Issue 9
October 2021

Looking at art from the past through a contemporary lens has been the hallmark of Frieze Masters since the magazine and fair launched in 2012. This lens has changed with time, never more so than during these two years.In this redesigned issue, William Kentridge remembers a formative encounter with Francisco Goya's A Queen of the Circus (1816-24). At the fair, Kentridge shares a seminal body of work created in apartheid South Africa, which features his first charcoal-and-collage animated film. On p. 8, you can read more about the fair's highlights, including a rare selection of paintings by Walter Richard Sickert, Carrie Mae Weem's response to the work of her late friend Terry Adkins, a restaging of Emilio Veda's presentation at 1982 documents 7 in Kassel and, in the Spotlight section, abstractions by Beauford Delaney. A collection of early printed books on ecology shows that scholars have been concerned with humanity's environmental impact for at least half a millennium. In the fair's new Stand Out section, curator Luke Syson makes the case for so-called decorative objects as art, while on p. 38 he responds to our questionnaire. In an interview with Amber Butchart, fashion designer Roksanda Ilinčić names the artists that have influenced her, from Helen Frankenthaler to Ljubica Sokić. Interior designer and collector Teo Yang invites us into his traditional hanok, filled with works by Korean artists. Isobel Harbison traces the long history of Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery and Andrew Durbin commemorates the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri's death, remembering the consolations of the poet during his own experience of intern hell.

 

From this issue

The Seoul-based designer discusses his extensive collective – including works by Lee Ufan and Ahn Kyuchul – and the last work he brought 

BY Teo Yang |

The artist reflects on a single work by the Spanish master that opened up an absurd world

BY William Kentridge |

The fashion designer’s bold, geometric creations reference artists from Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner to Ljubica Sokić

BY Amber Butchart AND Roksanda Ilinčić |

Isobel Harbison chronicles the Dublin City Gallery's inseparability from the 20th-century politics of its capital namesake

BY Isobel Harbison |

Andrew Durbin reflects on the efforts of seven centuries to monumentally exalt – and incidentally profane – the poet Dante

BY Andrew Durbin |

The new section at Frieze Masters 2021 brings together objects of conceptual and technical brilliance, from Indian glass painting to plaster works by Rachel Whiteread