Andrew Graham-Dixon at the modern art supermarket

THE CONTEMPORARY Art Society Market, which opens at 11 o'clock this morning at Smiths Galleries in Covent Garden, is the British art world's equivalent of the January sales. Although the CAS's Organising Secretary, Petronilla Silver, insists that it is "by no means an annual institution", the market's popu-larity over the last three years sug-gests that it may well become one. It has already brought the selling tactics of the supermarket into a British commercial gallery.

At the CAS Market prices are clearly marked, and any work that is bought is immediately removed from the wall (to be instantly re-placed with another by one of the gallery assistants-cum-shelf fill-ers), wrapped and placed in a car-rier bag for instant removal by the proud purchaser. You can buy an Anthony Caro drawing as uncere-moniously as a tin of baked beans (the market's sponsor this year, appropriately enough, is Sainsbury's).  

Artists are invited to exhibit by CAS and the maximum price for any work is .£600. This means that —especially in the case of works by some of the more estab-lished artists exhibiting, like Caro, Richard Long, John Hoyland, or Richard Wentworth — bargains are definitely to be had (although all these artists are represented by lesser works, small pieces or drawings, prints and sketches that might not normally find their way on to the walls of their dealers' galleries). There is also a restric-tion on the size of the works on sale, which must not be larger than three feet by three feet — a domestic scale which means that buyers will not have to agonise over rearrangements of furniture.

Although the market does contain a significant quantity of work by commercially established artists it is not conceived primarily as a showcase for them, but as...

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