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Kobel's Art Weekly

Handelsblatt's Susanne Schreiber at a talk in Cologne. Also online: https://vimeo.com/1045356929
Handelsblatt's Susanne Schreiber at a talk in Cologne. Also online: https://vimeo.com/1045356929
Stefan Kobel

Stefan Kobel

Kobel's Art Weekly 3 2025

Last year was, to a large extent, just another Monday, and 2025 promises to be quite turbulent also. In recent weeks, reporting has been characterised by retrospectives and outlooks. Ursula Scheer has compiled a series of pictures with last year's top ten hammer prices in the FAZ. The major global auction houses had to cope with a sharp decline in sales. Susanne Schreiber summarises the situation in the Handelsblatt: ‘Although the season saw some very high hammer prices, one should not be deceived by this, because the overall supply was weaker than in the Corona years. Those who do not have to sell because of divorce, debt or inheritance are waiting for better economic and geopolitically more stable times. But when a unique opportunity presents itself, financially strong buyers are by no means hesitant. A few examples: Christie's painting occupies the first two positions of the most expensive objects of 2024. The front-runner is René Magritte's ‘L’ Empire des Lumières', a surrealist painting depicting both day and night, which sold for 121 million dollars. Ed Ruscha's view of a petrol station with a fluttering comic book in the air, ‘Standard Station’, fetched $68 million at the same auction house. Sotheby's followed with Claude Monet's portrait-format painting ‘Water Lilies’ from the Sydell Miller collection, which sold for $65.5 million.’

Due to the weakening art business, auctioneers are looking for alternatives, as Scott Reyburn observes for the New York Times: ‘Josh Pullan, Sotheby's global head of luxury, said sales of such goods draw in wealthy clients who may, in time, start to buy high-end art. “Luxury categories are for us a vital gateway for new, often younger, collectors,” he added. Last year, luxury generated about 33 per cent of sales at Sotheby's, compared with 16 per cent at Christie's, according to the companies' communications teams. But the category attracted more buyers than art did. [...] Christie's is owned by luxury goods billionaire François-Henri Pinault, whose Kering conglomerate has also been hit by flagging sales. After introducing handbag auctions back in 2014, Christie's is now having to catch up with Sotheby's offering of luxury items and trophy collectibles, like dinosaur skeletons.’

The personnel merry-go-round at the major auction houses continues to turn, seemingly faster and faster. Now the CEO of Phillips has resigned. He will be succeeded by the former Chief Legal Officer Martin Wilson. Monopol and the FAZ report.

Meanwhile, Sotheby's is trying to get the genie of its new pricing model back into the bottle. Stephanie Dieckvoss explains the climb-down for the Handelsblatt: ‘In a radical about-turn, Sotheby's is raising the reduced commissions for consignors and buyers at auctions again. They “listened to the market”, according to a customer announcement from the company. From February, customised fees will be offered for consignors that will not be published. After the desired transparency, it is now going in the opposite direction, namely total freedom of negotiation for the house. However, this will certainly take a lot of time.’

Meanwhile, the marketplace in Great Britain is content with smaller and, above all, domestic rolls, reports Anne Reimers from London for the FAZ: ‘The international auction houses on the Thames, at the place of their founding, are once again concentrating more on British art and the traditional business with Old Masters. This summer, Christie's accepted a bid of 15 million pounds for a depiction of Titian's Holy Family fleeing to Egypt. In December, a Renaissance painting by Sandro Botticelli, ‘The Virgin and Child enthroned’, celebrated by Sotheby's as the ‘discovery of the year’, came up for auction. Bids from eight competitors pushed the hammer price up to 8.6 million pounds.’

By contrast, the French auction market has developed positively, Aurélie Tanaqui sums up in the Handelsblatt: ‘Nevertheless, they achieved impressive results and can look back on a year of extraordinary sales, historic records and new initiatives. Drouot, under whose roof several independent auction houses operate, achieved a turnover of 662.9 million euros, an increase of 4.3 per cent over the previous year. [...] A new development was the introduction of drouot.immo, a platform for real estate auctions. With a turnover of 65 million euros, Piasa recorded an eight percent increase over 2023 and further expanded its leading role in the fields of design and contemporary art.’ Bettina Wohlfarth writes in the FAZ: ‘But if you look at the sales of French auction houses over a longer period, you see a steadily growing market that retains its appeal despite geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties. In the duel at the top between the market leaders Christie's and Sotheby's, François Pinault's house moved into first place in 2024 with sales of over 384 million euros. An increase of almost 24 per cent made Christie's the year's sales winner. Successful acquisitions played just as important a role in this as a feeling for balanced estimates in a rather cool investment climate.’

Vivienne Chow and Cathy Fan look back at the Asian market and forward at Artnet (possibly paywall): ‘Japan has quietly been making a comeback in the international scene. Japanese artists Yayoi Kusama, Yoshitomo Nara, and Takashi Murakami remain the top-selling living artists from Asia, and the country has the second-largest auction market in the region, after China, according to the Artnet Price Database. Japanese collectors have also been buying big at international art fairs. Events like Art Collaboration Kyoto and Art Week Tokyo are drawing attention worldwide’.

Clare McAndrew has analysed the Japanese art market for the Japanese cultural authority. Louis Lu summarises the findings of the report ‘The Japanese Art Market 2024’ (PDF) at Art Asia Pacific: ‘Nevertheless, primary sales have gained ground steadily, with the share of total transaction value gradually climbing from 35 percent in 2022 to 42 percent in 2023. This growth is also reflected in the increase in the average number of artists represented by galleries, from 20 in 2022 to 27 in 2023. The survey, however, highlighted a commercial reality: despite the growing representations, for most galleries, over 40 percent of revenue stemmed from the top three most commercially successful artists. The remaining artists generated more modest returns but still required substantial support in exhibition, production, and promotional efforts. The report noted that while aggregated dealer sales dipped by nine percent, smaller galleries with an annual turnover under USD 500,000 experienced an unexpected upward trend in sales. Maybe bigger isn't always better in the art world.’

Personalities, bankruptcies and other headlines of the past year have been compiled by Vivienne Chow, Margaret Carrigan, Eileen Kinsella and Annie Armstrong for Artnet. Predictions for 2025 from market players have been collected by Artnews. Also Artnews has put together a whole dossier on the year 2024.

Margaret Carrigan at Artnet (probably paywall) – artificial intelligence, a generational change and the growing importance of the Gulf region: ‘However, there's widespread hope that the worst is behind us. I, for one, am willing to believe in the power of positive thinking, but I don't think we're heading for an all-out rebound. Instead, 2025 offers the promise of change—and change can be good.’

The new VAT rules on art in the EU and their possible consequences are explained by Devorah Lauter at Artnews: ‘Directive 2022/542 allows member-states to reduce taxes on art sales provided that the rate is over 5 percent, though at the same time they must ditch their previous, more complex taxing system. For the new system, France and Germany have slashed or kept their VAT on art sales to 5.5 and 7 percent, respectively, while others, like the Netherlands, have plans to raise it, and still others, like Belgium and Italy, have not yet announced what they will do. The EU governing body is not expected to punish members for not getting their VAT act together by the January 1 deadline, and for now, those tardy countries can continue with their previous taxing system. But the new VAT system, which leaves some of the specifics up to each country, stands to be a major boon on some regional art markets, while harming others.’


The press release on the ‘Reform of the Advisory Commission by the Establishment of an Arbitration Tribunal for Nazi-Looted Art’ has made it into the international media. Adam Schrader reports for Artnet.

I describe the developments in the case of the bankruptcy of the Munich gallery Thomas in the Handelsblatt.

Ursula Scheer laments the departure of Handelsblatt editor Susanne Schreiber in the FAZ: ‘Susanne Schreiber, an art historian who has been head of the art market editorial team at Handelsblatt since 2004, is retiring. Her texts have established themselves as must-reads in the art scene over decades,’ says Kirsten Ludowig, deputy editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt. ‘We thank her warmly for that.’ Since the beginning of the year, Jan Kohlhaas and Stefan Weixler from the Zeit art market newspaper Kunst und Auktionen (formerly Antiquitätenzeitung), which is editorially linked to the Zeit's Weltkunst magazine, have been devising and producing art market reports for Handelsblatt.’ As if the loss of the adept and confident market expert were not enough, the art market coverage in the Handelsblatt has been reduced from two double pages a week to one. The conversation about ‘Art & Money’, which Susanne Schreiber conducted with Stephan Zilkens and me in Cologne last autumn at the invitation of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst at the Museum Ludwig, is now available as an online video.


semi-automatically translated

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