Only the most fashionable have been invited to the first-night party of London's Frieze Art Fair 2004 on October 14th. It will be packed with art lovers, collectors and celebrities (Jude Law, an actor, and Kate Moss, a model, are promised), and will be followed by a weekend of champagne breakfasts, impromptu performance art and lavish receptions to encourage punters to fork out for works by the hippest of contemporary artists—Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney, Jake and Dinos Chapman and the like. "Art is money-sexy-social-climbing fantastic," said the late Thomas Hoving, ex-director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. That wasn't true in London's staid art market until a few years ago. But now a happy conjunction of all those virtues means that the business is both booming and hip.
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