo, Scope, and last year’s newcomer, DesignArt London, help ensure that the top—increasingly international—collectors make a point of being in town. “At the fair we’re seeing more buyers from outside the established markets, from places like Latin America, Russia, and Asia,” says Frieze cofounder Matthew Slotover. “Some of them are beginning to buy art in a very significant way.” Just look at Russian oligarch and part-time London resident Roman Abramovich, whose recent spending spree included $120 million for a pair of trophy paintings by Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud at the May auctions.

A decade ago, when the Royal Academy of Arts staged the landmark “Sensation” exhibition of works from Charles Saatchi’s collection, Hirst, Tracey Emin, and the rest of the Young British Artists, or YBAs, were virtually the country’s official artists and Saatchi was the only London collector most people could name. Now the city boasts a new crop of collectors, some with their own museum spaces, and the most talked-about artists in London often aren’t British but come from Africa, Asia, or Eastern Europe. And there are ever more intriguing overlaps between London’s art world and its richly talented design community.

Frieze launched just as many of these shifts were gathering force, helped along by the opening of the hugely popular Tate Modern and the growth of London as a global financial center. It was the right fair at the right time. And while Frieze pitches its tent in Regent’s Park for a mere handful of days a year, its impact has been huge. “Frieze has made the idea of buying contemporary art more accessible and brought it to a wider British public,” says Slotover. “People have said to me that it used to be weird if you bought contemporary art, and now you’re a bit weird if you don’t.”

In many ways the fair has defined London’s art world today. This is the Frieze Generation and the times are good. —Stephen Wallis

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