To map the world in new ways allows us to see it afresh. With its ambitious geographic and historical scope, Frieze Masters has always offered original perspectives on the art of the past. Frieze Masters Talks opens up conversation across generations and disciplines, while the Studio section, which expands this year, approaches historical art through the eyes of practising artists, including Nathalie Du Pasquier, whose remarkable new commission for Frieze Masters magazine is on its cover.

This issue celebrates the global insight of the fair. The Abstract Worlds series explores distinctive approaches to abstraction by post-war artists from Argentina to Korea, focusing on the work of Frederick J. Brown, Nasreen Mohamedi and Anita Payró – all presented in Spotlight– and on leading fi gures of the dansaekhwa movement. Coinciding with the ‘Silk Roads’ exhibition at the British Museum, Debika Ray interviews Shirazeh Houshiary and Nilima Sheikh, both showing in Studio, about the imaginative charge that the Mogao Caves along the ancient trade route continue to exert on artists. Kathryn Murphy considers the endurance of wood as a vital material for sculptors.

In the year of the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary, Turner Prize-nominated artist Pio Abad describes his long-standing fascination with a still life in its collection. The critic and broadcaster Henry Louis Gates, Jr. charts his life in culture – from book-browsing with Romare Bearden to sitting for Kerry James Marshall for a portrait now on view at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. And, as the Warburg Institute in London opens a new gallery, we contemplate the infl uence that its founder, renais sance art historian Aby Warburg, exerts on contemporary art. Warburg tried to map the history of art, but found it was constantly evolving – something we realize, with delight, every year at Frieze Masters.

Welcome to Frieze Masters 2024.

Nathan Clements-Gillespie
Director, Frieze Masters

Thomas Marks,
Guest Editor, Frieze Masters Magazine