Profile·London
Collectors' dinners, dark-side Barbies and Warhol's cats: Frieze week's diary of the week that was
The Art Newspaper's Frieze London diary covers the week's social circuit: the lavish Collectors' Dinner with a Holly Blakey dance performance, the tenth anniversary of the National Gallery's Unexpected Views, subversive Barbies at Richard Saltoun and 1-54, and Andy Warhol's cat lithographs stopping crowds at Frieze Masters.
Art world glitterati gathered in the Frieze London tent on Thursday evening for the lavish Collectors' Dinner, attended by gallerists, patrons and journalists. Choreographer Holly Blakey's troupe of dancers wove between diners, building a human tower that collapsed on purpose. Over the wine, tongues wagged about the week's hot topic: does anyone actually like the Tate Britain 90s art show?
Always one of the hottest tickets of Frieze week, Unexpected Views at the National Gallery celebrated its tenth anniversary. In the format, eight contemporary artists each give a ten-minute talk before their favourite painting. Tschabalala Self, whose monumental Lady in Blue occupies Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth, chose Bronzino's An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (around 1545). Yinka Shonibare spoke before Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews (around 1750), alongside his own decapitated, Dutch-wax-clad aristocrats.
Barbie has been shedding her girly pink image at the fairs. Richard Saltoun's Frieze London stand shows Helen Chadwick's Birth of Barbie (1993): the doll upside down, coloured deep scarlet, emerging from labial folds of red meat — all the more disconcerting since Chadwick used the image as her Christmas card that year. At 1-54, on the Whitechapel Editions stand, Joy Gregory's Explosive Barbie (2025) catches the blonde mid-meltdown against a cyanotype blue ground. And at Frieze Masters, Shapero Modern's stand shows Warhol's 16 offset lithographs of 25 Cats Name(d) Sam and One Blue Pussy (around 1954), lettered by his mother Julia Warhola — responsible for the title's missing "d". Grayson Perry, reportedly, thought they were purrrfect.
Other talking points on the Frieze art trail: Maria Kreyn's storm paintings at the Swiss Church in Covent Garden, organised by the Ministry of Nomads Art Foundation (The Dream Logic, until 19 October), Turner-inflected; Jim Amaral's fantastical Invisible Flowers drawings (1979–80) at LAMB's Frieze Masters stand, alongside a parallel Mayfair survey of five decades; and a new spotlight for John Banting, the flamboyant 1930s figure, via the solo show Livid Cosmoramas at John Swarbrooke Fine Art and a new biography — one veteran journalist confessed to having his 1932 woodcut Siamese triplets tattooed on her leg.
