Frieze. Jane. Talk.

To catch up, Frieze Art Fair was unbelievable.  Hundreds of galleries from around the world come together to show off the artists they support and works they offer, and although slightly overwhelming at first, it was a wonderful experience.  Chris, Carrie, Esther, and I spent five hours walking around Frieze London, the contemporary fair, before bolting over the Frieze Masters, where we spent the next two and a half hours seeing works by the great masters from the Renaissance up to Modern that were for sale. 

We took an afternoon last week to visit Lisson Gallery for the Anish Kapoor show that was going on there.  If you want to read about the work, see my art blog, but in short, it was a stellar show.  The work was great, and the company made it that much better.  Going to galleries with people from Christie’s, you never know what will happen.  We had way too much fun testing the pieces, Kapoor makes hemispherical sculptures that amplify sound waves,  and crawling under tables to talk about the how he created some of his more interesting works.

Jane came to visit last weekend.  I spent all morning on Saturday walking around Holborn looking at Street Art (London is one of the best cities in the world for finding Graffiti Art, which I have a strong soft spot for) before meeting up with her and having a lovely day catching up on Europe life.  We had a fabulously “American” Chipotle lunch and walked around a bit before meeting up with some Christie’s people to watch the Arsenal match at a pub.  That night we went out to a bar that has the “best music from movie soundtracks” nights every Saturday night where we danced the night away to everything from Cotton Eye Joe to Ghostbusters.  It was my first time going out with the people from Christie’s, and it was nice to get out to see a bit of London night life that wasn’t an art gallery or a museum, as much as I do love both.

Banksy

Stik

We’ve had our first few seminars at school.  Seminars are semi-brutal 3-4 hour sessions where we talk about art/aesthetic theory and philosophy, debating over issues like aesthetics, sublime, beautiful, autonomy in art, and vulgarity.  We have to prepare readings from philosophers and critics alike and be up to par on our economic, political, and social knowledge for the periods we are discussing and then relate all of these theoretical discourses back to various movements in art.  Mostly they are really very interesting and fun when we have a good discussion rolling, but after the talk dissipates, we come out of them just wanting a hug and a nap.

Mr. Brainwash

Invader