Sir “Stormin” Norman Rosenthal was in fine fettle at the unveiling of the first tranche of his permanent public sculpture commissions for Embassy Gardens, the major residential development going up around the new US Embassy in Vauxhall. “It’s the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done,” enthused the former Royal Academy exhibitions secretary, summing up the trio of works by Simon Fujiwara, Sarah Lucas and Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq as “animal, vegetable and mineral”. An accurate, if basic, description, considering Fujiwara’s work presents a giant severed foot (taken from the classical fragment in Rome’s Capitoline Museums), Lucas has made a giant bronze marrow (a reference to the proximity of New Covent Garden vegetable market and, perhaps, the famous gay watering hole, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern?), and Qasim Ashfaq has created ROD, a gleaming two-tonne staff of honed steel.
However, let’s hope that the future occupants of the American Embassy also appreciate the subtext to Fujiwara’s foot outside their front door, which is entitled “Modern Marriage” and sports a large golden ring embedded in its sole. “I wondered what a gay man would want to put on his finger: maybe a big sexy foot to show off at his engagement party?” declared the artist, while revealing “I’m not going to get married, but I love love! Who doesn’t love love?”
Get your private parts painted in public at Frieze
Who said sexual stereotyping was dead? Gender specificity is taken to its furthest extreme in the artist Ken Kagami’s free daily one-on-one “intimate portrait sessions”, Tokyo-based Misako & Rosen’s contribution to Frieze Live (FL, G19), in which the artist creates on-the-spot renditions of his sitters according to their sex, with males immortalised in the form of a penis, and females interpreted only as variously shaped breasts.
While there is strict signage restricting sitters to the over 18s, there is also a notice declaring that there is no need to bare any body parts because “the artist will see your face and know how you look!” This did not seem to overly reassure Kagami’s sitters, with a number of them overheard declaring that, on the basis of his interpretations, they rather wished that they had been allowed to strip off.
Is Renoir crap? Dealers at Frieze Masters have their say
Protestors at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston have put art world academics in a spin with their rousing rallying cry: “Renoir sucks at painting!” The feisty demonstrators are adamant that the 19th-century French Impressionist’s work is overrated (“God Hates Renoir” was emblazoned across one of their placards). Dealers at Frieze Masters have expressed shock (and awe) at the Renoir revolt over the pond. “I wouldn’t be out there marching with the protestors, but Renoir did produce some over-sentimentalised and fundamentally banal rubbish,” says the London-based dealer Guy Stair Sainty (FM, G4). “This makes no sense; the Impressionists, including Renoir, ushered in the modern era,” thundered Jonathan Green, the chief executive of Richard Green gallery (FM, E2), pitching in to the Renoir ruckus.
Frieze takes underground art to a whole new level
Eminent curators, collectors and critics are being forced underground at Frieze London, courtesy of the artist Jeremy Herbert, whose Frieze Projects piece—a claustrophobic chamber that burrows down deep into the earth—is proving popular (FL, P5). “I love the idea of digging underneath the park—that you go down into something and you don’t know what you’re going to find there,” Herbert says.
High-profile figures are lapping up this descent into the fair’s underbelly. Sheena Wagstaff, the chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary department, came out the other end proclaiming: “I love it, it’s a case of reality bites!” But the biggest fan of the subterranean installation, is Gregor Muir, the director of London’s ICA, who ventured down below at least three times, coming up for air with a beaming face reflecting his delight at this furtive foray into the bowels of the art world.
Working the aisles with Graham Norton and David Furnish
Frieze is always a magnet for the rich and famous, so it was no surprise to see the jolly TV presenter Graham Norton darting around the aisles yesterday at Frieze Masters, or David Furnish, the husband of pop icon Elton John, perusing the works at White Cube’s stand over at Frieze London (FL, D4). Furnish was on fine form, saying that he loves art fairs because the “cream always rises to the top”. The hirsute art lover was seen eyeing up works by Andreas Gursky (“spectacular”, he mused), Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn, pointing out that he had not graced Frieze London for around five years. Who knows, perhaps Damien’s latest creations will end up at Furnish/John Towers in the near future.