But Is It Art?

Definitely a crowd pleaser- for the opening party at Frieze Art Fair Jay Jopling had taken the front section of his White Cube gallery space and created an artists studio where Jake and Dinos Chapman were hard at work turning out 30 minute portraits of anyone who wanted to pay £4,500 for the privilege.

It looked like there were quite a few takers, but the process itself smacked to me of a clever marketing strategy that cheapened the art and played solely on the celebrity name of the artists. It did however raise the question of art returning to a historical patron/ commision basis, and as one dinner guest (and artist) remarked  – it was playing with the ‘grotesquery of the fair’ and making a point about the mass consumption of art leading to Frieze’s supermarket proportions.

Whatever it was, it was definitely a step up from the
30 minute portraits you usually get!!