http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/art_news/put_downs_and_suck_ups_matthew_collings_weekly_ventings_on_the_art_world_no_41_sign_up_to_my_visual_art_campaign/6073
http://www.whitecube.com/artists/chapman/iii/
I very much liked a work by the Chapman Brothers at the White Cube stand, which was a spin-off from their recent re-make of 'Hell', their sculpture featuring tiny Nazis torturing each other, which was burned in a warehouse fire in 2004. (The re-make, commissioned by multi-billionaire Francois Pinault, owner of Louis Vuitton, for seven million pounds, was called 'Fucking Hell'. The work at Frieze was called 'Kapital is Kaput? Ya? Nein, Dumkopf!') I like the intelligence of all these various manifestations of the Chapmans' Nazi theme, which I don't think is about real Nazis but about contemporary life, the way we now ask art to express society's fascination with certain social taboos coming to an end. I like the Chapmans' references to art history, their eye for visual richness, the way they make the layout of their detailed scenario of figures, landscape and buildings enjoyable, even though the actions represented are disgusting. (Endless variants on blackly humorous suffering and sadism.) They really are geniuses, and it's rare in the art world to have something that is genuinely carefully done, clever, funny, entertaining and has a bit of attitude. Usually it's much more pathetic, and you just get used to no one complaining.