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THE APOTHEOSIS OF SWING - LONDON THOUGHTS ON THE
FRIEZE
The Regent’s Park: practical parody (Nash, Nesfield, and the
rest of the restoration) defined by its inner and outer circles
(Dempster’s rather than Dante’s). And then this.
He walks in, a beautiful day in that beautiful autumn, golds coming,
browns holding their own, bronze rabbit letting its languorous ears
draw him in, past the orbs last seen beside a Blaine’s crane
at Shad, a sunlounger forever turning. He snaps the snappers snapping,
walks up the temporary ramps to the temporary structure, is reminded
by the last of Herzog & de Meuron’s untreated oak, only
to find their comely spinner waiting at the net’s mouth, watching
the catch.
This is the real thing, before even the turnstiles have been passed.
Was the two-man-tent outside exhibit, exhibitionism, or ex-officio
dosser? Just that question justifies the bigger structure’s
existence, empty.
Once inside, past the gentle security, he knows it needs no apologist.
There’s no music yet, although there will be later, but there
seems to be an echo that he can hear from a roof in Saville Row.
It’s not so much the sound as the liquidity of optimism, that
astounding belief that there are new things, there are surprises,
there is a world still to be discovered. Just open up. Apple Corps
and its ludicrously naïve vision has just materialised in a
Royal Park, 35 years later.
He feels at home despite being surrounded by strangers. Many of
the artists are unfamiliar names, yet their work has such context
within this place that he cannot but feel that he does know them,
that he would be hearing the cock crow if he pretended lack of association.
There’s no threat in this environment. That’s left to
the pieces. Sometimes, he rounds a corner and has to stop, fighting
for breath as formerly putative love turns to passion. Juan Muñoz
ravishes his senses with a figure who seems to be the wiseman of
the fair. Slogans discard their wordy literalness and hold their
risers high beside Picasso. Two children hold adults in a thrall
of Mail guilt, waiting for the Daily to arrive. Round every corner
c prints remind him that there is a difference between a mortal
and an artist, but the line has never been found - so many
on the wrong side, yet each one on the right side worth an hour
of the others.
This, he sees, is the continuum. He’s known about it, seen
it flashing in and out of view, the image stabilising for a moment,
but always out of reach in another place, never here.
Now, it has arrived. Those Beatles, given pride of place by Miles
in the supporters' club of the sixties, are only visible in a Blurred
connection. But this stuff was happening before they did and they
knew it and they wanted to be a part of it and so they gave it their
blessing.
For London, this is the apotheosis of swing. Once inside the place,
he’s in the band and he can’t miss a beat - there
are no beats to miss, only tunes to hold, no notes to bum, only
riffs to delight. This town has museums. This town has galleries.
This town has snobbery. Only the galleries are here, and they had
to leave their snobbery behind. The H&M place is meekly buying,
delighted to be just a punter, like him.
A Glasgow gallery grunt seems almost in tears as he explains his
delight in having travelled the world for so many years to these
fairs, and finally to be doing it here.
This is the Stargate. By the time he reads about it, Frieze will
have gone. But if he puts it in his diary for next year, maybe it
will be there again, and he can discover once more that he knows
nothing, and revel in the beginnings of knowledge.
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