Photo by Sarah Douglas

Artist Oleg Kulik and friends

Photo by Sarah Douglas

Artist Oleg Kulik speaking at the Kandinsky Prize exhibition in London.

Tracey Emin Louise Bourgeois Marcel Duchamp Oleg Kulik Aya Takano in New York The Appendix: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Pipilotti Rist, and Paul H-O The Second Sex (at Auction, Anyway) Tracey Emin

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In Praise of Silliness

Russian artist Oleg Kulik was on hand Friday at the Louise Blouin Foundation to discuss the Kandinsky Prize exhibition he'd curated there. In a week dominated by news of the market, his fleeting comment about the role of the artist struck a welcome contrasting note: "The artist is silly, hysterical, moody, can't be reasoned with. But he's the one getting meaning out of an empty space." The Kandinsky Prize exhibition runs through December 10, 2009. The Louise Blouin Foundation was founded by Louise Blouin, who is also the chairman and CEO of ARTINFO's parent company, Louis Blouin Media.

Versifying at the Serpentine

Tracey Emin was one of the first readers to take the stage at the Serpentine Gallery's two-day poetry marathon. Before launching into her own verses — Emin is poet-in-residence at GQ magazine — she revealed to the audience that her favorite lines come from a short composition by Ahmad Ibu-al-Qaf: "…I poured out my worries to a friend. Hoping it would make me feel better. But what I told him became an open secret. Fireflies in the dark."

Looking at the Stars

The words with which Greek collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos ended his talk this morning at Frieze were perhaps even more poetic than Emin's. Asked by an audience member whether there was an artwork in his collection that perfectly captured his particular aesthetic philosophy, he first mentioned Louise Bourgeois's small wax sculpture Fillette, a piece that he said aptly expresses his sensibility, and which has been on loan to the Tate for three years.

Daskalopoulos went on to describe the artwork that made him decide to continue building his collection when, ten years ago, he reached a turning point. "I had to make a major decision," said Daskalopoulos. "Because my collection had gotten to the point where suddenly you have something that frightens you -- it's big enough to go on, but small enough to stop." It was then that Duchamp's artwork Fountain came up for sale at an auction. "Duchamp's Fountain was the sign for me that I was going to go on collecting. It was 2:00 a.m. in Athens, and I was sitting in the garden, looking at the stars, when I decided to bid."

Sarah Douglas is Senior Correspondent for Art+Auction, Modern Painters, and ARTINFO.

See all of ARTINFO's Frieze-related coverage here.