The subject of blue

If I am seriously addicted to anything, it is the weekly arrival of my New Yorker magazine, which I read almost cover to cover, leaving out (usually) the articles on obscure American politicians or on the failing fortunes of one or other sporting teams. The quality of New Yorker writing is such that practically everything else – restaurant, film and book reviews, fiction, in depth articles about all manner of subjects - gives enormous reading pleasure.

The strength of this addiction became apparent to me during the recent Johannesburg postal strike, which left my letter box infuriatingly empty of the desired object month after month.

This week, the October 6 issue arrived, several weeks late, but a harbinger of the end of the drought. I hope. I was rewarded by a remarkable article by Calvin Tomkins about the painter Chris Ofili, in the Profiles section, an article which tracks the Turner prize-winner from birth through his early career and the residency in Zimbabwe where he started to consider the artistic possibilities of introducing elephant dung into his brilliant collage paintings, through his ascendancy in London to his current studio in an old cottage in Trinidad.

Here is Tomkins writing about Ofili and the subject of blue: ‘On his many visits to the island, he had been fascinated by its haunted landscape and mysterious light – especially the slow transition from day into night, an extended period when forms are still visible, but their shapes become indistinct. Trying to capture that experience in paint opened up a whole new way of working. “I felt I was tapping into a process of looking that was slower,” he said.'

‘Alone in the white cottage in Trinidad, he began experimenting with blue, a color he had always shied away from, because of its tendency to dominate other colors… ”I had found that if you put silver underneath blue, the blue sits back, like night, or glows like moonlight,” he told me.'

Art making porn.

Frieze P.S.: Here are two links I meant to include in my last column. The first is to a Frieze review of Lisa Brice’s French Riviera show: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/lisa-brice/. The second is to a column by Polly Brock on my work at Frieze Masters http://www.artctualite.com/?p=3138

A Week at Frieze Masters

Glimmering whitely across the green lawn of Regents Park, a cathedral-like tent has been erected to house Frieze Masters for Frieze week, London’s frenzied annual October art fest. 

Day One is setup day. Crates from galleries around the world are being unpacked. Exhibitors have been given sheets of A4 paper printed with the word RUBBISH as part of their welcome pack. Just so art doesn’t get carted away by the cleaners by mistake.

New galleries are taking advantage of the week to stage opening events. One of these is Rodeo, in Charing Cross Road. I didn’t really take in much about the exhibitions but the vodka and pizza kept coming and soon the street outside the gallery was stacked with empty boxes.

Back inside the Frieze Masters tent, by Day Three, the work has been vetted by the committee – rules about the dates the work was made are strict. It must all have been made before the end of the previous century, or must be taken down.

This is the Goodman Gallery stand, with my work. Each space has its own muslin ceiling, and feels more like a small gallery in a museum than an art fair space.

Visitors stream through all day. Swiss curators Jacqueline Burckhardt and Bice Curiger stop by.

One of the most popular stands is Helly Nahmud  with an installation entitled The Collector.  It’s the imagined apartment of  a dedicated  Parisian collector circa 1968, complete with Picassos, Miros, objet’s d’art, mid century furniture, stacks of magazines, catalogues and all manner of genteel clutter. Music from that era wafts through.

Or you can buy Rembrandt’s extraordinary 1698 Portrait of Man with Arms Akimbo. A Rembrandt on an art fair! It would have been mildly interesting to know  the asking price, but the gallery would not have divulged this to the casual questioner. 

If you are in a position to acquire a masterpiece, you could also choose a handsome Rubens to add to your collection. Or a Bonnard, a classic honey coloured painting of a woman next to a bath. There are also top notch offerings by modern masters like Warhol, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Helen Frankenthaler.  These works will not be seen in museums, but will pass from one private collection through the medium of a gallery at Frieze Masters into another private collection.

I feel immensely privileged to view them while they are briefly in the public domain.

Cape Town artist Lisa Brice lives in London now, and has an exhibition on at a hot new gallery called French Riviera in Bethnal Green Road. She also has a new work on the Goodman stand at Frieze. In this picture, we have just finished a very nice lunch at the excellent Frieze Masters restaurant, Locanda Locatelli, conveniently located very close to the Goodman stand.

This is a detail from Lisa’s exhibition poster.  ‘Cut your Cloth’ is a complex layering of the history of painting and the representation of women within that history. 

Over at the V and A Museum, concern about the representation of women artists in museums is manifested in a recreation of a classic performance by New York’s Guerilla Girls. It’s part of an engaging show called  ‘Objects of Disobedience’.

After five frantic days, Frieze Contemporary is over. This photo is taken in the final hour of the final day.

The Goodman stand at Frieze Contemporary.  In the front of the space is a a steel construction by Mounir Fatmi, and on the wall, a stripey painting by Moshekwa Langa.  

The Frieze after party is held on the rooftop of the Ace Hotel.  French Riviera co-owner Jennifer Lewandowski and video curator Barbara London, now retired from MoMA, stand with their backs to the stunning view.