Frieze! Is counterculture back just in time for London's most prestigious art fair?

Which city, would you say, is the artistic capital of the world? It’s a billion-dollar question that can be taken either one of two ways. The first: which is the world’s most creatively fertile city? The one home to the highest number of artists and the busiest scene? The second: which city commands the highest art sales? The two yield different answers. The first is probably Mexico City; the second is obviously New York.

London, by contrast, occupies more of a middle ground. The capital’s status as a cradle for artists and art dealers, respectively, has ebbed and flowed; both aspects are currently in flux. Emerging artists are returning to the city’s blue-chip galleries in greater numbers than they have in a while. The art market, disrupted by Brexit, has shifted to Paris and Milan.

Perhaps this is no bad thing. A city is unable to be a bastion of the art market and a well of countercultural activity to the same extent or at the same time. A glance at New York’s creative alumni since the city switched allegiance from artists to bankers in the 1990s reveals a dearth of names on par with those of the Downtown scene, such as Koons, Basquiat or Keith Haring. Basquiat could not have become Basquiat had he been unable to afford even a squalid flat in Lower Manhattan.

Contemporary artists have long been outpaced — and outpriced — by the same gentrifying forces that allow their predecessors to monopolise sales. Yet what goes up must come down. In London, the pendulum is swinging back. Although fewer buyers may be worrisome to dealers, our most prestigious gallerists are using such a moment to pivot towards new artistic subsets.

Pilar Corrias, a blue-chip gallery on Mayfair’s Conduit Street, has started showcasing young talent such as Sholto Blissett. At Halcyon Gallery on New Bond Street, works by Warhol (worth millions) sit alongside those by Wang Tingxin, whose pieces often sell for more modest five-digit figures. Over ten years, the Mayor of London has created what City Hall refers to as ‘ten football pitches’ of affordable studio space, allowing artists to rent these for far below market rates.

It is amid such circumstances that patrons begin to think beyond the household name — and to move the market forward even as they avoid buying a Magritte.

Such dips in the market are necessary for it not to remain static. As Frieze Art Fair returns to The Regent’s Park this month, opportunistic buyers are muscling in to play among the big leagues.

Frieze London and Frieze Masters run from October 14-18.