Frieze Still Pleases

Art fair shrugs off the credit crunch but Damien Hirst falls flat with his sorry excuse for paintings

Pay £25 to see a floating squirrel and some surgical tools arranged neatly (and expensively) by Damien Hirst - it can only be one thing: the Frieze Art Fair is back in town.

Back for a seventh consecutive year in Regent's Park, Frieze played out its artistic soap opera for four days this October amid fears of the knock-on effect of the global financial crisis. The more sombre tone of the work supposedly reflected these testing times but, if you didn't know any better, it seemed business as usual for the most important fair in the art calendar.

Last year, at one of the many Frieze spin-off shows, a man dropped his trousers in the corner of a vast exhibition space at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane and, unflinchingly, defecated. This apparent protest against the standard of art on display was viewed by many of those present as a piece of active art in itself. A considerable moment passed before the man and his deposit were both ejected from the premises.

There were no such malodorous displays of antagonism on offer at the Frieze this year, although a few less eye-catching impromptu acts were staged: a suited man traipsed around playing the sound of a mosquito on a violin while in a Portuguese gallery space a "visitor" showed up a few times every day, took his shirt off and promptly headed for the exit.

As usual there were pieces of work from the art world's leading luminaries. Grayson Perry gave the old art of tapestry a modern twist with his gigantic Walthamstow Tapestry; Gilbert and George provided a piece celebrating their ubiquitous duality; Tracey Emin's crudeness shone through with a vulgar pink neon sign which said "My c*** is wet with fear"; a trademark Anish Kapoor concave disk boasted a price tag of £450,000 (yawn) while Hirst's perplexing knack of designing the emperor's new clothes was yet again present with his large steel cabinet of surgical tools (priced, rather offensively, at £2.45 million).

All in all, more than a thousand artists showcased their work to 60,000 visitors with 165 galleries represented from 30 different countries worldwide. With 20-30% slashed off prices since the market plunged last year, Frieze 2009 had been met with certain trepidation. The difficult financial climate was reflected in the absence of 13 top US galleries who failed to take up their space; to compensate, a new section of the fair called "Frame" was set up to champion less established artists.

It is these artists who are really feeling the pinch of the credit crisis. Forget your Hirsts and Emins - there will always be a market for those trumpeted by the establishment, deservedly or not - it's the lesser known (and often more talented) younger cluster at the bottom of the food chain whose work is taking a knock. A close artist friend of mine sold a picture for £35,000 a couple of years back - now he's making ends meet by peddling sketches for £300 to friends and family to use as wedding presents.

Frieze has always been just as much about the spectacle as it is the art. No one in their right mind would pay £25 to enter (£27 if you book online) if it was simply to view what is essentially a glorified jumble sale. Most of the experience comes from the physicality of the place and the people-watching. Mortal visitors spend the whole day getting a glimpse of a world from which they are largely excluded for the other 364 days of the year.

There were, of course, some excellent works amongst the drivel. This year, the new sculpture garden was a treat (and free) while, inside, who could fault the magnetically floating stuffed red squirrel? A 16mm-film video installation by French multi-disciplinary artist Cyprien Gaillard was rewarding for those who bothered to sit through the repeated eerie musical loop and British painter Dawn Mellor's warped pictures of monsterified celebrities certainly caught the eye.

Frieze, of course, is not the place to go if sniffing out a bargain. In the same week, the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park displayed work priced between £50 and £3,000 while the Zoo Art Fair made a successful debut at its new home in a former Victorian warehouse on Shoreditch High Street.

Fairs remain essential viewing for all echelons of the art world and despite its hefty entrance fee, Frieze still tops the list. The Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle summed it up perfectly: "I try and encourage young artists to go to art fairs. It's a bit like toilet training - you need to know where your sh*t ends up."

Talking of sh*t, October also saw the opening of Hirst's long-awaited Blue Paintings exhibition at the Wallace Collection. To be blunt, Hirst's 25 pictures (largely of skulls set against ash trays, flower pots or lemons) are beyond terrible. The audacity of Hirst to present his one-dimensional monstrosities under the same roof as the museum's Old Masters is as baffling as the man's success. His popular installations and sculptures may have made him a household name but these pictures first and foremost show us that Hirst's efforts to reinvent himself have been in vain because, put simply, he cannot paint. Maybe the problem is that, this time, he couldn't get a vast team of helpers to do them for him.

Another respected art critic, Jonathan Jones, claimed that Hirst's exhibition "reveals the most successful artist of our time to be a tiny talent, with less to offer than even the most obscure Victorian painter in the Wallace Collection."

Collectors will still open their wallet for a piece of Hirst, whose disproportionate fortune is beginning to leave the same sick taste in the mouth as the bonuses earned by bankers (the kind, admittedly, that keep the art world - the only Ponzi Scheme left in town - afloat). Apt, then, that Frieze's sponsor for a sixth consecutive year was Deutsche Bank.

NFL Touches Down Again at Wembley

The New England Patriots beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 35-7 in the third annual regular-season NFL game in Wembley this weekend. Now the boss of NFL UK has said he aims to stage four American Football games a season in London by 2012. Any proposals to expand further will have to be approved by the 32 team owners at a meeting in February. The obvious logistical headache involves the long-distance travel and time difference, which means participating teams need a week's break to recover following the game. But the latest sell-out instalment of the NFL in London was seen as a resounding success with players labelling the atmosphere as "unique" and a "privilege to experience".

From Russia With Love

More sport, and Arsenal midfielder Andrei Arshavin has spoken about his new life in London following his transfer from Zenit St Petersburg last January. The diminutive Russian said the weather is better than in his homeland and that his wife is very happy because "in London the shopping is the best". Speaking to The Telegraph, the 28 year-old revealed a love for British traditions but puzzlement towards some of its "crazy" culinary delicacies, most notably salads. "I like that you keep your history in Britain. You don't use your red telephone boxes but you keep them. But what does 'British food' mean? I heard about fish and chips but I do not eat it. I heard about ales - a special drink like beer but without gas! I've not tried it. And what is porridge? When you eat salad in Russia there are lots of cut tomatoes, cucumbers and a few leaves. Here, it's the opposite! Lots of leaves and one cut tomato and two slices of cucumber."

No Return for 'Jedi' Tube Worker

The self-confessed "easy-going Jedi" Transport for London employee caught on video abusing a member of the public has apologised and resigned after being caught up in a national storm. Iain Morbin called an elderly man a "jumped up little git" and a "little girl" before threatening to "sling him under a train". The long-haired customer service assistant at Holborn Tube station also asked: "Why don't you go and walk under a bus?" The victim is understood to have done nothing wrong. Mayor Boris Johnson said he was "appalled" by the video footage, which has received thousands of hits on YouTube. Following an inquiry, TfL announced that Mr Morbin had apologised and handed in his resignation for personal reasons.

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