Entrance to Frieze Art Fair 2010, Regent's Park London. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

Following an event packed week at London’s Frieze Art Fair, I can confidently state that the contemporary art market has plenty of stamina and pep. Sales were selectively brisk. I believe many of the exhibitors made money, though I did hear moans from some quarters that results were just “comme ci, comme ca.”

Another observation: while overwhelmingly artwork lacked content, other than art historical references, or the artist’s own working process, I did notice a smattering of artworks addressing the decline of the U.S. — often the handiwork of American artists — a potentially interesting theme for collectors in search of an subject.

Stay tuned for fair photos which will be forthcoming.

In the meantime, here are links to my Art Newspaper Frieze coverage, including a story on what makes a good fair stand, and another on the role of sexual content in fair, which left me questioning does sex sell?

Standing Out from the Crowd LINK HERE

Does Sex Really Sell? LINK HERE

Jeremy Yerse, via Flickr

My latest column for the Art Newspaper looks at deadbeat collectors who take months to pay for their art purchases-and the consequences for struggling dealers.

Find that story here.

New York's Harris Lieberman stand with Alexandre Singh installation. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

I covered the Liste fair for The Art Newspaper, an event that I recommend to any Basel fair-goer hunting for new talent.  There was plenty of appealing work, much priced well under $10,000.

My story can be found here.

Here are some photos.

Messeplatz in front of Art Basel convention center. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

Here’s a story I wrote with The Art Newspaper’s Charlotte Burns on the phenomenon of dealers using Art Basel as a venue to introduce and boost their newest names.  Link to story here.

Louise Bourgeois on Cheim and Read stand at Art Basel. Though Bourgeois was included on several stands, she was nowhere near making the top 40 list.

Is Art Basel a manfest? Seems so.

One of the stories I wrote this past week for The Art Newspaper examined the gender stats on artists included in the big Swiss art fair. The results weren’t pretty. A tabulation of the fair’s top forty most exhibited artists revealed some rather discouraging news: all forty were men. Not a single female artist made the list.

You can link to my Art Newspaper story here.

List of  top forty most exhibited artists at 2010 Art Basel:

Name              Number of Galleries

1. Andy Warhol                  28

2. Pablo Picasso                   23

3.  Alexander Calder         20

4.  Sol LeWitt                  19

Joan Miró                  19

5.  Jean Dubuffet        16

Donald Judd                  16

6.  Henri Matisse            14

Robert Rauschenberg       14

Frank Stella                  14

Lawrence Weiner         14

7.  Cy Twombly                  13

8.  Josef Albers                  12

Daniel Buren                  12

John Chamberlain         12

Willem De Kooning         12

Sam Francis                  12

Fernand Léger                  12

Albert Oehlen                  12

Ed Ruscha                  12

Richard Tuttle          12

9. John Baldessari                  11

Georg Baselitz                  11…

Independent, February 2010 © Lindsay Pollock

In case you missed it, The Art Newspaper’s Charlotte Burns reported that the Independent will return to New York in February 2011 in former Dia building.

Her story can be found here.

Rendering of Rosenblum Collection space, opening in Paris this fall

Here’s a story I wrote for the Art Newspaper on French collectors Steve and Chiara Rosenblum and their new contemporary art exhibition space. The venue is slated to open in Paris this fall.

Link to story here.

Brody living room featuring Picasso, via Art Newspaper

Did you know that one of the biggest 20th century art deals took place in the early 1930s, amid the crippling Great Depression?

As a major Picasso comes up for sale next week at Christie’s, my new Art Newspaper column examines a counter-intuitive phenomenon: how record auction prices are achieved in lousy financial times.

From the Art Newspaper…

The reign of Alberto Giacometti’s emaciated Walking Man I as the world’s priciest trophy at auction is likely to be short-lived. The six-foot tall bronze, which fetched an outsized $104.3m in February at Sotheby’s, London, is expected to be overtaken by a painting of Picasso’s lusty, lilac-hued mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, coming up for sale on 4 May at Christie’s, New York.

The 1932 Nude, Green Leaves and Bust bears the largest pre-sale auction estimate in history: an “on request only” $70m to $90m. But dealers say the painting may well hammer down for over $100m. It is from the same series as casino owner Steve Wynn’s celebrated Le Rêve, also 1932, which was sold to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen in 2006 for $139m, before Wynn accidentally plunged his elbow through the…

The Art Newspaper asked me to explore the status of a couple of lawsuits filed last March involving the Dedalus Foundation, established by Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell, and a former curator who alleges she was unfairly dismissed. The Foundation alleges the curator stole artworks and then secretly sold them at auction.

The Art Newspaper story is here.

Most people glaze over the confusing array of microscopic auction catalog symbols.

A year after Sotheby’s introduced a third party guarantee or irrevocable bid symbol, I spoke with Sotheby’s Mitchell Zuckerman, Christie’s Marc Porter, art lawyer Ralph Lerner and dealer William Acquavella to find out how these deals really work.

My article in the the January, 2010 issue of The Art Newspaper can be found here.