Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 18 2023

The New York Times last reported on the Gallery Weekend Berlin 2019. Yet this spring, diversity and a spirit of optimism reign on the Spree as rarely in recent times. Kevin Hanschke sums it up in the FAZ: "Overall, identity, whether social, political or digital, is one of the common threads holding the weekend together. [...] The response from international visitors and collectors at this year's Gallery Weekend exceeded expectations and was above pre-pandemic levels, says Maike Cruse, who is responsible for the 19th edition of the weekend. With 55 galleries and almost ninety artists presented, it is particularly diverse. Among the newcomers this time are well-known names of the art market, such as Kunsthandel Werner or Galerie Nothelfer, which has been in existence since 1971. The seventh edition of the paper positions fair, which is taking place in parallel, is also setting a new record with 56 international galleries from twelve countries."

Niklas Liebetrau jumped into the fray with a Swiss art consultant for the Berliner Zeitung: "At Gallery Weekend, this export hit copied in Paris, Warsaw and Beijing, the crises of this time (pandemic, war, energy crisis) seem far away. The issues that play a role here are mainly in the field of identity politics (racism, transgender, wokeness). It doesn't seem to hurt the gallery show. According to the organisers, there have never been so many registrations from collectors and representatives of the big museums as for this 19th edition.

There's not much for ordinary mortals to buy here either, Peter Richter complains in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 29 April: "But if you're still thinking primarily of a shopping tour for collectors, good luck finding enough works that a) fit into the rooms of a private art collection, if they b) are for sale at all and not on loan for exhibitions with elaborate curatorial concepts. For in a dialectical twist that perhaps only the art business can pull off so perfectly, this event has meanwhile turned into a kind of Documenta (in the earlier sense of actually still wanting to document the state of art), with an astonishing number of exhibitions that one would once have rather expected in museums or art associations. Only in commercial galleries and spread across the city of Berlin."

Raimar Stange visited the Paper Positions fair, which took place parallel to the GWB for Artmagazine. I was in the galleries for the same publication.

The review of the exhibition curated by Isabelle Graw in her usual salon-socialist manner in one of Max Hetzler's Berlin galleries leads to a double dead end. Jens Müller asks for the Tagesspiegel: "Art is only for the rich? Unfortunately, yes, according to an exhibition at the Max Hetzler Gallery. The dream of liberating art from its existence as a luxury good ends at the sales counter." Which promptly puts the paper behind the paywall.

The supposedly egalitarian tendency of art prizes such as the Neue Nationalgalerie's recently to simply award all nominees is too short-sighted, Saskia Trebing points out at Monopol. "After all, the public presentation of the shortlist was also a rare opportunity for the public to understand the work and the basis of decision-making of an art prize jury and to form their own opinion. The new procedure does not make the selection more transparent, especially since many selection committees are always staffed by the same museum personnel. In addition, prizes are often fed by other awards or grants and create a kind of 'domino effect' of honour [...]. This creates the impression that many honours with similar profiles are concentrated on a few individuals - which can overwhelm and burn out some artists and make access difficult for others. Prizes are never entirely fair because the quality of art cannot be assessed objectively and in the end winners and losers are produced, albeit in varying numbers and with varying degrees of distinctness. The reform of the National Gallery Prize takes up impulses from the artists and dampens the institution's pathos. However, it does not change the basic problem." But at least it allows one to pretend to care about diversity and equity.

Oliver Körner von Gustorf takes up his idea of the "commons" for art production and support, which he developed in the same place three years ago, again at Monopol (paywall): "Many in the art business want the same Hunger Games again as before the pandemic. Prizes, grants, acquisitions, whereby the decision on who gets money for what belongs 'in the hands of experienced experts' - wrote art critic Kolja Reichert in the 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'. Cultural policy should not be measured by how many artists it ensures survive. It must be measured by how much outstanding art is created - and whether it finds its audience,' said Reichert. It is precisely this elitist desire for 'excellence' that takes away any hope of change. 'Outstanding' means nothing other than profitable, for the market or to be exploited institutionally. In the pandemic, only artists who are marketable should be on board. Of course, the same people will again decide who gets money, namely those who are already in the network. But the argument of excellence is relative."

The estate of Queen singer Freddy Mercury will be auctioned off in September, Susanne Schreiber reports in the Handelsblatt: "The estate of Mary Austin, carefully guarded for over 30 years, will be consigned. She was a close friend of Mercury. She inherited his London retreat, the brick mansion Garden Lodge, his fortune and the rights to the songs. She plans to donate the proceeds from the house sale to both the Mercury Phoenix Trust and the Elton John Aids Foundation because Elton John was a good friend of Freddie Mercury."

A nice fig leaf for possibly more mundane reasons in the decision-making process to accept the Horten jewels has Christie's, which Zachary Small interviewed for the New York Times: 'But the auction house has acknowledged that, in deciding to host the sale, it also had to grapple with the fact that Helmut Horten's business empire was built atop his purchase of companies from Jews who were pressed to sell by the Nazis. 'We are aware there is a painful history,' Peers said. 'We weighed that up against various factors,' she added, saying that the foundation is 'a key driver of philanthropic causes.'"

Appropriation art probably doesn't work with NFTs. Yuga Labs was upheld in a related lawsuit in California, reports Shanti Ecalante Di-Mattei at Artnews: "Further, the judge said that [Ryder] Ripps and [Jeremy] Cahen's 'NFT marketplace sales [on OpenSea and Foundation] and Ape Market website contain no artistic expression or critical commentary'. While the judge acknowledged that Ripps and Cahen provided almost daily commentary about their campaign and the project on Twitter and other platforms, he said that on the marketplaces themselves, the defendants' listings were 'designed to sell infringing products, not expressive artistic speech protected by the First Amendment.'"

Ursula Scheer watched the "documentary" film "The Illusionist" about the fraudster Helge Achenbach for the FAZ, so that we don't have to: "The film also glides along without depth, sticking to the Albrecht affair, not saying a word about Achenbach's fraud against the entrepreneur Christian Boehringer, the Rhine gold collection or cooperation with the Berenberg Bank, and showing no interest in victims' perspectives. Instead, it is mainly Achenbach who talks about himself. And because the art advisor is a very good narrator with a pleasant voice, who always radiates complete agreement with himself, even though he somehow finds the million-dollar fraud thing "'stupid' and has suffered in prison, the filmmaker allows herself to be charmed." For the Handelsblatt Regine Müller reports on the cinema premiere: "So those have come who remained after Helge Achenbach was arrested for fraud and his empire dissolved into nothingness. And apparently those have also come who to this day feel schadenfreude that Achenbach ripped off the particularly rich and - in his reading - the miserly. As if his 'collages', as he called his retouched invoices, were nothing more than a peccadillo of an otherwise upright man. Is this just Rhenish 'laissez faire' and a penchant for the shady, which Düsseldorf is also said to have?"