PUBLIC DEBATE
Fair's Fair: Why do we love to hate art fairs?

The event was held at the ICA, London, November 7 2007.

Love them or loathe them Art Fairs are here to stay. Part of the art market, art fairs don't just benefit dealers and collectors but artists too, so why do so many art critics despise them? Isn't it time to move the debate along from the default position of "museum shows good: art fairs bad"?

Read articles from Art Monthly pertinent to this discussion by clicking on the links below.

Fair dealing
Lisa Le Feuvre: It somehow seems good timing to be considering the two publications, The New Art and Frieze Projects: Artists Commissions and Talks, halfway between the October 2006 and 2007 contemporary art extravaganza Frieze and Zoo Art Fairs herald. The exhausting events of October 2006 are but a memory, and preconceptions of 2007 are full of promise. There can be no doubt that London has significantly changed with the advent of both fairs. These publications underline the fact that art fairs are no longer simply about selling - they are about producing and critically engaging with culture.
Read the article

International Art Plc

Is it inevitable that the corporatisation of international art exhibitions makes them more conservative? Pryle Behrman investigates:
The capacity of the ever-growing blockbuster biennales around the world to ingest and thus neuter dissenting voices has been much commented upon, but the way that this is achieved has subtly shifted of late. Large-scale exhibitions no longer seek to absorb radicalism into their remit directly: what is important is that your event is seen to encourage radicalism by taking it under your wing in some shape or form. This year's Documenta is a prime example.
Read the article

Fair is foul: battles on the letters pages

Peter Suchin's open letter to Lisa Le Feuvre
Read Le Feuvre's reply to Suchin
Read Suchin's reply to Le Feuvre
Read Sean Ashton's interjection
Read Peter Suchin's reply to Ashton

ABOUT THE PANELLISTS

The four panellists are: Lisa Le Feuvre, Peter Suchin, Pryle Behrman and David Barrett. David Barrett will chair.

Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator and writer based in London. She is Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Maritime Museum and teaches on the postgraduate Curatorial Programme at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her recent curatorial projects include Dennis Oppenheim: Recall, 2006; Simon Faithfull: Ice Blink, 2006; Dan Holdsworth: At the Edge of Space, Parts 1-3, 2006/07; and Lawrence Weiner: Inherent in the Rhumb Line, 2006.

Untangling the market from artistic practice is a near impossible task - commercial imperatives are an unavoidable element of all aspects of contemporary global society, art included. Artistic practice is no newcomer to this debate. Alexander Alberro argues in The Politics of Publicity that conceptual practice was a response to changing structures of capitalism, and today creeping capitalism creates a context that is an urgent issue to be addressed within artistic practice.

The pertinent question today is how critical artistic practice can exist within this situation. Making a judgement over whether this is a good or bad situation is not the question at hand - observation shows that the situation exists, and the question is what to do with it. Art Fairs are places where artwork is distributed beyond economic exchanges and it is unfeasible to reject them as sites of potential criticality. As all gestures become recuperated into the dominance of capitalism perhaps the overtly commercial context of an art fair is the place for a critical engagement to take place

Peter Suchin is an artist, critic, lecturer and curator. He writes for a wide range of publications, including Art Monthly, Frieze, Untitled and Mute and has exhibited his paintings and text-related works both in the UK and internationally, most recently organising the show-within-a-show, Planchette, at The Residence, London, November 2007.

"In a recent letter to Art Monthly ('Fair is foul', AM308, July-August 2007) I wrote: 'Art fairs reduce complexity and diversity to sameness. They encourage vacuous glancing rather than extended consideration of artworks, and they privilege marketing and money over artistic interests, conveying a status and importance to dealing, collecting and curating that these activities scarcely deserve.' In my presentation at the ICA I will expand upon these remarks and raise questions about the effect of the fairs upon the image and self-image of the contemporary artist, and upon art education as it is currently constructed and perceived."

Pryle Behrman is a critic and curator who lives and works in London. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, writing with particular reference to the effects of globalisation on contemporary art. Since 2004 Pryle Behrman has been the lead curator of the Art Projects section of the London Art Fair, which comprises around 20 exhibitions produced specifically for the event and, from March 2007, he has been the video art buyer for the V22 Collection, which aims to give artists a greater stake in the secondary market for their work by including shares in the company in the purchase transaction.

"The debate as it has occurred in the pages of Art Monthly so far seems to have largely focused on whether it is possible to disentangle the commercial from the non-commercial aspects of large-scale art fairs. The most pressing issue is whether the aesthetic claims made for non-commercial initiatives such as the art projects section of the Frieze art fair are always tainted by its role in promoting unabashed capitalism?

It seems to me that another approach is possible, which is to accept that these auxiliary events can only be analysed and understood by relating them to the main body of the fair, but argue that they can still retain a degree of criticality nonetheless. The first stage is to consider why art fairs house these non-commercial projects in the first place. To a significant extent, the reason is that the fairs themselves realise they have a fundamental weakness: namely that they aren't very much fun to go to. As has been frequently noted, art fairs can be exhausting, alienating experiences, with the sheer volume of work and its density of presentation pushing the visitor further and further away from any meaningful aesthetic experience. Mindful of this, these auxiliary events are designed to provide a welcome breather and, importantly, are environments that are predicated upon showing alternate ways of exhibiting and engaging with art. As a result, the 'special projects' of art fairs remain an arena where alternatives can to some extent be showcased and debated. This raises the possibility that art fairs can have a critical edge; there is nothing in these events that dictates that they must a priori be loved or loathed."

David Barrett is an artist, writer, and co-founder of the independent publishing company, Royal Jelly Factory. From 1999 to 2002 he was Editor of a website selling limited-edition prints, eyestorm.com.

"Just like any trade fair, art fairs are inevitable within a fragmented commercial industry; small businesses coming together in an effort to generate additional trade. Part of the difficulty comes from the fact that art fairs are often open to the public, even courting the public as if the fair is just another art exhibition, when in fact art fairs make for very poor viewing environments. It is not the rampant commercialism that I hate about art fairs, nor is it the fact that they often use more 'worthy' cultural events - such as public talks - as fig leaves for this commercialism, but rather that the art on display is so poorly served. I don't love to hate art fairs; if anything I hate to love them - at some level I love a good art fair."