London's deep Frieze

THE NOTION of bringing the mania of art fairs like those held in Basel and Venice
to London has an obvious logic. Why force the art world to descend on
some Swiss or Italian provincial city for a fair when you can just
stick it in central London, where so much of that world is concentrated
anyway? Like so many good ideas, this one took a while to catch on, but in 2003 Amanda Sharpe and Matthew Slotover founded the the Frieze Art Fair, held in an enormous tent in Regent's Park. The fair has been wildly successful, and a multitude of satellite, alternative, and extra-alternative fairs have sprung up around it. So this week Frieze and its hangers-on are back, once again making London feel even more like an artistic theme park than usual.

But the experience of looking at art at these fairs is an unusual one for anyone accustomed to the comparatively august environs of a museum. Frieze and most of its satellites are unmistakably industry events, existing first and foremost to sell art, not to display it for a curious public. The result is an odd mix of attendees, ranging from high-powered collectors and their buyers to celebrities (Cillian Murphy being my best sighting), along with students and creatively-bearded artistic types. Frieze and its sisters, big tents in more ways than one, seem infinitely more vital than your average museum show thanks to this diversity, but also thanks to something else.

It might be crass to say so, but all the buying and selling going on at various venues around London this week lends a unique energy to the artistic experience. The excitement of knowing that the great hedge fund-driven juggernaut of the art market is picking up speed all around you is a lot more fun than checking out what's on the white walls of the local museum. There, the feeling that artistic careers could be beginning the process of ascent or collapse at any moment is distinctly absent.

I submit, then, the following proposal for the reinvigoration of the museum: put price tags on the walls. Let the cash registers ring out through the halls of the Tate, MoMA, Met and beyond. Indeed, with so much art being bought and sold that would be a more honest approximation of the reality of its existence than the traditional model of the staid museum show. And besides, it would be a lot more fun.