Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 25 2024

It was Art Basel in Basel again, which this year was very European in character on the visitor side. There were still hotel rooms available in the city at triple-digit prices, the crowds in the exhibition halls seemed less intense than usual at the opening and the mood among the dealers was rather subdued. In Handelsblatt (possibly paywall), Susanne Schreiber calls Art Basel's appearance in the public space, for which the new director Maike Cruse is responsible for the first time, a "mark-up of relevance", while the galleries' offerings correspond to the economic situation: "Unlimited can also be read as a commentary on the present. This year, the continuing state of crisis and the never-ending wars seem to have fuelled a longing for art that soothes and delights. [...] These are politically tense times, in which collectors who have travelled to Basel from all over the world may have the purchasing power, but hardly the desire to spend big money. Visible trend: almost all exhibitors are playing it safe, no bling-bling; new names of younger artists who do not yet cost millions dominate."

Deutschlandfunk (audio), which is otherwise so critical of the art market, practices affirmation when it comes to Art Basel of all things, and Christian Zürcher, in his art market statement based on Art Basel in the BaZ (paywall), practices bending the statistics: "The art market is growing and growing. Global sales rose from 39.5 billion Swiss francs in 2009 to 65 billion dollars last year. The financial crisis and corona were dampeners, but they have long since been overcome." And the art market is back to where it was in 2007, albeit in absolute figures and not adjusted for inflation. The main thing is that the randomly selected excerpt fits into my narrative of the art world as will and imagination.

On another impression of the event, Ursula Scheer wrote for the FAZ (Paywall): "The ViP days were full of energy before the general opening of the fair: There was a dense crowd in the halls, a buying frenzy at the stands. New York gallery owner Sean Kelly speaks of the 'best start to the fair' he has ever had in Basel. Although the market was 'demanding', collectors were keen to buy high-quality works at 'reasonable' prices. Iwan Wirth also rejects the "doom porn" and speaks of a trade at a "more humane pace" in which buyers secured the "best of the best". [...] Other major trends can hardly be discerned during the trade fair tour. the overall picture is nuanced and not particularly exciting. Art informel is here to stay, but neither is figurative painting." Iwan Wirth's slogans of perseverance could be read in a press release sent out before the fair, and the last gallery to sell a significant amount of German Art Informel was no longer authorised since the death of its founder Georg Nothelfer.

With the Parcours, Art Basel has really taken a risk this time, notes Marcus Woeller in the WeLT: "Rarely has it succeeded as well as this year. Curator Stefanie Henssler, who heads the renowned Swiss Institute in New York, has positioned the 22 works in and around Clarastrasse. It leads from the Mittlere Brücke bridge, which is used to cross the Rhine from the old town of Großbasel, to Messeplatz in Kleinbasel on the right bank of the Rhine. The 500 or so dead straight metres are extremely lively, but also a little run-down, lined with functional buildings, empty shops and the Gothic St. Clare's parish church; you can see drug use, homelessness and prostitution - and the trade visitors, dressed up in an appropriately 'artsy' way for the trade fair, hurry through. But thanks to Henssler's conquest of off-the-beaten-track locations, Clarastrasse is now Basel's most avant-garde exhibition space."

Jens Müller attests to Art Basel's reform efforts in the Tagesspiegel: "Rejuvenation and diversification seem necessary after the latest 'Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report' stated a four per cent shrinkage of the art market. The targeted younger clientele is to be wooed with a new fair shop run by Sarah Andelman, founder of the legendary concept store "Colette" in Paris. And with a new concept by Stefanie Hessler for the course. At home in the doll's house-like Old Town in previous years, this public (and free) part of the fair has now moved to the so-called Kleinbasel side of the Rhine, to Clarastrasse: a rather unglamorous shopping street with the typical problems that city centre retail has today, including vacancies." However, the "younger clientele" is not necessarily the segment that is responsible for the decline in total sales noted in the aforementioned report, which was (exceptionally) exclusively in the top segment.

For the NZZ, Philipp Meier takes an unusually critical (systemic) view of the events: "The big art fair in Basel is always a huge battle of materials. Art is brought to market here. It is for sale, not for enjoyment. At best for haggling and weighing up. The yes or no is of purely monetary interest. Critical judgement used to take place. At least with the established artist names. They have already proved their worth. Here they have their appearance as labels and brands in the art world. This is where they fulfil their social role as status symbols."

Niklas Maak combines gossip and superstructure in his overview of Basel for the FAZ (paywall): "In recent years, we have seen two art systems drifting further and further apart like ice floes: Biennale art and fair art. Biennale art has to prove its relevance and value by critically illuminating certain social issues such as climate change, colonialism or identity politics, or by promising the most diverse forms of "healing". Trade fair art, on the other hand, has often tended to belong to the field of decorative interiors for super-solvent collectors; there are artists like Anish Kapoor, whose monumental luxury objects now only appear in trade fairs and private museums, where they fill the halls like ashtrays for giants."

I took a look at the satellites for the Handelsblatt and also at the main fair for Artmagazine. Julia Stellmann's report on the satellites in the FAZ comes to astonishingly similar conclusions: "What initially seems courageous, however, proves to be a wrong decision. Between fields, farms and cows, walkers encounter ViP guests wandering around disorientated in search of art. If you are lucky, you will discover Julia Scher's 'Owls' (35,000 euros, Galerie Drei and Esther Schipper), Tomás Saraceno's 'Spider Compass' (40,000, Galerie Andersen's) or Margaret Raspé's 'Rain Drums' (14,000, Galerie Molitor) along the way. You have to rely on an app for information: There are neither explanatory signs on site nor art mediators placed next to the works. Only the eponymous social interaction at the Predigerhof and Mathis Hof, as well as the performance programme, are managed by the BSC. Fortunately for the Liste Art Fair, the Social Club is not outstripping it, at least for the time being." Khabir Jhala sees the Basel Social Club in a wider context of changing art consumption habits in The Art Newspaper: "But selling, or in fact viewing, art in a speedy manner is somewhat at odds with this year's BSC. 'We want to decelerate time. People come to Basel and say, 'I did Kunsthalle, I did the fair. They rush through the motions,' [co-founder] Salomonowitz says. Visitors on a sunny afternoon this week were sitting on sofas in fields with beers in hand, watching films in a woodland clearing and lounging in the sun with ice-creams."

The auction of Rosa de la Cruz's estate was a colossal flop, Scott Reyburn proofs in The Art Newspaper. He sees the flop as a sign of a larger development: "Over the next 20 years or so in the US, there is estimated to be an intergenerational transfer of as much as $84 trillion in assets to people born between 1965 and 2012-that is, mainly from the Baby Boomers to Generation X, the millennials and Gen Z, according to Cerulli Associates, a financial research and consultancy firm. The art world has been hoping the 'great wealth transfer' will not only make many esteemed private collections available, but that it will also give a new generation of buyers the riches to pay huge prices for art, just as their forebears did. But this win-win scenario also assumes an intergenerational transfer of cultural values. The sobering fate of the Rosa de la Cruz collection [...], suggests this might not necessarily be the case."

Renault did not cut a good figure in the sale of its corporate collection, criticises Bettina Wohlfarth in the FAZ: "Both Renault and Christie's had the legal situation checked before the auction. There were no legal obstacles. Paul Nyzam, the expert in charge at the auction house, told the daily newspaper 'Le Figaro' that all artists or their legal successors had been contacted in advance regarding the works up for auction and that none of them had spoken out against the sale. However, being authorised does not necessarily mean being right. Several documents cited by Delphine Renard prove that there was a moral contract with the artists. The works created for Renault and in the collection were considered 'inalienable'."

Lawyers Andreas Ritter and Aline Camin dispel the myth of the supposedly unregulated art market in the NZZ by analysing scandals of recent years: "One of the common features of these cases is the gullibility of collectors to entrust themselves and their money to a supposedly successful advisor without clear contracts. If the adventure goes wrong, there are widespread complaints that the art market is unregulated - still a 'legal vacuum' - and riddled with dubious business practices. [...] It is true that the art market is indeed regulated. On the seller's side, there are numerous rules on the duty of care when selling and increasingly rigid regulations regarding the protection of cultural assets. On the buyer's side, money laundering regulations have been steadily tightened in recent years. Even the bonded warehouses, which are always the first to be pilloried, are regulated - and monitored by the authorities."

The sudden departure of Andrew Fabricant as COO at Gagosian is reported by Daniel Cassady at Artnews, citing the initial report by James Tarny at Bloomberg (paywall): "Andrew Fabricant is out as chief operating officer at Gagosian, according to an email from gallery founder Larry Gagosian that was obtained by ARTnews. Fabricant's wife, Laura Paulson, who has led the gallery's art advisory since 2019, is also no longer on staff. 'Andrew Fabricant and Laura Paulson are no longer with the gallery,' Larry Gagosian said in his email. 'At this moment in the gallery's evolution, we arrived at the point where I decided it was time for us to part ways. We are grateful for their contributions over the past several years and wish them well." Sounds a bit like Elon Musk, only with a polite phrase at the end.

Christiane Fricke pays tribute to the recently deceased Frankfurt art dealer Christoph Andreas in the Handelsblatt: "Germany has not only lost one of the leading market representatives for art from the late 18th to the early 20th century, but also a tireless mediator and defender of the industry, particularly in matters of restitution and the protection of cultural assets."