The art world falls in love with Courtney

“Live Through This” may well be the perfect mantra for any art fair, but Courtney Love has proved to be the stand-out star of Frieze week so far, with the unveiling of the first ever exhibition of her own work at Fred Torres Collaborations, entitled “And She’s Not Even Pretty”. These surprisingly compelling (and surprisingly expensive, starting at $12,000) watercolours and works on paper portray the star at her most emotionally vulnerable and give the artist Karen Kilimnik—currently being much fêted at Frieze and by the collector Peter Brant at his Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, Connecticut—a serious run for her money. It’s hardly surprising that a top-tier celebrity crew turned out for her VIP opening on Wednesday night, including Jude Law and Fred Armisen. But the real shocker here was to find la rockeuse clutching a photocopied version of Clement Greenberg’s Art and Culture in her delicate fingers. For who would have guessed that Courtney was actually related to the great art critic, her grandmother, the writer Paula Fox, being married to his brother Martin Greenberg. While Love declares herself a committed fan of the criticism of her great-uncle, the stern formalist himself might have been less reciprocal in his views on her work, having famously gravely proclaimed that “kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times”.