Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 10 2025

It's hard to grasp the Outsider Art Fair with conventional standards, so Tessa Solomon from Artnews tries a different approach: ‘The best and worst of the Outsider Art Fair, which opened to the public Thursday night, seems to come down to clutter. There's the material excess routinely spilling out of the booths, which sometimes feels captivating, like exposing the machinery of a live mind; and other times gratingly self-conscious, like those nouveau-old antique boutiques. This is a markedly subdued edition, at least compared to last year, but the issue stands. Since its start in 1993, the fair has become known for noise, but in this context, chaos can be equated with an outstanding imagination. It's a consequence, I think, of the confusion over what constitutes authenticity in a market-first industry.’

To a belated positive assessment of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair comes Daghild Bartels in the Handelsblatt: ‘Among the numerous museum directors and curators who travelled to the event were representatives from Tate Modern London, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and US museums from Atlanta, Chicago and Denver. German institutions have held back so far, but now Frankfurt was represented by the Schirn and the Museum für Moderne Kunst. The desire to expand the collections, which have so far focused rather monotonously on Western art, to include art from the African continent, seems to be spreading everywhere.’

I present the new Art Basel Medal of Merit at Artmagazine.

Mixed signals were sent by the contemporary art mid-season sales at Sotheby's and Christie's, according to Karen K. Ho from Artnews: ‘[Art consultant Dane] Jensen said the results of mid-season sales can be rocky, especially in a fragmented, “spotty” art market that currently privileges Abstract Expressionism and figurative painting. ‘People will show up for the really great stuff, and then anything less, it makes it a tough, tough sale,’ he said.’

In the FAZ, Anne Reimers reports on the brave whistling in the forest in the run-up to the spring auctions in London: ‘Gill does not see the ‘non-dom’ regulation, which comes into force in the UK in April and obliges all residents to pay tax on their foreign income there, as a threat to the local auction market. He says that the UK and London are so attractive that well-heeled waylayers will be offset by new arrivals. Gill explains that the targeted turnover for this season is significantly lower than last year's because the supply pent up by the pandemic between 2022 and 2024 has now been released. Nevertheless, not a single lot with an estimate in the double-digit millions will be called in London in March.’

Sotheby's is trying to boost the Old Master market, which has gained attraction at least according to PR, with the sale of the Saunders collection (estimated at $80-120 million), as Daniel Cassady reports at Artnews : ‘The collection, consisting of 60 paintings spanning the 16th to early 19th centuries, includes works from across Europe, ranging from German Renaissance pieces to Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masterpieces. Among the highlights are exceptional still-life paintings by Jan Davidsz. De Heem and Luis Meléndez, portraiture by Sir Thomas Lawrence and Frans Hals, and a landscape by Francesco Guardi.’

Is the idea of investment funds for ‘woke’ art really sustainable while the largest market, the US, is becoming increasingly fascist? Margaret Carrigan presents various providers at Artnet: ‘For instance, Arte Collectum, a fund based in Stockholm, is capitalizing on what it calls the “megatrend of revisionism” sweeping both museums and the market in the last decade. The firm invests in works by women and other historically or geographically marginalized artists. Its first fund raised €20 million ($20.8 million) in 2022, with which it bought 46 works by artists such as Olga de Amaral, Howardena Pindell, Wook-kyung Choi, and Michael (Corinne) West.’

Sotheby's owner Patrick Drahy seems to have saved his debt-ridden telecommunications company Altice for the time being, reports Reuters: ‘One of the sources said the agreement will involve a debt reduction of 8.6 billion euros ($9 billion), bringing consolidated net debt to 15.5 billion euros. Creditors will receive a 45% stake in total, including 31% for secured creditors. ‘(Founder) Patrick Drahi manages to retain control after a year-long battle,’ said the source.’ The debt reduction alone is roughly equivalent to the total value of the Continental European art market in one year.

In a press release, Artnet AG celebrates the outcome of its Annual General Meeting. The content of the report prompted Dirk Hagemann, the representative of DSW - Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz (a German private investors' association), who was present at the AGM, to make a statement. Immediately before the AGM, Artnet's editor-in-chief Naomi Rea conducted a PR interview with her boss. I will be publishing a detailed report in this week's Handelsblatt.

Frank Kurzhals analysed a survey (PDF) conducted by the Hamburg Association of Galleries for the Handelsblatt: ‘In any case, the study found that 48 per cent of the highest-spending buyer groups, who value Hamburg as a place to buy art, come from Hamburg. The price segment in which most sales are made is between 1,000 and 5,000 euros for 51 per cent of the galleries, while 26 per cent generate most of their sales in the 5,000 to 10,000 euro range and three per cent make sales between 50,000 and 100,000 euros. The majority of buyers of the works (58 per cent) are between 50 and 65 years old. This is to be expected, but in perspective it is certainly a problem; the younger ones, who are summarily classified in the study as between 35 and 50 years old, make up 37 per cent.’ However, the fact that only 55 per cent of the galleries state that they are profitable is alarming.

‘Why the art world has to talk about poverty,’ explains Larissa Kikol, at Monopol: ’It's fear. It weighs heavily on everyone. Admitting that you can't make a living as an artist is a big taboo. And this is also a paradox: because it affects the majority of artists. And yet everything is done to hide it from the outside world. The bright, chic art world consists of illusions that are only reality for a small elite. But almost everyone wants to maintain the shiny façade.’

The market for luxury watches is picking up again, says Markus Hinterberger in the Handelsblatt: ‘[Carsten] Keller is certain that the success of cryptocurrencies has contributed to the fact that more watches are being bought again worldwide. He is also the head of Chrono24, the world's largest platform for luxury timepieces. ‘The recent crypto boom after the US presidential election has further fuelled the market,’ says the expert. He adds that in the past, a strong crypto market has been a reliable indicator of increased demand for luxury watches. Another trend on the scene also has its origins in the foreign exchange market: watches from Japanese sellers are gaining in popularity. On the one hand, this is due to the weaker Japanese currency, the yen, says Keller, and on the other hand, to the fact that Japan is known for its distinctive watch culture

Bavaria is just one example of how the handling of Nazi-looted art could be improved, writes Christiane Fricke in the Handelsblatt, who is also sceptical about the future: ‘Now the arbitration will probably come this year. At least that's what they're hoping for in Berlin. But there are obstacles along the way. Not all federal states have signed the administrative agreement yet. Two are still missing: Saxony and Thuringia, according to informed sources. Then the individual municipal museums must also submit a so-called ‘standing offer’; in other words, they must explicitly agree to arbitration proceedings. At the moment, the only option left for the municipal umbrella organisations is to work towards their cultural property-preserving institutions doing so as well.’

The novel ‘Innerstädtischer Tod’ by Christoph Peters may continue to be published, reports Hannah Pilarczyk in Spiegel with agency material: ‘The chamber assumes that Johann and Lena König are recognisable to at least some of the readers on the basis of the similarities between them and the novel characters Konrad and Eva-Kristin Raspe as described in the application. However, this alone is not sufficient to assume an infringement of personal rights,’ the decision states. The balance between the personal rights of the applicants and artistic freedom therefore falls in favour of Luchterhand Literaturverlag as the publisher of the work.’ According to the report, the Königs' lawyers wanted to appeal against the decision. Dirk Knipphals is pleased with the ruling in the taz: ’A ban on the novel would have had serious consequences for the writing of current political novels as a whole. Any allusion to real events could have led to legal action by people who felt unfavourably portrayed. In this respect, the court's decision is very welcome.’

The closure of the Daniel Blau Gallery in Munich is reported on by Sabinde Spindler in Handelsblatt and Brita Sachs in the FAZ: ‘Both his parents and Daniel Blau himself have been living in Salzburg for some time. Because it is almost impossible to close a gallery ‘elegantly’ in Germany, as the remaining stock is heavily taxed, Blau is having the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna start auctioning off the gallery's inventory of works on paper in March.’