From the fuzzy casing of the levant cotton seed to the speckled scarlet runner bean to the star-shaped pod of the aptly named star anise, the minuscule sources of the world’s edible plants take center stage in photographer Uli Westphal’s newest project. Fascinated by food systems (previously) and the myriad ways we have adapted botanicals to our needs, the artist showcases the phenomenal diversity of plants, or in this case, their tiny origins. In the ongoing Seeds series, he creates a collective portrait of all edible plants, capturing incredible textures and colors in micro-photographic detail.

While other projects include amassing large quantities of produce, he started focusing on a collection of crop seeds during the pandemic, many of which he accumulated over the years. Currently, he has about 400 species, with a shortlist of 3,000 considered highly edible. Varying in shape, size, color, and texture, the specimens require a setup that allows Westphal to capture every minute characteristic.

Carica papaya (papaya)

Because the seeds are often so tiny they’re impossible to capture with traditional camera lenses, Westphal added high-resolving microscope objectives—the magnifying part of the microscope lens closest to the object—to his camera. The objectives have an extremely shallow depth of field, so he built a machine that moves the camera a few micrometers at a time, allowing him to take hundreds of images of each seed. These individual shots are used to create one composite image in which the entire seed is in focus.”It’s a time consuming but rewarding process that reveals a world that would otherwise remain invisible to the naked eye,” he says.

Westphal considers this body of work, in addition to others like the Cultivar Series, “infinite projects that I intend to pursue and expand for as long as I’m around…I believe we need this knowledge to raise awareness, celebrate, and safeguard this botanic cornucopia.”

If you’re in The Netherlands, you can see some of the images in the exhibition Spacefarming at the Evoluon in Eindhoven, which continues through March 2024. Westphal is currently working on a project site to accompany the series, but in the meantime, you can explore some of his other projects on his website, and follow updates on Instagram.

Illicium verum (star anise)

Top row, left to right: Opuntia ficus indica (prickly pear), Origanum vulgare (oregano), and Oryza sativa (rice). Middle row: Panicum miliaceum (millet), Papaver somniferum (bread seed poppy), and Passiflora edulis (maracuja). Bottom row: Passiflora quadrangularis (giant granadilla), Pastinaca sativa (parsnip), and Pennisetum americanum (pearl millet)

Centaurea cyanus (cornflower)

Cucurbita ficifoli (fig leaf gourd)

Gossypium herbaceum (levant cotton)

Elettaria cardamomum (kardamon)

Ribes rubrum (redcurrant)

Phaseolus coccineus (scarlet runner bean)

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article An Ambitious Series of Portraits by Uli Westphal Captures the Character of Every Edible Plant Seed appeared first on Colossal.

More than 80 events feature the works of nearly 60 talented artists, plus lavish parties, private studio tours and a free shuttle between galleries connect visitors to the art more directly than ever

What:      Created by Visit Seattle, in partnership with Chihuly Garden and Glass, the 5th annual Refract: The Seattle Glass Experience, is the premiere glass festival spanning four days across dozens of locations across the greater Seattle region. Honoring the 5th anniversary of the festival, Refract is bigger than ever, showcasing more than 80 events and nearly 60 participating artists. During Refract, glass art enthusiasts and newcomers will enjoy artist parties, exclusive open studio tours, special gallery exhibitions, hands-on experiences, a free shuttle tour of local galleries and hot shops, as well as intimate glassblowing demonstrations not offered at any other time. 

When:     The festival will be held Thursday, October 12th through Sunday, October 15th Four days of exciting events and programming kicks off with Gather, the official opening night party at Chihuly Garden and Glass, taking place on Thursday, October 12th from 6:30pm-9:00pm. 

Where:     Various museums, galleries, studios, and spaces throughout the greater Seattle region will host events, most of which are free and open to the public. Participating organizations include Chihuly Garden and Glass, Pike Place Market Glass Artist Showcase, Glass Art Society, Museum of Glass, Lino Taglipietra Studio, Traver Gallery, Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle Glassblowing Studio, Radiant Neon, Stonington Gallery, Gallery Mack, Pratt Fine Arts Center, Blowing Sands Glass Studio, Vetri, and many more. 

Who:     Top Seattle glass artists participate in the annual Refract festival and this year’s line-up includes notable artists like Ginny Ruffner, a pioneer in lampwork technique; Jason Christian, a member of Dale Chihuly’s boathouse team with a focus on classical Venetian techniques; plus past contestants from the hit Netflix show, Blown Away: Dan Friday and Minhi England. These artists will be offering live glassblowing demos and/or glass art exhibitions throughout the event weekend. 

Why:     With more than 700 glass artists in the region, Seattle is the epicenter of glass art in North America. Refract is the only region-wide glass festival offering accessible art and exclusive experiences to everyone. 

How:     The most convenient and enjoyable way to experience all that Refract has to offer is with a hotel stay at one of Seattle’s luxurious downtown properties. This year, six downtown Seattle hotels are offering exclusive Refract hotel packages. To plan your Refract weekend, the entire event schedule can be accessed at RefractSeattle.org. 

Visit RefractSeattle.org for the full list of programs and events. 

Tickets to the official opening night party, Gather at Chihuly Garden and Glass, may be purchased here. 

 Media Images available here. 

About Refract: The Seattle Glass Experience
Visit Seattle, Chihuly Garden and Glass and dozens of Pacific Northwest arts organizations are joining together for this annual festival, taking place October 12-15, 2023. This year’s festival offers a unique mix of open studios, demonstrations, parties, exhibitions and tours. Visit RefractSeattle.org for further details.  

About Visit Seattle
Visit Seattle has served as the official destination marketing organization (DMO) for Seattle and King County for more than 50 years. A 501(c)(6) organization, Visit Seattle enhances the economic prosperity of the region through global destination branding along with competitive programs and campaigns in leisure travel marketing, convention sales and overseas tourism development. Visit visitseattle.org.  

About Chihuly Garden and Glass
Located at Seattle Center, Chihuly Garden and Glass brings together all the elements of artist Dale Chihuly’s work, including Drawings, signature glass series, large architectural installations and personal collections. The long-term Exhibition features indoor galleries, the centerpiece Glasshouse, and an ever-changing Garden, along with live glass demonstrations, a Theatre, and The Bar at Chihuly Garden and Glass, featuring creative cocktails alongside delicious bites and plates in a one-of-a-kind atmosphere. Learn more at chihulygardenandglass.com. 

Towering over the paintings and sculptures on view at Frieze Masters this week is a decidedly different kind of object for sale: a dinosaur skeleton. 

The specimen, nicknamed Chomper, is a rare example of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex—and a pretty well-preserved one at that. It’s on offer through the London-based gallery David Aaron, with a price tag that is similarly eye-popping: $20 million. 

Chomper dates back roughly 68 million years, from the Late Cretaceous period. The fossil was discovered in Garfield County, Montana in 2019, and took years to unearth in its entirety. Parts of the process were documented by the Discovery Channel series “Dino Hunters.” 

The whole skeleton is approximately 55 percent complete, though the skull alone is 90 percent intact, and boasts a surprising number of original teeth. For interested buyers, the gallery will provide a map of the dinosaur, detailing which bones are present or missing. 

That Chomper is for sale at an art fair is somewhat surprising. Fossils of this significance tend to make their way to the market via high profile auctions, drawing competition from a broad swath of collectors who may not be interested in Monet and Modigliani. In 2020, Christie’s auctioned off Stan, one of the largest and most complete T. rex fossils ever excavated, for a record-setting $31.8 million. Last December, Sotheby’s sold a skull from the same species for $6.1 million. 

But in recent years, as the market for prehistoric skeletons has grown more robust, dinosaurs have started to populate fair booths.  

David Aaron—which specializes in “important items of natural history,” as well as Classical Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Islamic works of art, according to its website—is among those leading that trend. At Frieze Masters in 2022, the gallery sold a complete skeleton of a 154 million-year-old Camptosaurus for £1 million ($1.2 million). Earlier in the year, at Masterpiece London, it sold the skull of a triceratops to a private collector for an undisclosed sum. 

“It’s an area that’s been overlooked, partly due to presentation,” Salomon Aaron, the director of the gallery, told the Art Newspaper. “As an art gallery, we look for historically important, but also aesthetic fossils. We apply the rules of our due diligence, honed in the art market and applied to fossils. That gives buyers much more security in terms of understanding what they are buying and how it ranks relative to other specimens.” 

Despite the steep learning curve and giganotosaurus prices, the skeletons have a broad appeal, Aaron explained. “It’s something all humans can relate to, irrespective of culture or age.” And Chomper, he added, is a “once in a lifetime discovery.” 

Still, $20 million is a big sum for an art fair, even for something prehistoric. Will the gallery find a buyer? Remains to be seen. 

More Trending Stories:  

An Early Edition of an ‘Unhinged’ Christopher Columbus Letter Outlining What He Discovered in America Could Fetch $1.5 Million at Auction 

An Elderly Couple Sold a ‘Worthless’ African Mask for $157. Now They Are Suing the Buyer Who Auctioned It for $4.4 Million 

An English Woman Paid $100 for a Sculpture at a Trunk Sale That Turned Out to Be an Elisabeth Frink Work Worth $72,000 

Three Artists, Immersed In Far-Flung Residencies, Offer Unique Takes on Human Truths at New York’s International Center of Photography 

What I Buy and Why: British Artist Glenn Brown on His Historical Collection and the ‘Ugly Duckling’ He Bought by Accident 

A Norwegian Man Stumbled Upon a Trove of Gold Dating to the Early Middle Ages, Including a Rare Pendant Depicting the Norse God Odin 

A Top Antiquities Sleuth Has Called Out the Manhattan D.A. For Continually Passing His Work Off As Its Own 

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

As Frieze London marks a landmark anniversary, exhibitors and attendees on the VIP preview day were reflecting on how much the city’s art market has changed in the last 20 years. Although it has grown and professionalised, the heady optimism of the early 2000s has been missing in the last few years.

The current mood of the market is perhaps best summed up by Alex Logsdail, the chief executive of Lisson Gallery: “Not as bad as everyone is saying, and not as good as everyone is saying—give it six months.” The gallery is one of several this year to make a concerted effort to present fresh works for Frieze’s anniversary, exhibiting a solo stand of new paintings by the American artist Van Hanos, all made for the fair during a stay in Vienna. Three of these had sold by 3pm on preview day: two modestly sized canvases for $22,000 each, and a larger one, Der Rosarote Panther (the pink panther), for $60,000.

Thaddaeus Ropac has also encouraged its artists to make new work for the fair. Fresh pieces by market titans like Georg Baselitz, as well as younger names like Zadie Xa, Mandy El-Sayegh, Megan Rooney and Alvaro Barrington, all came to the stand. Among the works placed by 5pm on preview day were Baselitz’s painting Besuch in Dinard (2023) for €1.2m and four works by El-Sayegh, each for $115,000.

At Pace too, a concerted effort for fresh work can be seen: around 75% of the gallery’s presentation has been made in the past two years, a spokesperson for the gallery says. Nonetheless, it is a mid-century artist, Louise Nevelson, with Model for Celebration II (1976), which is installed on Regent’s Park as part of Frieze Sculpture, that led the gallery’s preview day sales for $2m.

Further sales at Pace’s Frieze London stand include an Arlene Shechet sculpture, Cousin (2023), for $90,000, and eight sculptures from her Together series, priced at $65,000, at Frieze Masters. Pace’s president, Samanthe Rubell, says that “the growing interest in building collections that incorporate works that span from historically important to very contemporary, is surely impacting the way that people see and experience Frieze Masters, and I expect that we will see the dialogue between both fairs flourish”.

Secondary market sales

Greater crossover between Frieze Masters and Frieze London also chimes with a general trend among larger galleries relying more heavily on the secondary market to stay afloat. Thaddaeus Ropac says that secondary market dealing has “absolutely” increased in the past two years. Rubell says that Pace’s “secondary market dealing is definitely increasing—although secondary prices for living artists are not necessarily rising”. So what is behind this trend? Rubell says that new clients — most of whom have made their wealth rather than inherited it—are looking to build “more cross-referential collections mixing young and old in a way that other collectors don’t”.

A similar reasoning is found in the words of Hauser & Wirth president Iwan Wirth, who said in a statement that “right now we see the most sophisticated collectors focusing more on the relationship between past and present”. The gallery’s Frieze London stand is devoted to recent sculptures and works on paper by Barbara Chase-Riboud, two of which from the latter medium sold for $120,000, while four works were disclosed to have sold at Frieze Masters, including an early Louise Bourgeois bronze sculpture for $3m.

A turn towards tried-and-tested names also comes at a time when prices at auction for lesser-known—and often very young—artists is cooling, following a meteoric rise in the past five years. This was no better exemplified than at Phillips’s New Now sale in New York last month—the same “ultra-contemporary” category that turned fresh-from-art-school names such as Michaela Yearwood-Dan into market stars overnight, albeit in a manner that has been roundly criticised as highly speculative. This time round, all top nine highest prices achieved at Phillips were by artists over the age of 50—and most of them male—including Anish Kapoor and Gilbert & George.

Its certainly a tried-and-tested name at Gagosian’s stand. While last year at Frieze London the gallery gave its whole stand over to new works by the much-in-demand 30-year-old UK painter Jadé Fadojutimi, this year it is devoted to 12 new floral paintings by Damien Hirst, priced from $450,000 to $1m, all of which sold on the preview day. “We thought, who better to celebrate 20 years than the artist who best defines London’s rise as an art centre?” says Gagosian director Millicent Wilner. She adds that, while “prices for young artists at auction might have fluctuated, they have remained steady with us.”

It is not just large, established operations that report a doubling down on already-sold art. Younger galleries with contemporary programmes are looking to get in on the secondary market game too. Alex Vardaxoglou, whose gallery Vardaxoglou is taking part in Frieze London for the first time, has just signed his first estate, that of Robyn Denny. “It’s kind of unprecedented for a gallery my size to take on an estate. The 20th-century context is very important for my programme,” he says. The gallery is showing a solo presentation by the 28-year-old Tanoa Sasraku, priced between £15,000 to £30,000, and has sold one to the Arts Council Collection Foundation, with two others on hold to institutions.

What can be viewed as a retreat to the known is a trend that has been building for years, says the dealer Phillida Reid. She founded her gallery, formerly called Southard Reid, in 2010, and says that “buying is conservative, although much less nervous than it was last year. It has been for the last four years or three years”, reasoning that a “sort of prudence” or “thought hesitation” is accompanying the decision to buy. “Prices got too high” with some galleries, and there “is definitely a correction”, she says. Importantly, she says: “The market is totally fine for things that have become popular or familiar. Or if the artist is very revered. That has become more exaggerated and that’s the way that things sell. Holding attention for the unknown is more and more difficult. And that is a challenge when you want to be a programme-led gallery.”

But amid these challenges are positive signs. Reid is one of a number of London galleries to have opened a larger location in the past year, taking advantage of the pandemic to get an “amazing deal” on her Bloomsbury space. And while the problems “from Brexit, to increasing prices” have only “gotten worse”, more people are buying art than ever before. “It balances out,” she says.

There was a sense of intensity and focus among the early-bird visitors to the Frieze art fair (October 11–15, 2023) on its 20th anniversary in London’s Regent’s Park, with smooth entry to the signature white tent that offered a marked contrast to the scrum many visitors complained about last year.

Celebrities including Florence Pugh, Stormzy, and Rami Malek were among the VIPs given early access, but the guest list for the prime slot felt like it was pared back, and skewed more towards serious art world heavyweights who were ready to spend, including American collectors Don and Mera Rubell, Swiss mega-collector Uli Sigg, Italian Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Belgian Alain Servais, and local patrons Paul Ettlinger and Irene Panagopoulos.

All were very complimentary about the fair’s organization this year, and Sigg was particularly impressed with the efficiency of the sandwich queue. Still, things picked up as the day progressed, and by 3 p.m. the tent was heaving with glamorous and eccentrically dressed art lovers. There was no sign of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, although he collects and has been known to attend. Sunak did, however, host a cohort of U.K. arts leaders at Number 10 last night, signaling a vote of confidence in the country’s art market, though he gave few reassurances that his government—which has slashed public funding for the arts and deemphasized arts in education—would be changing tack in real terms. Dealer Thaddaeus Ropac was among the attendees.

“I was happy because this is a very European tradition—in Paris President Macron hosts us at the Elysée—and it’s a positive sign when public figures of this caliber and importance embrace the art world,” Ropac said.

Thaddaeus Ropac, Frieze London 2023. Photo: courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.

A lot is at stake this Frieze week, considered the first proper warm-up of the season, a barometer before the big test of the November sales in New York. Following two years of escalating prices and market frenzy, this summer saw a slowdown, and after tepid auctions in Hong Kong, stakeholders are eyeing each other’s behavior carefully this week.

“The last few years were exceptional, and I think we are in a soft landing in the truest sense, but I think it is a good thing,” Ropac said. “People are slower in making decisions, which we like, actually. It is better for all of us to work in this ideal climate, where there is more time to discuss, and without the race of speed and pressure of last year.”

Frieze has done a good job of getting people excited about the fair’s anniversary, an optimism evinced by the 166 participating galleries this year, up 18 percent from last year. And stakeholders are determined to divert any sense of market despondency despite the dismal narrative surrounding London, woven-through with the knock-on effects of Brexit and Covid: inflation, a weak pound, rising interest rates, and growing competition from Paris.

Some are taking a pragmatic approach. “London is on sale,” art advisor Wendy Goldsmith said, nodding to the exchange rate. “That will keep the attraction to Americans, and to the rest of the world who also think in U.S. dollars.”

Still, there was concern that macroeconomic circumstances, plus the unfolding geopolitical events in the Middle East, might put people off a buying mood.

Deborah Anzinger, Untitled (Transmutation 11) (2023). Courtesy of Nicola Vassell.

While some galleries were absent this year (Mother’s Tankstation, Galerie König, and Matthew Brown among them), first-timers included the two-and-a-half-year-old Nicola Vassell gallery, whose founder told me it was a “logical step” to join Frieze as it begins charting an international presence. The gallery is presenting artist Deborah Anzinger in a new section this year titled Artist-to-Artist, for which the fair has invited established artists to curate a booth. Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner Simone Leigh nominated Anzinger, who is still unrepresented but will have a solo show at the gallery next winter. Anzinger is showing a suite of works on paper made with ground-up cookshop charcoal, a fuel used in her native Jamaica. Vassell reported some sales by end of day, and a number of “promising” conversations.

Massimo de Carlo was returning this year after a hiatus after deciding not to take part in art fairs in cities where the gallery has an outpost. This year it decided to reverse course in order to promote its new gallery on Clifford Street in Mayfair. The gallery had sold out its solo presentation of paintings by the Chinese artist Xiyao Wang, priced between €45,000 and €70,000 ($47,700–$74,300), by the time I visited the booth—all likely presold ahead of the fair.

Seventeen, Frieze London 2023. Photo: courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.

On its 20th anniversary edition, many were wondering whether Frieze’s organizers would encourage a return to the fair’s roots in experimentation; back in 2003 the Wrong Gallery proudly displayed an empty booth, having brought a notoriously hard-to-sell “constructed situation” by Tino Sehgal, and Paola Pivi invited visitors to roll down a grassy slope. In the end of the day, there were few extraordinary presentations and a lot of paintings, reflective of a curbed appetite for risk-taking in moment of economic downturn.

What was on view included a lot of color, and an emphasis on fun, eccentricity, and a British sensibility. Pilar Corrias’s booth was awash with color thanks to a Sophie von Hellermann mural and carpeting; Patrick Goddard’s army of snails climbing up the exterior walls of Seventeen gallery’s booth was already on hold in the early minutes of the fair, as was a surreal fragmented self-portrait on an oversize charm bracelet by Gillian Wearing at Maureen Paley. Shown in the artist’s solo at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York during the pandemic, it had an asking price of £150,000 ($184,000). 

My Charms(2021). ©️Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley.” width=”1024″ height=”683″ srcset=”https://www.mecreates.com/story/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/IMG-4941-1024×683.jpg 1024w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/10/IMG-4941-300×200.jpg 300w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/10/IMG-4941-1536×1025.jpg 1536w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/10/IMG-4941-2048×1366.jpg 2048w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/10/IMG-4941-50×33.jpg 50w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/10/IMG-4941-1920×1281.jpg 1920w” sizes=”(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px”>

Gillian Wearing, My Charms (2021). ©️ Gillian Wearing, courtesy of Maureen Paley.

Frieze London’s defining focus is on living artists, and there were plenty of young talents who are growing in demand on view. Contrary to patterns in recent years, where there has been a turn away from the emerging sector during times of economic uncertainty, there was still plenty of demand for the new and now, attributed by gallerists and advisors to the interests of a new collector generation. Pace quickly sold a painting by in-demand artist Pam Evelyn, the youngest artist on its roster, which we understand had an undiscloed asking price of $75,000.

“There’s definitely been a recalibration, but buyers are still active, they’re just more focused now,” advisor Diane Abela said. “I remember when they would just want a name, not caring about the quality of the work. Now they actually want a good work.”

Danielle Mckinney, Hindsight (2023). Photo: Pierre Le Hors. © Danielle Mckinney, courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen.

Collectors were elbowing each other out of the way for a chance to acquire works by Danielle Mckinney in a solo booth at Marianne Boesky. Mckinney’s intimate and cinematic portraits depicting Black female protagonists have gathered a devoted following, and the Frieze presentation marked her first U.K outing after a $201,600 auction debut at Christie’s in the spring. Mckinney was in good spirits on the booth and seemed to be keeping a steady head on her shoulders despite the market clamor. “I’m staying grounded. For me it’s about making a good piece. I recently transitioned from acrylic to oil and I’m focused on technique, not on the market and who is buying it,” she said.

Boesky had sold out the booth in the days preceding the fair, prioritizing museum placements, but that didn’t stop collectors interrupting our conversation to beg for a work. Bucking a trend of escalating primary market prices in recent years as galleries hoped for a share of the speculation, Boesky has opted to keep the buy-in sane, between $45,000 and $65,000. “I wanted to keep prices institutions can afford,” she said, adding that she prefers this approach to the common BOGO practice, where collectors donate a work to a museum in order to win access for one themselves.

Still, Boesky acknowledged the wider slowdown. “This is not a good reflection of the market because this is a solo booth by an artist who is in demand. Elsewhere it is slower, but overall people are still quite active.”

Joan Semmel, White skin (2018). Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. Photo by Dan Bradica.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was a more significant presence of older living artists. “Galleries are now trying to take the estates of undervalued, under-the-radar established artists, as opposed to six months or a year ago, when they were all chasing very young artists,” art advisor Sibylle Rochat commented.

Work by Antiguan artist Frank Walter, who is gaining posthumous reappraisal, including in a show on view at the Garden Museum, was attracting attention at David Zwirner and Xavier Hufkens—Zwirner sold multiple paintings priced between $35,000 and $55,000. Also on view at Hufkens, and at Alexander Gray Associates, was the 89-year-old American painter Joan Semmel, whose solar-hued expressionistic feminist nudes are being deservedly recognized institutionally. The works at Alexander Gray were all on hold for collectors in the early hours of the fair (the gallery does not disclose prices), and the painting at Hufkens sold for approximately $200,000.

At Edel Assanti, there was Sylvia Snowden, an 81-year-old abstract painter who was a contemporary of Sam Gilliam; a painting by 83-year-old Color Field painter Peter Bradley—whose auction market has been taking off in the past two years, was on view at Karma with an asking price of $200,000; and Hauser and Wirth sold two works on paper priced at $120,000 from their exquisite solo presentation of sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud. Speaking to this trend, gallery president Iwan Wirth said collectors were “embracing the idea that younger artists and new art don’t have a monopoly on revolutionary thinking and radical risk-taking.”

Alison Jacques, Frieze London 2023. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.

So what do the results this year portend for the market? Many galleries this year chose to take their heavy hitters to Frieze Masters, and the top prices reported by close of day were certainly lower than last year. In 2022, the highest price reported on opening day was $6 million for a Kerry James Marshall painting at David Zwirner. The gallery has since decided not to share secondary market prices, so may well have traded more significant figures, but reported a Gerhard Richter sale for $650,000 among the first day highlights.

Still, there were a number of works reported sold at asking prices of more than $1 million on opening day. Ropac had sold a Georg Baselitz for €1.2 million ($1.47 million), Goodman Gallery parted ways with a major El Anatsui work for $1.9 million, and Tracey Emin paintings sold at White Cube and Hufkens for £1.2 million and £900,000 ($1.47 million and $1.1 million).

It should be noted that a softer market does not necessarily show itself in lack of sales; rather in easier access to once-rare gems, galleries more open to negotiation, and stabilizing prices that had been on a vertical trajectory. All told, the day-one picture was much brighter than feared; as Boesky put it: “The market is not gangbusters, but it’s not bad, either.” We’ll take it.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

Whether by turning his paintings upside down or with his widely reported comments that women are not good painters, Georg Baselitz, one of the most influential artists of his generation, has never been afraid to provoke. Now 85, he is exhibiting sculptures and sculpture drawings at the Serpentine. Here he talks about the German tradition of sculpting in wood, why it is important for artists to be provocative, and the “sad” German art scene.

The Art Newspaper: One of the sculptures on display at the Serpentine, Zero Dom (2021), is 9m high. Can you tell us how this work came about?

Georg Baselitz: All my work and my sculptures generally have a biographical or autobiographical background. Nothing I have made so far is conceivable without my background. Either the work itself or at least the title indicates that. Zero Dom, for example, is not a glimpse into the future, but rather describes what we perceive as the German past: in short, a burnt-down building. Zero Dom was initially a small wood sculpture comprising individual women’s legs about 3m high. A black patinated version cast in bronze followed. In 2018, I designed the stage set for Wagner’s opera Parsifal in Munich. The sculpture became part of the set, in an enlarged form. The Holy Grail was hidden inside it. Then I decided to make a 9m-high bronze casting out of it, which was first placed in front of the Institut de France when I was named a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Your use of wood is rather unusual today, but it reflects a strong German tradition; we think of Tilman Riemenschneider, for example. Do you see yourself as a German artist in this tradition, or is your use of wood also inspired by other cultures?

German tradition is absolutely right. Tradition in general is very important for me. In Germany, we don’t have a significant tradition made visible by archaeological finds—as, for example, in the Mediterranean region. Since the 14th century, there have been large, decorative stone sculptures in our places of worship but, equally, very important wooden sculptures—for example, by Riemenschneider. And this continues until Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. My first attempt was a wooden sculpture in 1980 for the Venice Biennale and I stuck with it.

Ten wooden sculptures carved from individual tree trunks featured in the show have never been exhibited before. The Serpentine’s press release states that they relate to your personal life, including a childhood memory. Do you find that, with age, your personal history has become more important to your art, or is this childhood memoir showing three girls from a Nazi youth group also a political statement?

When I work, I always think about my past. My background was very ordinary and rural in a place far off the beaten track. When I make a sculpture, like BDM Group (2012), the goal is not a priority; it is more like a poetry that slowly unfolds. Again, the title clearly refers to my origins. The kinds of statements on daily politics that we see a lot in contemporary art are not my thing.

What can you tell us about the drawings on show and the production method?

I think the sculpture drawings are different from my other drawings. Sculpture drawings are important observations for working in three dimensions or on a wooden trunk whose original volume you reduce, by cutting and chopping and so on. Without the drawings, mishaps and misfortunes would be more frequent. I have been making such drawings since 1980 when I started sculpting. But there are none of these preparatory drawings by me before that.

Tracey Emin has said that your provocative approach to your art “kept the gateways open for artists like me”. Who are the art-world provocateurs of the next generation you most admire?

Tracey Emin said exactly the right thing. I have found in art history that when an artist, whether male or female, has success early in their career, it is usually with a provocative work. Most first works confirm that—whether by Tracey Emin or Paula Modersohn-Becker, by Cézanne, Frida Kahlo or Picasso. But being provocative just to provoke is difficult. I don’t think it works, or only for a short time. As far as the next generation is concerned, I still find the British art that surprised me when it first appeared—thanks to Charles Saatchi’s willingness to take risks—very interesting.

You have complained in the past that Berlin museums are not sufficiently interested in German art. Do you think that has changed? Will your work be shown in the new Berlin Modern art museum and, if so, which ones?

Just compare Berlin’s Nationalgalerie with its London equivalents. Berlin has hardly any contemporary art. After they tried to repair the past by recovering “degenerate” art or other works, not much new has happened in German museums, especially in Berlin—not to mention the low visitor numbers compared to other metropolises.

What do you think of the plans for the new museum, which is currently under construction?

I think any new museum in Berlin is superfluous.

What do you think are the most interesting developments in the art market today?

I have not concerned myself with digital art at all. For me, there is no such thing. I work with paper and pencil, with paint and canvas and with wood. And all the works by other artists that have drawn my attention use similar materials.

What worries you most about Germany and Europe today?

People abroad can’t imagine that in Germany, there is no cultural scene comparable to that in the UK, the US or France. It’s a regrettable, very sad state of affairs. But since there is a well-functioning international art market, German artists can make a living independently of Germany.

You are known for your ability to provoke not only with your art but also with your words—for example, with a statement in Der Spiegel in 2013 that women are not good at painting. Since then, you have expressed your admiration for many female artists. Museums are now making an effort to show more works by women. Do you welcome this attempt to redress the balance, or do you think it is a distortion?

There are only new artists and their first works, and of course that has nothing to do with gender or age, but everything to do with what appears on paper or on canvas.

The Guardian wrote last year that you are experiencing a “fiery and ruthlessly expressive late flowering” in your 80s. Do you think that’s true?

If what they say is true, then I’m very happy about that. Even if you leave out the “fiery” and “expressive”—and even “flowering”—it is still a fact that I have not given up, and that I continue despite an almost complete absence of pressure—less depressive, but even more dystopian.

Do you still work in your studio every day? Can you describe a typical working day?

I try to work every day, for a very limited amount of time. My physical condition is not the best. I use various aids such as walkers, carts, walking canes, chairs, extended brushes, extended palette knives and quicker decisions. So far, that’s working well.

• Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011-2015, Serpentine Galleries, until 7 January 2024

A bridge in the middle of a Montana forest appears eternally suspended mid-collapse, and a wooden dock curls up out of the water in just a couple of artist Cornelia Konrads’ site-specific interventions (previously). Using found materials like driftwood in the towering “tourbillon” or tapping into the regional vernacular like the ceramic tiles and stone in “refuge,” the artist re-interprets existing spaces by considering the tension between harmony and chaos in nature.

Konrads’ installations feature an interplay between permanence and weightlessness, as structures such as bridges, houses, and walls appear to defy gravity. In “La folie des folies (3 The Match),” for example, existing classical statues of Hippomedes and Atalanta appear to playfully lob marble pots across a lawn at one another. And in her most recent work, “fluchtweg / escape route,” a stone wall curls aside to open a footpath, transforming into an inviting gateway rather than a barrier.

The works often visually remark on a specific location, such as “refuge,” which incorporates “an ancient dry stone wall along an old link road between France and Spain, frequently used by refugees during the past centuries,” while “bridge” suspends local lodgepole pine and weathered barn boards over a forested ravine.

Explore more of Konrads’ land art and installations on her website.

Collaboration with Marco Dessardo, “pontoon” (2020), wood, plastic containers, iron, and aluminum, 900 x 120 x 150 centimeters. Site on the bank of the Canal de Bourgogne at the harbour of Migennes, for Tandems—Parcours artistique en plein air, Association Canal Satellite, Migennes, France

“tree house” (2022), bricks, cement, construction wood, wooden tiles, and steel cable, 4 x 4 x 6 meters, in Sologne, France

“refuge” (2019), stones, wood, and roof tiles, approxomately 5 x 2.5 x 1.5 meters, for Murets d’art, Mornans, Val de Drôme, France

“refuge”

“tourbillon” (2018/2021), driftwood, and metal, 600 x 400 x 400 cm, for Fondation Carmignac, Villa Carmignac, Île de Porquerolles, France.

“La folie des folies (3 The Match)” (2019), resin, div. paints and pigments, steel rope, two vases, 0.8 x 0.5 x 0.5 meters each, for the Grand Allée of Domaine de la Garenne-Lemot, Gétigné, France

“La folie des folies (3 The Match)”

“fluchtweg / escape route” (2023), local stones, mortar, wood, and metal, each side approximately 120 x 225 x 40 centimeters and Installation on a terrain of 550 x 100 centimeters. Site: small valley crossing the main hiking trail to Rittisberg, for Land-Art Rittisberg 2023, Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria

“tinkers” (2016), set design for a theatre play of ‘The Only Animal Theatre Society’ at Mt. Elphinstone Provincial Park, Roberts Creek, British Columbia

Detail of “bridge”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Bridges and Walls Defy Gravity in Cornelia Konrads’ Atmospheric Site-Specific Installations appeared first on Colossal.

There is an unutterable sadness to seeing Damien Hirst’s new paintings at Frieze. These big pictures of gardens, their blurry photorealism besmirched with Pollockesque drips in a desperate attempt to bring such duds to life, are the star turn at Gagosian, one of the mightiest of the art dealers whose chic stands fill the vast white tent of the art fair. But no one looks fooled. Few are giving Hirst’s paintings a second look at the VIP view, which is filled with moneyed collectors, articulate salespeople, my daughter and me.

I try to explain to her how exciting and dangerous Hirst once was, when he was young, when he got someone to kill a tiger shark so he could put it in an art gallery. “He had the shark killed?” “Well, you don’t just find a tiger shark on a beach. It was a different time.”

Hirst in the early 1990s made art seem unsafe, outrageous, like something that mattered in the world. Now he is painting gardens – which would be wonderful if he did it well. Unfortunately, he is no David Hockney. He still shows absolutely no talent for painting the real world. It is 14 years since Hirst first exhibited “proper” paintings by his own hand. He has learned nothing about the craft since. He is still bad, flat and unimaginative, yet he somehow gets a major display at the heart of an art fair that supposedly defines the new.

The misery of The Secret Gardens, as Hirst calls his snores, is not just that they are confirmation of his decline. It is also the fact these works are far from the dullest things here. Even in his dotage, Hirst has a bad-taste boldness that reminds you, vaguely, of what it’s like to see unexpected, exhilarating contemporary art. But there is precious little of that here.

Hirst didn’t become the extremely rich man he is by not having an eye for the market. And he has noticed the market wants paintings. Art collectors still buy video, photography and conceptual art – and, once, they even bought sharks. But oily colours on canvas have a pedigree, an aura of value, that has always made painting the blue chip definition of collectible art. At Frieze this year, there are so many paintings – from abstract monochromes to saucy murals – that when you do come across something that’s not another painting, you fixate on it. Gillian Wearing has made a giant charm bracelet with a life mask of her face and replicas of body parts all slung together on a thick chain: a sculpture of true unease. Wearing flirts with the surreal, yet her blankly accurate rendition of her face makes it all too real. Between the kitchen sink and the nightmare comes the uncanny.

It is largely Wearing’s generation of Young British Artists who shocked their way to fame three decades ago that stand out like treasures on a charm bracelet in this drab and pedestrian 20th edition of a once-rollicking art fair. You find yourself stopping by drawings by Glenn Brown that knottily riff on Rubens and Leonardo da Vinci. A painting by Gary Hume of huge pink flowers emerging like poisonous poems out of greenery has all the mystery that Hirst’s garden paintings lack. Yet once these artists were young rebels. Now they look like serious, thoughtful creators in a gathering full of fly-by-night, cynical attempts to please and get bought.

Wearing, Brown and Hume all made their bones in an era when contemporary art fought for attention and had to insist it mattered – when in Britain, at least, it seemed cutting edge to like it at all. Nowadays, barely anyone is brave enough to admit they don’t. Frieze in its two decades has helped to normalise the new. And domesticate it. And thus kill it.

Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, who founded this art fair in 2003, no longer run it. Today, they create restaurants while Frieze is majority-owned by US “talent agency and holding company” Endeavor, with Simon Fox, a former media executive, as its CEO. So what’s cool about it?

Nothing that I can see, as dealers talk up their goods to one percenters at every booth. Why do people think that shoplike spaces filled with selections of saleable stuff make an ideal venue to appreciate the power of art? This week, just a few miles away, El Anatsui opened a superb installation in the Tate Turbine Hall, proving once more that great contemporary art thrives on huge post-industrial spaces. You couldn’t fit that in a booth. Instead, you get fragments of interest: a small yellow wooden foot hewn by Georg Baselitz; a tiny, hyperreal figure by Tomoaki Suzuki; a papier-mache creation by Monster Chetwynd based on the Victorian asylum artist Richard Dadd’s painting The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke.

As for the legions of paintings, they veer between the bland and bizarre. Chetwynd’s neo-Victorian work belongs to a veritable micro-fashion for costume dramas. A huge realistic landscape painting by Paulina Olowska looks as if it could have been painted a century ago. Maybe Olowska is hoping to get bought by Tate Britain and shown as a rediscovered Suffragette artist – since her picture stars a young woman dressed like a Virginia Woolf character striding through the fields. Back to the future, or a cosy neo-pastoral idyll? Constantin Nitsche’s painting La Visite III also looks like a classy book cover – or a storyboard for a Merchant Ivory film.

All of which makes such paintings lovely to hang on your wall, no? Only if you have a very high boredom threshold. They are at best slightly distracting for a moment. There is no sign here of artistic revolution or challenge. The great upheavals of modern art don’t just seem to have come to an end at Frieze. It’s as if they never happened. Whatever you think of Picasso’s personal life, he did shake the foundations of western culture. Whereas art now, on this evidence, exists to mildly entertain in a tasteful, reaffirming, bland way.

Frieze has become a corporate snooze. Have the galleries been actively encouraged by its big-business owners to Disneyfy themselves? Or is that just the way art is now? The neo-Victorian craze is very apposite. The crowds admiring these timid artistic efforts may not wear top hats and crinolines, yet we could just well be at the Royal Academy in 1850 hailing the latest efforts of Mr Landseer.

Perhaps I should take it all back about Hirst. Maybe he has a brutally accurate eye for the times. The avant garde is dead. The function of art now is to avoid frightening or shocking or, God forbid, exciting anyone. The deathliness of Hirst’s garden paintings conveys the dire truth about Frieze. It is a graveyard of creativity, not a blooming garden. The excitement it once created seemed to confirm an essay by the late American critic Dave Hickey praising “the big, beautiful art market”. The aura of this art fair is based on the idea that Hickey was right and money frees creativity.

But Hickey himself became disillusioned by the hypercommercialisation of art. And now, with the London art world stripped of the income stream from Russian oligarchs, Frieze looks about as creative as a shopping mall.

• Frieze London and Frieze Masters are at Regent’s Park, London, until 15 October.

A new fund of at least £40,000 ($49,000) has been launched for the Arts Council Collection to acquire work by early career and overlooked U.K.-based artists at Frieze London. The artists selected today for the fund’s inaugural year were Julianknxx, Anne Tallentine, Mark Corfield-Moore, and Tanoa Sasraku.

The new Frieze fund, which has been made available by a select group of patrons, including Tala Cingillioglu, Zelie Walker-Noble, and Suling Mead, comes at a time when the U.K.’s culture sector has faced catastrophic cuts in public funding. London was hit particularly hard when the annual funding for 2023-26 funnelled money into regional institutions.

“Following the Arts Council’s devastating cuts last year, philanthropic initiatives are more necessary than ever,” a spokesperson for Frieze told The Telegraph when the fund was announced. The selection committee scouting the booths for up-and-coming artists at this year’s Frieze London included the Hayward Gallery’s director Ralph Rugoff, the writer and editor for Frieze magazine Vanessa Peterson, the artist John Walter, and program director at Jerwood Arts, Harriet Cooper.

The Sierra Leonian artist Julianknxx’s is talk of the town in London at the moment, with his moving image work Chorus in Rememory of Flights (2023) that explores the Black Diasporic experience currently being exhibited at the Barbican’s Curve gallery until February 11, 2024. His work is also included in “A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” at Tate Modern through January 14, 2024. His new film Black Room (2023), presented by Edel Assanti gallery in the Galleries sector, was quickly snapped up by the collection’s acquisition committee.

Anne Tallentire, These Aggregations 2 (2000) at “But this material…” at the MAC in Belfast in 2021. Photo courtesy of the MAC, Belfast.

Now in her 70s, Anne Tallentire has for decades been quietly drawing attention for her low-key artworks that are often made of everyday practical materials like string, screws and gaffer tape. She received a solo exhibition at the MAC in Belfast in 2021 and her work is currently on display in the Lavery Studio at Cromwell Place until October 15. The piece These Aggregations 2 (2000), a matching set of multi-colored boards that lean delicately against the wall at Hollybush Gardens gallery, also in the Galleries sector, has now entered the Arts Council Collection.

Tanoa Sasraku, Jacket Front R (2023) at Frieze London 2023. Photo courtesy the artist.

The artist Tanoa Sasraku has been turning heads for her “terratypes,” a unique hybrid medium that combines various methods like textile, painting, sculpture and print-making, as well as films like O’Pierrot (2019), through which she explored racist stereotypes and the Black British experience. Her work Jacket Front R (2023), offered as part of a solo presentation at Vardaxoglou, in Frieze’s focus section, was made with the unlikely combination of newsprint, foraged Cornish and Ghanaian earth pigments, tailor’s chalk, thread, and St Ives seawater.

Mark Corfield-Moore, Gilded (2023) at Frieze London 2023. Photo courtesy the artist.

Mark Corfield-Moore, who paints directly onto had woven textiles on canvas, was one of the shortlisted artists for this year’s John Moore Painting Prize. The Arts Council Collection acquired Gilded (2023), which is on display in the entrance corridor leading into the fair as part of a display by Outset. The Outset Contemporary Art Fund is a charity that set up an acquisition fund for Tate at the very first Frieze London in 2003. Now, it is spotlighting 20 artists who don’t yet have gallery representation but lease studios from its Studiomakers program, which offers affordable workspaces for creatives.

Patrons supporting the fund include Tala Cingillioglu from Cingilli Collection, Zelie Walker-Noble, independent art advisor and collector, and Patron, Suling Mead, Board Member for Contemporary Art Society. Mead called the fund an important supporter of “early career and overlooked artists” that enables them “to become a part of its history and future.”

Founded in 1946, the Arts Council Collection is a national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art with a focus on supporting promising emerging artists.

More Trending Stories:  

An Elderly Couple Sold a ‘Worthless’ African Mask for $157. Now They Are Suing the Buyer Who Auctioned It for $4.4 Million 

A Norwegian Man Stumbled Upon a Trove of Gold Dating to the Early Middle Ages, Including a Rare Pendant Depicting the Norse God Odin 

A Top Antiquities Sleuth Has Called Out the Manhattan D.A. For Continually Passing His Work Off As Its Own 

Emerging Artist Li Hei Di Calls Her London Studio a ‘Parallel Universe,’ Where Hong Kong’s Cinematic Heroines and Mystical Abstraction Meet 

After Its Team-Up With Pokémon, Scalpers Swarm the Van Gogh Museum to Snap Up Merch and ‘Pick the Gift Shop Clean’ 

An Enigmatic Still-Life Picasso, Made During His Now-Celebrated ‘Wonder Year’ of 1932, Will Hit the Auction Block This Fall 

Get a Closer Look at Lagos-Based Artist Nengi Omuku’s Intricate Textile Paintings—Made on Traditional Nigerian Cloth 

A Mexican Journalist Went Viral After He Presented ‘Alien Bodies’ to Congress. Now He Is Accused of Plundering Them From Ancient Sites 

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.