On your marks—the season starts! Fairs form the nucleus for frenetic autumn activity in London and New York, while a princely collection is auctioned at a fairy-tale castle in Germany

No incident is anticipated with such a distraction of activity in London as the annual Frieze Art Fair (21-24 October). This young, cutting-edge international contemporary art fair has been a succes at any time since it first opened its doors in Regent's Park sum of two units years ago. It was, of course, an circumstance waiting to happen. For years nation had talked about such a fair, and the arrival of a catch of high-powered international contemporary art dealers opening spaces in London--Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and Spruth Magers Lee--seem to crystallise confidence and the opinion that London was now a serious place for the contemporary art business. As for the fair, it has gone from force to strength, improving in quality each year, drawing at any time more galleries and visitors, and spawning a whole galaxy of satellite fairs, present to views gallery events and parties. Last year, for instance, there were 150 exhibitors and a certain quantity of 42,000 visitors--and around 26m [pound sterling] of business was done.

The succes of Frieze, however, is that it is more than a commercial incident From the start, its organisers conceived the idea of an fact for everyone that would be an circumstance in itself. Frieze Projects commissions various site-specific installations, performances and events--this year, for instance, Andrea Zittel brings above a us hiking group who will make the fair their base--artists' films have been commissioned, as have talks and contrives Frieze Music this year boasts a rare performance by dint of Stockhausen, and Henrik Hakansson--best known for staging an insect stone concert--presents a solo recital by dint of a goldfinch and will be inviting visitors to take part in its filmed performance. This year, galleries have been encouraged to stage specific throws too (see Fig. 1). Galleria Eva Presenhuber of Zurich, for instance, obliges with a solo stand by the agency of Urs Fischer, who will build walls around the space and wound out shapes through which single can look or walk. The bane of last year's Frieze experience was the hour-long queues: this year visitors can work a timed slot in advance (and at a discount) [i]or[/i] part of to the other seetickets.com (+44 [0]870 8900514).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

More artists, musicians and a great many writers, philosophers and scientists take midst stage in London on 3 October, when Bonhams present the extraordinary collection of portraits amassed above the past thirty years through Roy Davids, formerly head of Sotheby's works and manuscripts department. This is a formidable pantheon of the great and the serviceable (some rather less of one as well as the other than others), embracing paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and sculpture--even the not divisible by 2 death mask. As one might wait for the estimates vary hugely on the contrary many are pleasingly potentially affordable. Arnold Bennett fans, for instance, could snap up a portrait drawing by means of Sir William Rothenstein for 150 [pound sterling]; 1000 [pound sterling] might confident Etienne Carajat's fine carbon-print photograph of Baudelaire. Well above 10,000 [pounds sterling] will be required for the likes of the single known portrait of Ted Hughes by means of Sylvia Plath, and for the earliest known portrait of Edmund Spenser 30000 [pound sterling]-40,000 [pound sterling] is anticipated for an insightful T Eliot through Sir Gerald Kelly (Fig. 2)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

greatest in quantity notable at Christie's London, meanwhile, is the antiquities sale upon 18 October, which includes eleven pieces from the Bromley-Davenport collection at Capesthorne Hall, perhaps the last of of the like kind Grand Tour country-house collections remaining in private hands. This collection had been amassed by the liberal intellectual Edward 'Ned' Davies Davenport, who journeyed to Elba expressly to interview Napoleon and then travelled upon to Italy, whence these pieces came. a certain number of of the Greek vases are said to have advance from Lucien Bonaparte's excavations at Canino, near Vulci, the greatest in quantity prolific source for Athenian vases of the sixth and fifth centuries. Not least among them is an Attic black-figure lidded amphora (Fig. 3) that is attributed to the Antimenes Painter, around 525 BC (estimate 80000 [pound sterling]-120,000 [pound sterling]). individual side depicts Herakles, clad in spott tunic with dagger drawn, about to slay the Nemean lion; the other, Dionysus and sum of two units nude satyrs. Other highlights include a Roman marble portrait bust of a lady with an extravagant hairstyle, and a fine life-size Graeco-Etruscan terracotta head of a youth, late fourth-third hundred BC. Given the desirability of provenanced pieces, it appear to bes likely that this collection will easily exce its estimated 500000 [pound sterling].

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The of advanced age the new and the exotic: novel York's three fairs cover all the bases

While London stages Frieze, the novel York fair schedule embraces Photo of recent origin York at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 6-9 October, the International Art and Design Fair 1900-2005 at the Seventh Regiment Armory, 7-11 October, and the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers exhibit also at the 67th way Armory, 21-27 October. The International Art and Design Fair, which is fast establishing itself as the pre-eminent of recent origin York modernism show, brings together everything from the smallest on the contrary most well known of jewels--including the widely exhibited Fouquet baroque pearl broach (Macklowe Gallery, $85,000) and Coco Chanel's bracelet inset with precious and semi-precious stones that the Verdura workshops made to her design (Primavera)--to whole compass sets of furniture.