The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

It’s a telling sign of the times that an influential international arts magazine—Frieze—has not only mounted, in recent years, a big commercial art fair in London, but this year, apparently, the underlying subject of this year’s fair (Oct 11-14) is commerce for commerce’s sake.

Or, according to a NYT article titled “In London, Art and Commerce Scratch Backs“:

Seven artists were commissioned by Frieze to create projects that “respond to the social and economic dynamics of the fair,” according to its catalog. These included Mr. Prince’s car, Ms. Favaretto’s note and a piece by Gianni Motti, “Pre-Emptive Act,” in which an actor dressed as a police officer does yoga as a way to subvert expectations about authority and security.

Another commissioned artists, Kris Martin, hit on a novel concept: stop Frieze for an entire minute on Wednesday, the day the fair was all but groaning with important art-world figures and important collectors like Charles Saatchi, Frank Cohen and Eli Broad.

The idea was to “succeed in temporarily stilling the wheels of commerce,” the catalog said.

“To be honest, I never thought it could work,” said the fair’s co-director, Amanda Sharp. But the announcement came across the loudspeaker: please stop buying, stop selling, stop talking and switch off your cellphone “in respect of the moment.”

Shockingly, everyone obeyed. Silence reigned. The wheels of commerce were stilled. “It was actually quite beautiful,” Ms. Sharp said.

The great thing was that Mr. Martin’s piece, titled “Mandi XVI,” would probably have worked even if it hadn’t.

“If it failed,” Ms. Sharp said, “it would have been an experiment in failure.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under NYT arts articles, Commerce and the failure of art, Artistic delusion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.