By Robin Pogrebin
LONDON — The art dealer Robert Mnuchin was testing his theory of parallels between the painter Willem de Kooning and the sculptor John Chamberlain by juxtaposing their work in his booth at Frieze Masters, the major art fair that opened here this week.
“You’ll see the yellow here and the yellow there,” Mr. Mnuchin said, grabbing a few minutes to sit down amid the flurry of visitors at Frieze’s preview on Wednesday. “We’re fascinated by their mutual interest in color and shapes and abstraction.”
Mr. Mnuchin is planning to pair the artists at his Upper East Side gallery in an exhibition opening on Nov. 2 that features de Kooning paintings from the 1970s and ’80s and Chamberlain sculptures from the 1960s and ’70s.
“You never see them side by side,” Mr. Mnuchin said, pulling out images of Chamberlain’s 1964 sculpture “Spike” and an untitled de Kooning from 1977, as well as Chamberlain’s “Miss Lacy Pink,” from 1962, and de Kooning’s “Screams of Children Come From Seagulls,” from 1975. “You look at these and say, ‘Of course,’” Mr. Mnuchin said.