Kobel's
Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 43 2025

The fair duo Frieze London and Frieze Masters are returning to their old strengths with new formats, observes Gina Thomas for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "White Cube, Gagosian, Thaddaeus Ropac and Hauser & Wirth may generate the highest sales with the stars they represent. However, Frieze London is also keen to promote smaller, partly subsidised galleries with experimental art in the “Focus” section. This is intended to maintain the “Britart” dynamic to which the fair owes its creation 23 years ago. [...] Reports that the London art market is on its last legs should not be trusted." George Nelson summarises the sales reports, especially from the major galleries, for Artnews.

At Frieze Masters, Vivienne Chow identified a trend for Artnet (possibly paywall): "A fresh wave of young dealers and collectors is breathing new life into old art, defying market trends and generational expectations. Against the backdrop of a cooling contemporary market, pre-war and historical works are finding eager new audiences. Many of them are under 40 thanks to accessible price points, innovative presentations, and crossover programming that places historical objects alongside modern ones."

Participating in Frieze London is particularly challenging for young galleries, as Kate Brown learned for Artnet (paywall possible): "Five dealers said that the subsidies were smaller this year. Frieze said that it lowered prices for Focus from £313 ($419) per square metre in 2024 to £276 ($370) this year, but one dealer told a different story. According to an email I saw, the prices actually went up, from £276 per square metre to £310 per square metre. (Frieze did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Regardless, because of the decrease in subsidies, galleries had to pay more—around £2,000 ($2,677) more, in some cases. ‘It's a lot of money for an emerging gallery,’ said another dealer, who understandably asked for anonymity. Shipping to the UK has gotten more expensive since Brexit, this person said, ‘and sometimes it still feels like you're the entertainment for the secondary-market darlings.’ One young dealer who did Focus last year said that collectors have now ‘figured out’ the new floor plan, and that many headed directly to the veterans in the back this time. This dealer was less happy with their results today than the first day of 2024.

George Nelson of Artnews also asked a few more questions: "A few who didn't want to be named said they were up against it, and at least three said they hadn't sold anything at all. The pressure is on, especially when the smallest booth in the section (260 square feet) costs £6,750 ($9,000), one dealer told ARTnews. It's not all doom and gloom, though. Several of the 35 Focus galleries reported strong sales by the end of Wednesday. [...] ‘The feeling among the non-UK dealers here in the Focus section, at least the ones I've spoken to, is that it's becoming a very local market, despite the locals trying to communicate the opposite,’ Diego Diez, the gallery's director, told ARTnews. Take that how you will.”

Stephanie Dieckvoss sees the Frieze Group moving into the entertainment industry in the Handelsblatt: "They're playing it safe – the organisers want to fill the fair. The new owner, American Ari Emanuel, has spun off the Frieze brand (with seven fairs, an art newspaper and two exhibition venues) from the Endeavor company and merged it with a number of tennis tournaments as “live events”. This Americanisation is not only noticeable among the exhibitors this year, where American galleries are becoming increasingly prominent, but also in the marketing of the fair as entertainment. Guests are allowed in before the VIP opening. At the Masters, De Beers invites visitors to an immersive introduction to the “mythological origins of diamonds”. And tickets to visit the fair on Friday, two days after the VIP opening, cost £130 for a combined ticket. Without a tour." There is a small but significant difference between the events in Emanuel's portfolio: while tennis players receive high fees for their appearances, the protagonists at art fairs have to pay. They are in the process of mutating from customers to commodities and still being asked to pay.

Meanwhile, the empire of Frieze acquirer Ari Emanuel continues to grow. A report by Alex Werpin for the Hollywood Reporter gives an idea of the size and direction of the group: "Ari Emanuel has officially launched his new holding company, which will house many of the assets that used to be a part of Endeavor Group Holdings. The new company is called MARI, and will house a number of significant tennis tournaments, including the Miami Open presented by Itaú and Mutua Madrid Open, as well as the Mubadala Abu Dhabi Open, Mubadala Citi DC Open, SP Open, and a number of other exhibition tennis events. It also includes Frieze, the arts organisation that Emanuel agreed to buy earlier this year, as well as a majority stake in Barrett-Jackson, the automotive auction house and lifestyle brand. The deals closed on Wednesday in conjunction with MARI's launch."

Susanne Schreiber reports a surprising piece of news for the Handelsblatt from the art and antiques fair Highlights in Munich: ‘The first-time exhibitor is Henri Neuendorf, one of the sons of Artnet founder Hans Neuendorf. He works in New York as an art dealer, currently without gallery space – who would want to take on such fixed costs in these times? Because fairs no longer require a shop and a certain number of exhibitions, the 36-year-old will now be participating in fairs in Europe.’ Eva Karcher brings a touch of Baby Schimmerlos from the fair in Munich to Berlin for the Tagesspiegel: ‘The illustrious, often aristocratic Munich society that strolled through the aisles of the exhibition tent during the preview enjoyed the high-calibre mix of furniture, porcelain, jewellery, silver, carpets, paintings, sculptures and photographs from the Gothic period to the present day.’ Brita Sachs also praises the event in the FAZ: ‘One cannot praise enough how consistently Munich Highlights cultivates the interplay between old and modern art. Since the fair first pitched its tent in the courtyard of the Munich Residenz in 2010, audiences have enjoyed the breadth of art from the Gothic to the present day, which is now lacking at most other events.’

Relief spreads after the evening auctions in London, and Elisa Carollo rejoices in the Observer: "Kicking off the action, Christie's 20th/21st Century London Evening Sale on 15 October achieved a robust £106,925,400 ($142,852,000), marking the auction house's best Frieze Week evening sale in more than seven years. The total was up 30 per cent from last year, with 92 per cent sold by lot and 90 per cent sold by value. [...] Led by a £17.6 million Francis Bacon, Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction closed at $63.5 million. While the total was less than half of Christie’s the night before, the comparison needs context: this was Sotheby’s third major London evening sale since March—whereas it was Christie’s first of the season.”

The sale of the auction house Bonhams by private equity firm Epiris to credit manager Pemberton Asset Management is reported by George Nelson at Artnews and in more detail by Artlyst.

Roula Khalaf investigates why the Chinese auction market still provides such unreliable figures for the Financial Times: "Auction industry experts and participants are perplexed as to why the level of unpaid works remains so high, and why auction houses within China continue to deal with clients who fail to make payments. None of the major Chinese auction houses contacted by the Financial Times for this story offered comment on the issue. Wong, the former Sotheby's chair, suggests that, for some in the industry, registering a few bogus sales can help to create hype for an artist. Others say that China's legal environment makes it difficult and time-consuming to sue buyers who don't cough up. China's smaller auction houses, meanwhile, are reluctant to disclose when a sale falls through for fear of harming overall market sentiment. In other cases, auction houses may agree to offer flexible or extended payment terms to help entice potential buyers, but in times of economic hardship some buyers can get cold feet, go bankrupt or do more research on the work that leads them to change their minds before completing payment.

I read the new Artprice report ‘The Contemporary Art Market 2025’ for Monopol.

The luxury goods market is picking up again, reports Angelina Rascouet at Bloomberg (paywall): ‘LVMH sales unexpectedly returned to growth in the third quarter as shoppers splurged on Moët & Chandon Champagne and Dior perfumes, suggesting a persistent slump in luxury demand is easing.’

The current market environment is favourable for corporate acquisitions, believes Rüdiger Weng, who is extremely liquid with his WFA AG thanks to the sale of Artnet shares, in an interview with Gereon Kruse from boersengefluester: "The prerequisite for such a deal is that we find a company that will take us directly forward. Structurally, too. The timing seems right and there are promising negotiations. I hope that we will be able to announce the completion of the deal before the end of this year. Then it will also be easier to explain how we envisage the reorientation of the company. [...] The valuations of companies that can be bought at the moment are considerably lower than they were three or four years ago. That plays right into our hands. I believe we are the only art company in Germany that can post such high profits in 2025. And I see relatively little competition around us. I am therefore optimistic that we will manage to secure one or more deals that will lead to a significant positive turnaround for us as early as 2026 and in the future."

It's never too early to start thinking about Christmas gift ideas. In his book ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon’, Doug Woodham recounts how a clique of financially powerful market players built Jean-Michel Basquiat into a profitable brand. Felix Salmon reviews the book at Bloomberg (paywall). "The art market is small and highly susceptible to manipulation, and Woodham shows how Basquiat's posthumous career was carefully managed not only by his father, as the executor of his estate, but also by a tiny group of well-connected investor-collectors, foremost among them Jose Mugrabi, Peter Brant and the late Enrico Navarra. These men and a handful of others, including Basquiat's former dealer Bruno Bischofberger, bid in the market whenever prices looked weak. They were willing and able to buy his work in bulk."

Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer struck a harsh tone at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but this time in favour of culture, as Alexander Cammann reports in ZEIT: "Weimer sounded the attack on digital corporations, momentarily reminiscent of a speech by Heidi Reichinnek. Weimer spoke of the “intellectual vampirism” that “American and Chinese tech giants” were practising with the development of artificial intelligence, because they were simply exploiting human works for their own gain. AI would thus strike at the heart of literature, mow down the much-celebrated blue flower and degrade literature to a commodity. “Autonomous art becomes prey”." Now he just has to translate his pithy words into policy.

In Ireland, the basic income for 2,000 artists, which was introduced on a trial basis in 2022, is now being established permanently as Basic Income for the Arts (BIA), reports Harrison Jacobs in his article for Artnews, which is backed up by many further links. Hello, Mr Weimer!

The new Berlin Modern museum is expected to cost only 507 million euros, instead of the 526.5 million euros previously calculated, reports dpa. And it is also expected to open just one year later than planned, in 2029. According to a report in Der Spiegel (with agency material), Hamburg does not want to be outdone and is topping the federal capital with a coup. It wants to take over half of René Benko's Elbtower ruin for a mere £595 million and finish building it: ‘The Natural History Museum will use around 46,000 square metres on the lower twelve floors and in the large public area.’ This would mean that the Hanseatic city would not only have spent more tax money than Berlin, but would also have built the largest museum in Germany. According to its own information, the previous front-runner, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, only has 45,000 square metres at its main location. The Louvre in Paris is the global front-runner with 73,000 square metres. A sense of proportion has always been a Hanseatic virtue.

Patrick Bahners attempts to classify the complex restitution dispute across two jurisdictions (Germany and the USA) over the remaining paintings by Piet Mondrian in the Krefeld Museum in the form of a commentary for the FAZ. This does not make the ‘legalese’ he criticises any easier to understand.

Georg Leyrer reports in the Kurier on the awarding of the Austrian State Prize for Art Criticism to his colleague Michael Huber: "In front of companions, colleagues, representatives of the art and museum world, as well as friends and family [...] Michael Huber expressed his joy and gratitude in the Praterateliers – for the fact that “the jury recognised me in my role as a listener and translator”. For the art biotope, which has “developed excellently” in Austria, deserves “not only pats on the back, claqueurs and heartfelt posters, but also a fair and serious counterpart”." Hello, Mr Weimer!