George Soros and the Invisible Hand are no longer your friends.

Brightly coloured cutting edge with a sense of humour?

or

Understated lux grey-and-black-maybe-navy-or-an-occasional-flesh-coloured-thing?

Art Students and the Wealthy rubbed shoulders yesterday at the Frieze Art Fair in Regents Park. Sometimes the costumes were swapped, and, then, well, one ought to know better. The press were hungrily badgering for signs of d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r. Gallerists were canny to the gloom and doom game and had several pieces "on reserve", but, not fully sold. Some collectors haggled. Most dealers stood their ground. The best things sold with dignity. Sales have always been rather hush hush at Frieze, except in 2007 when things sold out before the doors opened. Those days are gone.

So what was on offer? Missmc focused yesterday on the Frieze Projects, presentations of art things that were not for sale. The aforementioned Superflex film was darkly humourous, with the phrase "George Soros and the Invisible Hand are no longer your friends" lingering after her down the hall. After that, I went to see the project by my old friend Anton Vidokle and his collaborator, Julieta Aranda. It was an alternative currency like the Ithaca Dollar thing, but, for artists and art workers. I looked for a giant something that was supposed to have "crashed" into the building but missed it. Rumour has it it was taken away.

Admittedly, I was seeking out the works that referenced finance or economics. In the past, the art world consideration of economics would be to include more artists from non-western countries that perhaps did pieces that reflected their culture.

Economics is a really hard topic for artists. Art is not about money. Art is not about money. Art is not about money. It is about ideas. It can be art about ideas about money, but, that only works in a recession. Otherwise, the money topic lifts art out if its ideas-based realm and plops it down uncomfortably, kind of 80's style, next to the topic of artists-who-knew-how-to-make-a-lot-of-money but were not necessarily good. And that kind of art ruins the market for both collectors and artists alike. Art is about money.

The Wayward Royal

Missmc's email inbox is cluttered up with jolly party invites as the Frieze Art Fair is in town. My ticket for the event is somewhere lost in the post, thanks to a series of Royal Mail strikes. I've been told I can pick it up at the event so all is not lost. There are electronic tickets but my invite happened to be the old-fashioned kind.

Regarding the strikes, the BBC reports that big companies such as John Lewis and Amazon have already contracted with other private carriers and cancelled using the Royal Mail. After all, Christmas is coming.

For a large corporation, changing carriers is an easy option. For a private citizen or small business there are less choices and they are all a good deal more expensive. As far as other options, there are things one just cannot do via email. Lovely thank-you notes on creamy stationary are just not replaceable by email or ecards. And the large check I've just sent out for some new wooden double-glazed sash windows has also gone astray.

This is terribly-timed and looks unresolvable. And, my Economist Magazine keeps going missing. Probably for good reason. I am sure whatever they have written about the strikes is unsympathetic.

Artworks That Ideas Can Buy

"Artworks that ideas can buy" is the title of an exhibition by Cesare Pietroiusti in the project room at Wilkinson Gallery.  Works by Jeremy Deller, Dara Birnbaum and notable others will be for sale in exchange for visitors' ideas.  Interested?  The exhibition opens on the 29th of May.

Questioning the value of contemporary art and its exchange mechanisms is a thread that has been alive and well, coming high above the surface with conceptual art in the 70's.  It is a subversion of the question "what is art" raised by Duchamp with his "fountain".

The value of art is undergoing quite a bit of analysis these days.  Alongside the value of money and the value of British politicians.  But I digress.  Major collections of contemporary art have historically had the generous support of the financial world.  The Frieze Art fair is sponsored by Deutsche Bank.  UBS has been a generous partner of the Tate Modern.  Fingers crossed for this to continue.

On the exit side, several prominent collections are up for sale as noted in the FT here and here.  It's fairly easy to guess which Spanish bank is in process of raising cash by selling off its collection.

So back to "Artworks that ideas can buy".  What other cultural goods can be "had" by the exchange of ideas?  It is self-referential.  Ideas of course.  And that is art with a capital A, no matter what its form.

Make room for a new storm of conceptualism in the contemporary art world.  The economics are ripe for it.  I can already picture the UBS sponsored Salon of Ideas in the Turbine Hall. 

A Toast to Iceland

Iceland's government left the premises yesterday.  Hard to even contemplate.  Missmarketcrash had a few drinks with Iceland last October at the Frieze Art Fair in London.  The Artists Collective known as Kling and Bang had taken a long-loved bar which was slated for demolition due to development and reconstructed it in the middle of the art fair in Regent's Park.  The outside seeped nostalgia and a slight whiff of comedic sadness.  Upon opening the door, Missmc was whisked off to Iceland with immediate effect.  A beer was poured by a delicious looking Icelandic boy with a swarthy voice that boomed across the bar.  Another beer was poured into the same glass.  Then another.  All three beers cascaded down the sides of the glass and formed an amazing lake atop the bar.  Two girls at the bar laughed. People were singing.  An infectious sense of the ridiculous descended.  The price of the beer was negotiable and rendered meaningless.  We drank and caroused.  A film was shown that had a you-had-to-be-there nostalgia that was easy to love none-the-less.  I felt like I had lived seven lives inside the bar by the time I left.  

Out to the hushed art fair tent I returned.  The light was a harsh snowy white that chilled through me and I felt a bit mute to the art I was there to look at and love.  Iceland had just gone bankrupt a few days before the fair and the irony of the Sirkus Bar wedged itself in.  The camaraderie of inside the bar was in stark juxtaposition to the posturing of the dealers and collectors wandering around the Frieze tent.  I did not want to look at art anymore, I wanted to go back to Sirkus.

And so today my heart goes out to Iceland.  I am certain all will be set right - they have such a fine group of citizens with most excellent social skills.  If they can come up with a Tom Selleck Moustache Competition they certainly have the wherewithal to achieve anything...

Skal.