World's apart: Two favorites at London's art fairs

Whew. It's just about over.
For the first weeks of October, art fairs auctions, gallery private views, lectures, conferences, films and museum stacked up like planes waiting to land at Heathrow. Everyone wants to capitalize on the international hordes who come to town for Frieze, the contemporary and cutting- edge art fair. There is more going on than anybody can see or do. I didn't bother trying to "keep up." Enough that I kept awake. I did not go to Frieze this year. This is not because last year it was overwhelming but rather that there was just too little, by a lot. I am told that ideas are what art contemporary art is all about (aka Concept). There didn't seem to be any new ones or even delightful or provocative slightly used ones. So I skipped Frieze and began with  PAD  (Pavilion of Art and Design) in its big white tent in Berkeley Square and then checked out Frieze Masters, the most ambitious because home to high quality, wide ranging dealers in everything from antiquities to modern with objects, photographs, paintings, sculpture, jewels.  It two is in a huge white tent this one not far from the zoo in Regent's Park (I will duck comparisons well maybe not. Frieze fits not so much because of what is for sale but the atmosphere..)  PAD was disappointing. There was too little art and too much not- great French furniture and lighting--just the thing for a desperate interior decorator or his/her client but otherwise boring. However: One object was a honey. If price were not object (I didn't ask but I don't have to to know it is stratospheric), it would now be mine.

  Sitting all by itself in a glass case in the center of the Siegelson stand (high jewellery dealers from NY), was a Cartier Mystery Clock.  Its base is made of green marble--the appropriate color as it happens. A circular, sterling- silver frame is, engraved with the Roman numbers 1 to 12. In between a short lines indicating minutes.  This rings a shallow pool of water on which floats a little turtle. There are no visible minute or second hands; there are no visible clock works. The turtle just floats yet somehow it is not entirely idle; it does manage to tell the time.  This Cartier Turtle Mystery Clock  It was made in Paris around 1927. It has beauty and wit to which is added a dollop of childlike wonder. How is the turtle able to tell the time?  Answer: The water keeps it buoyant while the magnetic hour- hand -- out of sight underneath the silver bottom of the pond--directs its swimming movements.



Frieze Masters gets better and better. There was lots to enjoy yet, here too, a single object stood out--for me. It could not have been from a more different time and place in almost every sense.

Along the width of the back wall of the stand of Tokyo's London Gallery was a gold- leaf, six- fold Japanese screen. In front of it--at its midpoint= was a pedestal on which perched a wood guardian figure holding an elegant, undulating bow. At about two feet tall, he was sculpted from a single hunk of cypress wood during the Heian Period--probably sometime in the 11th century. Probably one of a pair of attendants flanking a Shinto Deity, he does not look in the slightest bit marital.  And yet the intense quiet conveyed by his bearing manages leaves no doubt that in an instant he could pull an arrow from his quiver (it makes no difference at all that is is no longer present) and see off anyone meaning to harm his god. During the Heian Period Nara was the capital of Japan; it is when sculpture in that island country reached its height. By the morning of the fair's opening day this guardian had a new home.