In London, Art and Commerce Scratch Backs

According to the New York Timess,  “I thought it was some kind of strange feminist piece,” said Jessica Stockdale, a 21-year-old photography student, pondering “Untitled (Original)” by the American artist Richard Prince at the Frieze Art Fair. “But I do like her boots.”

The boots in question were adorning the shapely legs of the skimpily attired young woman in the installation, whose job is to rub Mr. Prince’s bright yellow, souped-up 1970 Dodge Challenger provocatively with a cloth while the whole thing rotates on a silver disk. While the Frieze program describes Mr. Prince’s work as offering “the ultimate vehicle in which to pursue the combined fantasies of upward and lateral mobility,” it is equally true to say that interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

“I like the color,” said Janice Thompson, who is 43 and a recent art school graduate. “The fact that it can be driven away — that’s important. The use of the iconography of the girl; for me it would be like the old masters in some ways, especially because she’s quite ... ”

Busty?

“Yes, that was the word I was looking for,” Ms. Thompson said.

So it goes, the search for meaning at Frieze, Britain’s largest contemporary art fair, now in its fifth year. The influential event opened on Wednesday for the usual coterie of serious buyers and collectors, but let in the rest of the world on Thursday: students, artists, tourists, gawkers and members of the noncollecting public eager to take in the riotous jumble of art, even if they were not always sure what it was.

At one point a tour guide — there are tour guides at the fair, and art appreciators can hire private ones — herded his charges, a group of American women, past a work called “Project for Some Hallucinations.”

“This tree is by ... ,” he said, rifling through his notes.

In fact, it was by Lara Favaretto, an Italian artist who had invited Queen Elizabeth II to visit the fair. The queen had declined; Ms. Favaretto had affixed the letter of regret to a tree as an exercise in “living surrounded by the empty set of a show, from which the main character is missing,” she explains in the Frieze catalog.

The women tried to keep up. “Is this a real tree?” one asked.

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