Synopsis
Short Art Newspaper Daily piece on the way in which the auction houses had started to capitalize on the Frieze-fair week, targeting the audience that the fair attracted to London. From the perspective of galleries this was a profoundly unfortunate development. Obviously, it creates more competition for collector dollars. But the really insidious part of this phenomenon lies here: When an artist does poorly at auction, it's natural for a collector to demand a further discount in an ongoing negotiation; but galleries can't raise their prices overnight at a fair, so they don't benefit when the artist does well.
