The second annual FRIEZE LA art show took place last weekend at Paramount Studios.
We sent two contributors over to cover the buzz on the fair, here’s their take on it and the art happenings around the city.
FRIEZE Los Angeles 2020
by Mikki Brisk and Cynthia Comsky
This past weekend Los Angeles hosted multiple art fairs. Without question, the most talked about of these was FRIEZE, in its second year. The Paramount lot held an enormous gallery tent and the studio’s New York backlot was the setting for a few outdoor pieces as well as performance artists, a shopping area and various food trucks and pop-ups.
As someone who pursues art on a daily basis – for therapy, entertainment, escape, answers – I hoped FRIEZE might allow me to satisfy my artistic longings as well as lift my soul in the way only art can. As I walked around studying the various works from around the globe, I realized I was experiencing all of life. There was beauty and depth, philosophy and history. There was also pain and noise, disorganization and nonsense. I laughed. I became quite still. I shrugged. I cried.
In the end, FRIEZE managed to represent multiple aspects of reality within its temporary tent and outdoor installations. And while I may have hoped for more of a distraction from the real world, art isn’t a deviation from life. For some of us, it is life.
FRIEZE Los Angeles didn’t shy away from mirroring the world we have created, the world we love, the world we might endeavor to improve. Sometimes art forces us to see life’s messiness and complications. And sometimes art allows us to see and feel hope. The works shown at Frieze did all of this and more. – MB
Visiting the 2020 FRIEZE Art Fair on the Paramount lot and the FELIX at the Roosevelt Hotel last weekend made it imminently clear that art has become a commodity. An opinion shared by LA Times Art Critic Christopher Knight in his recent review of FRIEZE LA.
“Once upon a time, it would have been unthinkable for talented curators from the nonprofit art-museum world to participate in a project whose purpose is to supplement and promote a for-profit sales event,” wrote LA Times Art Critic Christopher Knight about FRIEZE LA. “Today, almost no one bats an eyelash at the conflict of interest, so common has it become — another indication, as if one were needed, of the degree to which the marketplace now rules our artistic life.”
The fair extended though out the city from downtown to Venice. and the International art circus took place for four days- the opening preview to FRIEZE was by invitation only(as reported) to celebrities, their consultants, museum people, collectors and VIP’s. There were varying ticket prices for the public though out the three remaining days. Then like gypsies those who came went away.
Instead of attending FRIEZE, Knight “opted instead to spend the preview day at Felix, a simultaneous upstart fair being held for the second time at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.”
We can understand why. The price of an exhibition space at the FRIEZE is exorbitant. FELIX took place at the glorious Hotel Roosevelt and this year they, too charged for a three day ticket. Three floors of their hotel rooms were emptied to individual galleries to create spaces for their smaller in size art and rented at a much lower price. The art was more accessible and many of the gallerists were more open and friendly.
Only galleries who sell and maintain a certain stable of working artists commanding enormous prices and have a constant support base of clientele who remain on waiting lists for their art can afford to exhibit at the FRIEZE. That immediately eliminates a swath of talented artists who are not being represented by the art conglomerates. A couple of international galleries had double size spaces and exhibited three or four works of art that could only fit in a museum or in an art storage vault. If what we read is correct, celebrities and consultants, museums and collections and some major collectors were invited the day before the public could see the art and bought art in the seven figure range. One gallery sold out their whole space of three paintings to a major U.S. institution.
There are dedicated and creative Los Angeles gallerists who have made it possible for artists to have a place where their work can be seen. (These spaces might be where you least expect it and they are free of charge to enter.) If you see a work of art you like and it fits in your budget, buy it. You are the one it speaks to and you are going to live with it. I know a story about a woman who saw a Lichtenstein painting long before he was a household name and it was three figures. She could afford it and bought it because she liked it. – CC
Below are photos of art works that caught their eyes, see anything you like?(All photos by Mikki Brisk)
Mikki Brisk is an artist, writer, singer, songwriter, and creator. Cynthia Comsky is collector of art and former gallerist. She’s also a content creator and producer.
