a morandi in the living room

among the several highlights of frieze masters was helly nahmad's booth. this consisted of a lavishly detailed art collector's apartment over-full of the many accumulations of the pursuit of what is currently very premium art—a fabrication that required a long list of prop rental facilities and the services of a very good set designer. it brought to mind tibor fischer's the collector collector, which is worth reading.

lonesome cowboy

richard tuttle, 1988. at sperone westwater.

blue brownie

john chamberlain, 1979.

chuck close up close

a small self-portrait, in acrylic, at pace london; frieze 2014.

melancholic stem cells

assume vivid astro focus at peres projects; frieze 2014.

it had to be done

when just starting research on R&D networks in art, you cannot pass up the opportunity to see a large fraction of the major dealers when they come to a large park 5 minutes from where you live. so i went to frieze. every other stand had a bunch of stuff by gerhard richter on display. and there seems to be quite a lot of carl andré and donald judd inventory too. it is interesting to see which galleries are absent and which artists are in short supply—and speculate about why. blum & poe were undoubtedly the best stand. they dedicated their entire space to a salon-style showing of pieces by mono-ha school japanese artist kishio suga. other nice stuff:

martin boyce at the modern institute

edith dekyndt's yellow blanket covered in silver leaf (up top), and paintings by john mcallister at carl freedman

olafur eliasson's fading mirrors at tanya bonakdar

richard long's stones and clay-washed wall at lisson gallery

a lot of weird southern arabian and neolithic stuff at rupert wace gallery

a beautiful wall of not-books by irma blank (another case of nominative determinism?) at P420

"september 1955" by ben nicholson at richard green

the shadow series by philip hanson at corbett vs dempsey

nicolas de staël at malingue (why are his paintings not on show at more museums? this is also the clyfford still problem.)

anthony caro's flat, yet dimensional metal sculptures at mitchell-innes & nash

pierre huyghe's aquaria evoking the dystopian world of michel houllebecq (my interpretation) at esther schipper

zhu yu's proposals for the member states of the UN at the long march space

waqas khan at galerie krinzinger

massimo bartolini at frith street gallery

there was also a large florilegium by ottomar ellger, who had someone in his atelier paint the reflections of a window on every single glossy berry in a large bunch of white currants. close examination of this painting (see the rose petal above) demonstrates the transparency and luminousness of old oils, which more recent oil paintings nearly never achieve.

the day was not a total loss.