The 15-minute walk from Frieze London to Frieze Masters takes you back millennia in time. In the recent past it was almost like travelling from an interfaith airport chapel to a requiem mass at St Peter’s Basilica. This year the gap between the two parts of the Frieze package has narrowed enough for some disorientation to be felt.
Frieze remains the art happening that aficionados have been yearning for. This year it is delivered with the usual polish, and with wristbands to prove that visitors are Covid compliant. Listening to the loquacious crowd, it would seem that the Continent has taken over entirely. No quarantine worries for these enthusiasts, mainly from France, Spain and Italy. Nor did they seem to care on the first day whether they were viewing the avant-garde or the venerable. Was that a Gilbert & George ‘stained-glass’ window aglow amid the old masters? Yes it was: a vintage work from 1982. And was that another one standing proud among the most contemporary in the other marquee? Yes indeed: from 2019.
