Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 24 2023

Pre-Basel is usually silly season, except for the German auctions. There are a few surprises this year. Just a few years ago, most of the million-dollar surcharges achieved in this country would probably have taken place in London. Thank you Boris!

The 500th auction of the Cologne auction house Van Ham was also its best, Susanne Schreiber reports in the Handelsblatt: "With this Picasso portrait, reduced in colour and form, Van Ham can not only record the highest hammer price in the history of the house. So far, the 4.9 million also represent the highest hammer price in this German auction season. On the first evening of the two-part auction series alone, Van Ham sold art for 13.9 million euros. More than ever before. On the second day, another 8.1 million were added. The anniversary auction went down in the annals with a total of 22 million euros. More than a dozen national and international artist records were set."

Ketterer Kunst in Munich promptly topped the result, report Sabine Spindler and Susanne Schreiber also in the Handelsblatt: "The hammer for the most expensive work of art fell at 5.3 million euros. Gross, that is 6.4 million euros. Such high hammer prices are rather rare in Germany. This makes Alexei Jawlensky's 'Girl with Pigtail' Germany's most expensive work of art in the first half of 2023. This Friday evening, Robert Ketterer, head of the auction house Ketterer Kunst in Munich, knocked down the museum's expressive painting after a long bidding battle between two financially strong telephone bidders. His wife Gudrun had the winning top bidder on her ear. The expensive, museum-quality key work by Jawlensky was by no means the only million-dollar surcharge on an evening in which the Munich-based artist, with a lot of patience and anecdotes, was able to bring in a number of very respectable knockdowns. In the first hour of the two-and-a-half-hour session alone, three gross prices exceeded one million euros."

Lempertz was unlucky in Cologne with a painting by Max Perchstein, which had to be withdrawn immediately before the auction, as Ursula Scheer reports in the FAZ: "For Henrik Hanstein, the managing director of Lempertz, it is clear: 'The painting is not looted art.' Blank's sons had been compensated with 80,000 marks in 1956 for the inventory of their parents' house, the most valuable piece of which was Pechstein's self-portrait. In 2016, the descendants declared the case settled through their lawyer. Hanstein criticised that the Pechstein painting had been listed on Lost Art without examination and notification of the owners. He has now negotiated an amicable settlement with the Blank descendants - because he wants to auction the painting in peace. This is now to take place as part of the autumn auctions at Lempertz. Apart from this turbulence surrounding a possibly problematic provenance, the evening sale went satisfactorily for the house, despite some returns and hammer prices in the lower range of the estimate. All in all, the evening auction fetched 6.75 million euros, with a total pre-tax of 8.4 million; day auctions brought the result to just under ten million."

Only the Villa Grisebach in Berlin is ailing somewhat, after its first double-digit million euro hammer price at the end of last year. Christian Herchenröder summarises the results for the Handelsblatt: "At the moment, not all price expectations can be fulfilled. In the Grisebach auction of selected works on 1 June, restraint characterised the one-hour session. With the hall full, most of the knockdowns went to telephones as usual. No fewer than 19 hammer prices of the total of 45 lots remained at the lower threshold of the estimated price. Here, it is almost always identical to the consignor's minimum expectation, the limit. 14 works went back, including the main lot of the evening, Lyonel Feininger's oil painting 'Trumpeter in the Village', dated 1915. It was estimated at 2 to 3 million euros. Nevertheless, around 7 million euros were realised that evening. The proceeds for the entire first half of the year, including online auctions and VAT, amount to 18 million euros. It is mainly thanks to private donations. 'The trade is just observing,' comments Grisebach shareholder Micaela Kapitzky."

Vincenzo de Bellis, the director responsible for fairs and exhibition platforms in Basel, offers a preview of the coming Art Basel in an interview with Ursula Scheer in the FAZ of 10 June: "There is an unprecedented number of newcomers: 21 in all. The other important figure is that we have three first-time exhibitors coming directly in the main section 'Galleries'. Among the dealers of modern art, this is Offer Waterman from London, and among the contemporary galleries, Blank Projects from Cape Town and Empty Gallery from Hong Kong. I'd like to mention David Castillo from Miami, a gallery we saw grow at our fair in Miami Beach and is now coming to Basel, or Bene Taschen gallery from Cologne presenting Jamel Shabazz. and I'm very interested to see the nine galleries that have moved up to the main sector, like Croy Nielsen from Vienna or Deborah Schamoni from Munich." Daniel Völzke spoke to Basel's uber-boss Noah Horowitz for Monopol. I look at the strategic direction of Art Basel for WELTKUNST (paywall). Incidentally, those for whom VIP status at the weekend is enough can now book hotel arrangements at short notice via the city's tourist office, which are also not as outrageously expensive as in earlier times. Even an Art Basel bag is included.

A mega-gallery is coming to Berlin (at first) with an office, Ursula Scheer reports in the FAZ: "With the Pace Gallery, one of the internationally leading galleries for modern and contemporary art is planning to open an office on the Spree soon - and is poaching management staff and artists from a local gallery owner. Pace has named Laura Attanasio, a long-time associate of art dealer Johann König who was promoted to partner at König Galerie only last June, as executive director of the Berlin office."

Space art as the latest outgrowth of the private space industry is highlighted by Emily Watlington for Art in America: "The more gimmicky the space art, the more headlines it generates. Jeff Koons and Elon Musk-a match made in neoliberal hell-have teamed up for a new project launching (literally) this summer that allows collectors, perhaps bored of buying on Earth, to own art on the moon. Koons is sending 125 sculptures depicting different lunar phases to the moon on a SpaceX rocket, then pairing them with Earth-bound editions, each featuring a gem that plots the precise location of their lunar counterparts. Naturally, the editions all have corresponding NFTs."

Not entirely without causal connection, two events correlate that are currently moving (not only) New York. As Carlie Porterfield reports in The Art Newspaper, the Canadian forest fires are having an impact on the art world there: "Museums, galleries and other cultural institutions across New York announced closures and postponements out of caution over smoke blowing into the city from wildfires raging across Canada. Early Thursday morning, New York and other North American cities had the worst air quality levels in the world, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index (AQI)."

At the same time, there was a rally last week in front of MoMA against its sponsor Marie-Josée Kravis, whose husband Henry Kravis is a co-owner of KKR and heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry, reports Shanti Escalante-De Mattei at Artnews.

Anny Shaw and Scott Reyburn take aim at the sometimes degrading salaries in the art world for The Art Newspaper: "The salaries of curators, writers, researchers and those in more academic roles, many of whom are employed in both the commercial and public sectors, is also not covered in the SML report. One freelance curator The Art Newspaper spoke to on condition of anonymity earned just over £20,000 last year-£17,500 overseas. Over the past five years, her annual salary has averaged £24,000. Her UK work is 90% in public institutions, with overseas assignments chiefly paid for by art fairs, private museums and foundations. The curator says she was paid just £200 per 1,000 words to write an essay for the National Gallery in London. 'The prestigious places are the worst sometimes,' she says." Actually, in Germany trhat wouldn't be that bad as pay for two pages of text.

Helen Stoilas has seen court documents on art advisor Lisa Schiff for The Art Newspaper: "Responding for the first time to one of the explosive lawsuits brought against art advisor Lisa Schiff, her lawyer John Cahill

has revealed in court filings that Schiff is cooperating with federal and state authorities investigating her business dealings, and has been working to liquidate her advisory firm to pay creditors. Court documents also reveal Schiff is no longer able to afford the 'lavish lifestyle' she was accused of by her former client and friend Candace Barasch, including the $25,000 rent on her Manhattan flat, and she has exhausted her savings, dipping into retirement funds to pay for her living costs and legal fees."

In a complicated legal dispute over NFTs, the grandson of photographer August Sander and Cologne-based SK Kultur, represented by VG Bild-Kunst, are facing off. Damian Zimmermann explains the case at Monopol: "but then OpenSea took the NFTs offline. Or, to be more precise: August Sander's images linked to the NFTs were no longer visible on OpenSea. The reason: the collecting society Bild-Kunst had obtained an interim injunction on behalf of the SK Stiftung Kultur of the Sparkasse Köln-Bonn because they felt that the copyrights held by them had been infringed: According to VG Bild-Kunst, Julian Sander should have obtained permission from SK Stiftung Kultur because the latter had made the images publicly accessible. However, Julian Sander disagrees with this. Since the physical contact prints on which the NFTs are based are also linked to them and every owner of an NFT has thus also received or acquired the corresponding contact print as a gift, this is legitimised by the limitation provision in the Copyright Act."

The Crimean gold belongs to Ukraine and will not be returned to Crimea, reports dpa: "The cultural treasures of Crimea had come to Amsterdam in 2014 and were shown there in the Allard Pierson Museum. [...] But in 2014 the peninsula in the Black Sea had been annexed by Russia. The Amsterdam museum did not send the precious objects back there after the end of the exhibition because it did not know who was now the rightful owner. Both the four museums, which are now under Russian administration, and the Ukrainian state made claims. But the courts ruled in all instances that Ukraine was the rightful owner. 'The state of Ukraine has a legitimate interest in protecting its cultural heritage', the High Council ruled."