Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 8 2025

Karen K. Ho discusses the possible consequences of the coup-like tabula rasa of the second Trump era at Artnews: ‘Experts offered ARTnews a bleak picture of the year to come, saying that the tariffs will increase confusion and operating expenses, shift buying behavior among collectors, as well as hurt small and mid-size galleries the most due to limited resources. ‘If you're spending $10 million on a work of art and you're paying $1 million or $2 million, or even $2.5 million in tariffs because it was imported, you'd say, ‘No way. Forget it. It's a write-off of $2.5 million. I can't do that. I'll go for real estate, or I'll go for stocks and shares,' Philip Hoffman, founder and CEO of the Fine Art Group, told ARTnews. “It'll be the kiss of death.”’

George Nelson of Artnews assesses the results of Sotheby's debut auction in Saudi Arabia: ‘The results were like the two-part evening sale's lineup: a mixed bag. The house took in $17.3 million (estimate: $14 million–$20 million) across 117 lots, with works of fine art, luxury objects, and sports memorabilia among them. However, the value of the house's foray into the desert kingdom was never going to be confined to the depth of bidding alone. The historic outdoor auction served as a portal into the Saudi art and luxury markets (terra incognita for international auction houses), and it will be appraised against the long-term success of Sotheby's in the country.’

The upcoming marketing of the collection of Leonard Riggio, co-founder of Barnes & Noble, who died in 2024, is the subject of an article by Daniel Cassady at Artnews, Daniel Cassady takes the upcoming auction of the collection of Leonard Riggio, co-founder of Barnes & Noble, who died in 2024, as an opportunity to shed light on the approach of Christie's and Sotheby's in such cases: ‘It is commonly perceived that the highest number wins, whether it be the highest guarantee or the highest share deal, but I think that that's sort of an oversimplification,’ Mari-Claudia Jiménez, former chairman and president of Sotheby's Americas division and head of global business development told ARTnews. [...] ‘Sometimes the highest number on paper isn't actually the highest number when you look at the contractual terms that go along with it,’ she said. ‘It's not necessarily apples and apples sometimes when you're looking at a Christie's and a Sotheby's deal.’

Christie's is hosting the first auction that will only sell AI art. Not everyone is enthusiastic about it, as Kyle Wiggers found out for Techcrunch. He points to an open letter, which has received over 6,000 signatures in a week. George Nelson introduces the initiators of the appeal and the catalogue at Artnews: ‘Artists Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, two signatories of the letter. They are taking AI companies to court over claims that the firms‘ image generation tools have used their work without permission. The auction comprises 20 lots spanning five decades across a range of mediums. A quarter of the works are digitally native, such as NTFs, while the others are physical, including sculpture, works on paper, paintings, and light boxes.’ Ursula Scheer explains the reason for the outcry in the FAZ: ‘Why all the fuss right now about an online auction of twenty AI-created artworks starting at Christie's in New York on 20 February? Because the issue has now really taken off, as the emergence of Deepseek from China and the AI summit in Paris have made clear to everyone. For many artists, AI is not the next promising IT revolution, but an attack on their intellectual property, since the vast majority of them do not belong to the economically highly prosperous. The auction and the call for bids therefore go beyond the current case, notes Marcus Woeller in the WeLT: ‘The dispute over copyright in connection with artificial intelligence has thus also reached the art trade. Like musicians and writers, visual artists have good reason to fear that their creative achievements will be imitated or even learned by AI, thereby also causing them financial losses. However, it is hardly helpful that Refik Anadol, of all people, mocked his fellow artists on platform X for their ‘doomsday hysteria driven by dark spirits’. It's not all that bad, finds Hanno Rauterberg in DIE ZEIT, adopting a Marie Antoinette-like approach: ‘Appropriation Art, the art of cultural appropriation, became a form of play in its own right, a way of standing out in the canon of artists with gestures of empowerment and incorporation. Modernism has always been about pastiche, mimicry, mash-up – and it was not uncommon for artists to feel uncomfortably imitated, if not robbed, by other artists. In this respect, the current furore seems a little exaggerated.’ Exactly, let them eat cake! The discussion is largely lacking in differentiation. After all, there are quite a few artists who train their AI with their own data, such as Refik Anadol. Meanwhile, Beeple, who is now thought to have a nine-figure fortune, is making fun of the protesting artists at Elon Musk.

Reporting from New Delhi, Gina Thomas is a week late with the FAZ: ‘The India Art Fair also reflects the dynamic development of the art market. It is supported by established collectors, a new, economically successful class of buyers and the growing international recognition of Indian art. With 120 participants, the current edition of the fair is the largest to date. The participation of renowned international exhibitors such as Galleria Continua, Carpenters Workshop and Indigo + Madder, as well as the presence of curators from institutions such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Haus der Kunst in Munich, Tate in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, is a testament to its reputation. The Lisson Gallery in London, which has not exhibited at the fair since 2012, and David Zwirner from New York, who has not been here since the pandemic began, have decided to return.’

In the FAZ of 15 February, Brita Sachs reports on two gallery closures in Munich for reasons of age: ‘In the city's gallery landscape, which includes around 50 addresses, there is movement due to closures and new openings. Karin Sachs ended her work with a heavy heart, because for her “the gallery was the fulfilment of a dream”. But at 84 years of age. [...] Rupert Walser also retired for reasons of age, after the specialist in monochrome and radical painting Antonio Calderara brought Dadamaino, Marcia Hafif and Phil Sims to Munich, as well as Inge Dick, Thomas Bechinger, Christiane Möbus and many others.’

The well-known novelist Christoph Peters has published a new novel in which the Berlin gallerist couple Lena and Johann König recognise themselves and see themselves portrayed unfavourably, explain Marlene Knobloch and Thomas E. Schmidt in Die Zeit. Daniel Völzke explains in Monopol what the court has to clarify: ‘The court must now decide how many readers are able to recognise the real or only supposed role models of the characters. Can a literary text be at the same time not true enough, so that these models are defamed and slandered by art? The court will decide whether plaintiffs can actually be harmed by literature, that is, whether and to what extent art can affect reality. Of course, specific details will have to be discussed: What similarities are there between the characters in the novel and the plaintiffs? And if there are similarities, is Johann König, after the publication of his autobiography ‘Blind Gallerist’ and his appearances on TV talk shows, a public figure who must accept becoming the subject of critical and distorted representation? This kind of truth is of interest to a court.’ Marc Reichwein points out in Die Welt. The legal argumentation in the application for a ban seems somewhat brash where it claims that the relationship between the original and the copy is unambiguous and then acts as if every fictional embellishment had to be identified. The insinuation that the reader of a novel could ‘take all descriptions at face value and assign them to reality’ misunderstands the essence of all art. A novel does not have to and cannot provide explicit information or even add footnotes where something corresponds to reality and where it does not. Personalised depictions in non-fiction books have due diligence requirements that are subject to freedom of the press and freedom of expression. A novel that only borrows from real-life models without depicting them does not have to relate to a reality that it does not depict at all. In this respect, one can and must seriously doubt whether a work of art that allows itself freedoms that go far beyond a supposedly recognisable reality can be frivolously banned by the courts.’ The Königs' understandable impulse not to have to put up with another actual or supposed public humiliation could, however, backfire by triggering the Streisand effect. Without the current publicity, the book is unlikely to achieve the prominence it undoubtedly now has in the art world. The author and publisher could hardly have wished for better publicity. And for the gallery owners, there is hardly a better outcome to the scandal: if they lose the case, they will be disgraced; if they win, they will have set a precedent for gagging artistic freedom. Neither outcome will do much for their image.

The Viennese gallerist Ursula Krinzinger is celebrating her 85th birthday, as reported by the APA news agency. In the Handelsblatt, WELTKUNST editor-in-chief Lisa Zeitz congratulates Frankfurt gallerist Peter Femfert (DIE GALERIE) on his 80th birthday (DIE GALERIE).

Walter Robinson, artist and former editor-in-chief of the American Artnet Magazine, is dead. His friend, former colleague and fellow critic Jerry Saltz mourns him at Artnet, while Alex Greenberger dedicates a detailed obituary to him at Artnews. In the New York Times, Deborah Solomon writes: ‘It was never clear whether Mr. Robinson thought of himself as an artist who wrote about art or a writer who painted. Rather than settling on either, he seemed to relish his identity as a double agent.’