Colin Gleadell gives us a glimpse of his social calendar this week:
Even before Frieze opens, things have been warming up. On Monday, I went with a CNN film crew to a gallery opening to see the colourful abstract paintings of the Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes, who, we were reminded, was the first living Latin American artist to make over $1 million at auction. I thought of Peter Simon, the owner of Monsoon, who began collecting her work 20 years ago and now owns quite a number. But he wasn’t there. He’d probably gone earlier. Instead, there was a Vogue photographer snapping the cosmopolitan set in attendance.
After that, we went to 33 Portland Place, a 24-bedroom, Robert Adam-designed town house, formerly the Sierra Leone Embassy, owned by the self-styled “Lord” Edward Davenport. The enterprising dealer Joe La Placa, who does not have a place in Frieze, had hired the venue for an exhibition on the theme of Vanitas, exploring images of death and decay by contemporary artists. Here the crowd was much more raffish, more decadent, more British. Among the fashionable artists – Tim Noble, Sue Webster and the Chapman Brothers – was the socialite publishing heir Dan Macmillan … and the Vogue photographer, of course. A dealer from Beijing exiting the event with a Saatchi collection adviser whispered: “Great party, shame about the art.” The art world, for all its cultural veneer, can be bitchy, waspish and unforgiving.
Frieze Art Fair: The Biggest Party in Town (Telegraph)
