Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Ive even seen Marian Goodman and Paula Cooper work the sales floor.
L.A. has always been very different.
In a certain way, art-wise, it had it all: artists, galleries, collectors.
On Valentines Day, at the debut edition of Friezes Los Angeles art fair, that changed.
I often say about art fairs that they are a spectacle of art having sex with money in public.
At Frieze, they went at it like a gaggle of pent-up bonobo monkeys.
And the sex was good.
Or so Im told.
I only watch amazed, jealous, contemptuous, self-hating, you know the drill.
It wasnt all happiness of course.
A few Brits grumbled about lack of sales.
This seems to be a Brit given and may be a mark of a healthy fair by now.
Its also no surprise.
In the past, art fairs in L.A. were showcases of that kind of failure.
L.A. collectors didnt show up and buy at them.
Which meant out-of-towners didnt show up either.
This seemed normal, actually, no matter who was throwing the fair.
Thats the bad local economic medicine.
So why did this one held at Paramount Studios work?
I gave psychic readings in the project by too under-known artist Lisa Anne Auerbach.
It was instantly obvious to all that great things were already happening in Berlin and would only mushroom spectacularly.
Oh, hes now in L.A. too the new director of MOCA.
But the fun was bigger than Frieze.
But the rain also concentrated the energy.
This enterprise was so successful that it grew into the hateful gargantuan we all know: the Armory Show.
Lowering the economic stakes heightened the results and the love.
Everything multiplied out from there.
Young artists chatted with famous dealers; people looked at each others work; older artists brought students around.
Sentimental educations were in the offing.
This is what art fairs ought to be.
Critics will snipe that I havent talked about the art.
First, I dont think fairs should actually be reviewed.
I hate art fairs but I love that they make more artists and galleries money.
This is why I dont really know what I saw.
I didnt go to the fair for looking closely at art.
(An absurdity.)
I came to perform a critical vivisection on the current situation.
My conclusion is that I beheld the rising of a fascinating newFranken-L.A.monster.
The participants were all hip a third of them were from L.A.
Most of them major.
Almost all with some sort of buzz.
Americans cant make fairs this exclusive.
Not the Brits, who are able to be amiably cliquish, tribal, and posh.
No American could do that.
The Brits know that its buzz that attracts money to fairs like bees to flowers.
Whats it all add up to?
I surmise a new phase of the L.A. art world has come into being: L.A. Frieze Week.
The capitalists who own Frieze will say that they can only make money by making Frieze bigger.
Money does what it does until it ruins things.
And it will be.
Or as an illusion.
Frieze will attract enormous crowds following this year; more money, celebrities, and art will pour in.
This phase will last about five years.
Itll be another Miami.
However, five years in art-world time is an era!
In the meantime, Im already seeing sinister forces.
We were talking about how great L.A. is, how good all this energy was for the scene.
Then one of these artists said, L.A. has the best artists.
The others readily agreed.
I cringed and snapped, L.A. does not havethe best artists!L.A.
has great artists, yes; however, your peers elsewhere are doing just fine.
This didnt seem to land; they objected.
I said, Saying L.A. hasthe best artistsis provincial.
It goes without saying that all local scenes are prideful and provincial; none more so than New York.
I can see why L.A. might have a chip on its art-historical shoulder.
Maybe the L.A. boosterism and vanity comes from this.
But this sort of provincialism is never becoming and never remotely true when applied to contemporary art.
