086 ART FAIRS


THE ART WORLD has changed. Today it is all about art fairs, and biennales, of which there are now so many that each new one threatens to dilute their impact and importance, and overwhelm a collector’s schedule. From Venice founded in 1895, to the Kassel Documenta, the biennale São Paulo, Sharjah and now Istanbul and Singapore, Liverpool, Berlin, Yokohama and Kochi in Kerala, Moscow and Sydney, they are a completely global business. Frieze fair in London began in 2003. It expanded to New York in 2012. Te Frieze franchise now has seven fairs, with four in the US. Last year, it acquired the Armory Show in New York and Expo Chicago. Frieze Seoul is the


latest. Ten there is Art Basel (spawning offshoots in Miami Beach, Paris and Hong Kong), Art Brussels, and Art Düsseldorf, the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain (FIAC) in Paris, and the world’s leading art fair, TEFAF Maastricht, that began life in 1988 as the European Fine Art Fair, that was itself the offspring of two 1970s Netherlandish fairs: Pictura and De Antiquaits International. And that’s just for starters. Te venerable Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, founded in 1934 folded in 2009 before a new fair, Masterpiece London, rose in its place. A child of the 1960s, Art Cologne is considered to be the oldest contemporary art fair. Tokyo Gendai is


organised by the Art Assembly, which runs other fairs all around Asia – Taipei Dangdai, India Art Fair, Photofairs Shanghai and Art SG in Singapore – along with Sydney


Contemporary. Tus despite the troubled global economy, London in October was as ever flooded by an acquisitive tribe of hedge fund managers, oligarchs, and movers, sheikhs, and sheikhas thronging Frieze to stock up on investment-grade artworks with a cumulative insurance value of zillions. Name a major city that doesn’t have an art fair now?


Te proliferation of contemporary fairs since the experimental outing back in 1967 has seen no signs of abating. Art fairs are a necessary part


ALL IMAGES: COURTESY OF TOM POSTMA DESIGN


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