Adrian Searle, in a somewhat inebriated tone—narrates the typically surreal opening day of the Frieze art fair in London today. A slide show captures some of what Searle mentions but sadly leaves out the art involving bowlsful of foxes, foot massages, and private chambers for smokers.

Here, eight British artists talk about the market’s affect on their work, along with lists of the most expensive living and dead artists in the world.

Even artists who work in the time-honoured tradition of painting are wary of being sucked into market-led thinking. Landscape painter George Shaw likes to keep his work on a relatively intimate scale and refuses to rev up his output by hiring a team of assistants. “Just because you use the toilet doesn’t mean that you have to live in the sewer,” he says. Shaw lives and works in Devon, one of many painters (both Doig and Chris Ofili now live in Trinidad) who has left London to avoid the white noise of the market.

^{Shaw’s Scenes from the Passion: Late 2002, in the collection of the Tate}