The art market: All's fair, or the battle of the tents

There is fierce competition to fill the void left by London's Grosvenor House Antiques Fair, which was unceremoniously closed down in June this year. Four top London dealers - Apter-Fredericks, Malletts, Ronald Phillips and Asprey's - are eyeing two locations, one in Chelsea, the other in Westminster, and depending where they can get permission they will put up a 10,500 sq m tent for their new venture, to be called Masterpiece.

Harry Apter says: "[This fair] will be something completely fresh and new. It won't be a reincarnation of Grosvenor House, and will be far more international. We'll have luxury goods as well; we could feature, for instance, a seven-figure Ferrari Dino or a vintage Chateau Lafite as well as art and antiques." He claims he has huge support: "I could fill the 160 booths today." He has already tentatively pencilled in the dates June 24 to 30 2010.

But he's not the only contender: the French are also vying for the prestigious slot. The Parisian dealer Patrick Perrin, who organises Design Art London during Frieze week in October, wants to pitch another tent to house the first "Berkeley Square Art and Antiques Fair" in June 2010. "We will bring 45-50 top dealers in antiques and modern art, on the model of Grosvenor House or the Paris Biennale des Antiquaires," he says, citing the Parisians Steinitz, Alan Rubin of Pelham and the Old Master paintings dealer De Jonckheere as eager to sign up. "The location is central, London is the centre of Britain, the centre of Europe and arguably the centre of the global art market now," he adds.

And don't forget the fair organiser David Lester, who has ambitious plans for next summer's Olympia fair, rebranded the London International Fine Art Fair (June 4-13), which he co-owns. But will there be enough top dealers to go around?

Despite some last-ditch opposition, Sotheby's has been given the go-ahead to hold a mega-auction of a vast archive from Polaroid, the now-bankrupt pioneer of instant photographs. The collection dates back to the 1940s, when Polaroid promoted its new invention by encouraging artists to use it, sometimes giving free film or cameras and receiving photographs in return. Among approximately 16,000 images in the collection are hundreds by famous names, including Andy Warhol, Ansel Adams, Robert Maplethorpe and William Wegman.

Following a bankruptcy court order on Polaroid, Sotheby's is organising a single-owner sale in the spring of 2010, when the cream of the collection, about 1,300 images, will be sold; Sotheby's puts their value at up to $11m.

Many are unhappy at the break-up of this collection. David Ross, a former director of ICA Boston, the Whitney and SFMoMA told me:

"Regardless of the ruling, the new owners of Polaroid are selling what's left of the corporate soul of that once great company by treating the collection as mere property, and showing such blatant disregard for the rights of the hundreds of artists who trusted them with their work ...

"All we really hope for is that some enlightened foundation will buy the entire collection and donate it to a museum in the name (and spirit) of the great Edwin Land [inventor of Polaroid]."

As for the remaining 14,700 items, Sotheby's says it is "consulting with the court-appointed trustee as to [their] disposition".

This week sees the third edition of ShContemporary get under way (September 9) in the massive and ornate Shanghai Exhibition Centre. Billed as Asia's most dynamic contemporary art fair, the event had a major setback after the first edition when an exhibitor, Enrico Navarra, publicly accused the artistic director, Pierre Huber, of conflicts of interest, which he has always denied.

The resulting lawsuits are still rumbling on but the fair has found new impetus under the direction of the Sino-British Colin Chinnery, who was previously chief curator at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Chinnery has launched a blizzard of initiatives, in particular by encouraging new collectors with a development programme.

"We're expecting 260 of them to attend the launch dinner," he says proudly. This year the bulk of the exhibitors are coming from China, Korea and Japan.

The Chinese artist Xu Zhen has a number of controversial exhibitions to his name, one of the most amusing being an exact replica of a Shanghai convenience store installed at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2007, with product packages, registers and cashiers - a riff on the shop within the art fair "shop". Now Xu's latest idea is an exhibition of Middle Eastern contemporary art curated by "Madeln" in New York's Cohan gallery, opening on September 10. Except that it's not Middle Eastern art at all, but all by Xu himself, and Madeln is, again, Xu.

The works feature camels, political cartoons and calligraphy, and seem to be a wry comment on the way the art market responds to market pressures and western expectations. During the last art boom, Chinese artists cranked out predictable series of laughing Maos or family portraits; in this show, Xu seems to be saying that they can do Middle Eastern art just as well.

Georgina Adam is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper

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