Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 31 2024

Not a good outlook for the art market: sales and profits are collapsing for the luxury groups, reports Der Aktionär: "After LVMH recently disappointed with its figures, competitor Kering is now also causing long faces. Due to the slump in consumption and reorganisation efforts at its most important brand Gucci, the group is expecting a further significant drop in profits. The Kering share price is falling sharply, dragging LVMH and Hugo Boss down with it." Meanwhile, Sotheby's is opening its first shop in Hong Kong, reports the state-owned South China Morning Post.

Ingo Arend laments the art world's kowtowing to the Arab petro-dollar in the taz: "As far as Hartwig Fischer is concerned, it is not yet clear what will be shown in the museum he runs. Nevertheless, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is already interested in a co-operation. Hermann Parzinger, who is still head of the SPK, has confirmed talks with its designated director. The Foundation has not yet responded to an enquiry by taz regarding the nature of the cultural cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the SPK's moral responsibility." Where there's a trough...

Regine Müller from the Handelsblatt is enthusiastic about the Bamberg Antiques Weeks, not least because of the city itself: ‘There are historic old towns elsewhere, but in Bamberg the cityscape is more authentic, because no international fashion chains and drugstores have moved in here. There are no garish logos degrading old walls to picturesque advertising media. Bamberg's old town belongs to the art dealers, they characterise the atmosphere. And they are surrounded by tasteful little shops and boutiques. In this way, the city has succeeded in keeping the historic old town aesthetically ‘clean’, even from an excess of fast food outlets. After closing time, people flock to the cosy traditional restaurants. Clever and forward-looking city marketing. Once a year, the local art trade celebrates itself with the Art and Antiques Weeks, which take place at the same time as the Wagner Festival in nearby Bayreuth. Its visitors are flâneurs with plenty of free time during the day."

Sabine Spindler concludes her Handelsblatt report on the renaming of the Munich gallery initiative with the real news: ‘However, Open Art Munich wants to say goodbye to the September date that has been established for years in 2025. According to Quittenbaum, the organisation hopes that a July run will create synergy effects with the opera festival and other cultural activities in the city." So that everyone opens their summer exhibitions at the same time?

Hong Kong is getting a new fair, reports Lisa Movius in The Art Newspaper: ‘Photofairs Hong Kong will be held in Central, in an independent 5,600 sq m tent erected on the waterfront's west side, in what is a similar setup to the concurrent fair Art Central (26-30 March), says, Scott Gray, founder and chief executive of Creo. It expects to welcome between 50 and 75 exhibitors." The event is part of Angus Montgomery's empire via Creo, as are Taipei Dangdai, Art SG and Art Düsseldorf.

Philipps reported the smallest drop in sales among the Big Three at seven per cent, explains Ursula Scheer in the FAZ on 27 July: "The company, which belongs to the Russian Mercury Group and has raised doubts about its future competitiveness following Putin's launch of the war of aggression against Ukraine, is presenting itself with corresponding self-confidence. Edward Dolman, Managing Director of the company, writes in a press release of ‘strength and adaptability’. With a stable sales rate of 87 per cent, 41 per cent first-time buyers and 26 per cent of bidders from Generation Z and the Millennial age cohort, he is optimistic."

Aurélie Tanaqui summarises the auction season in France for the Handelsblatt: "Christie's accounts for nine of the ten highest hammer prices in France. With a turnover of 203 million euros, Christie's in Paris ranks first among the individual companies. This is significantly better than in the same period last year, when 114 million euros were reported. [...] Competitor Sotheby's auctioned seven important collections in the first half of the year. Sales totalled 133 million euros, slightly less than the 153 million euros in the previous year. Another 39 million euros came from private sales. The proportion of new customers was 20.6 per cent. Artcurial is in third place with a turnover of 121 million euros. Followed by Bonhams. The English auction house recorded 74 million euros with 53 auctions, spread across Paris, Brussels and Monaco."

Apart from Klimt's Fräulein Lieser, the first half of the year was probably unspectacular for Austria's auction houses, according to Nicole Scheyerer's summary for the FAZ on 27 July: "In the competition at the Vienna Dorotheum, a ten-part work by Andy Warhol topped the auction results. The screen print series ‘Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century’, created in 1980, includes portraits of Franz Kafka, Sigmund Freud and Gertrud Stein. The eleventh version of the edition of 200 changed hands from a German private collection for a good 850,000 euros (estimate 400,000 to 600,000 euros). In the Old Masters section at Dorotheum, an oil sketch by Francisco de Goya surpassed the preliminary estimate. [...] The copy, now valued at up to 400,000 euros, was knocked down at 550,000 euros."

Against the background of the debacle surrounding Fräulein Lieser, Olga Kronsteiner in the Standard sees the export ban on Caspar David Friedrich's sketchbook as premature: "As is well known, the planned sale was based on a restitution settlement between the Austrian private owner and two communities of heirs of the Lieser family. A ruse to obtain an export licence, clamoured Klimt experts, who for months were furious about the auction house's provenance research. However, there were no ambitions to preserve the painting for Austria."

A half-hour making of the Heidi Horten auction at Nagel in Stuttgart is available on SWR in the media centre.

In its State of the Arts study, the British Campaign for the Arts found that the UK is at the bottom of the league table for state spending on culture in Europe, reports Angelica Villa on Artnews. The donation-funded organisation notes that overall spending has fallen by six per cent since 2010. However, the study summarises budgets for culture and broadcasting for most of the statements, which leads to some blurring. In terms of pure cultural services, the UK performs even worse, coming in ahead of only Portugal and Greece at 141 dollars per capita per year. Germany is in the lower midfield with 260 dollars. The list is topped by Iceland and Luxembourg with just under 800 dollars.

Frankfurt's Die Galerie and Art Cologne are having a public spat over the rejection of an East German artist, as Christiane Fricke reports in the Handelsblatt: ‘In its response, the fair management insisted on the concept of “collaborations”. This concept envisages either two galleries presenting a joint exhibition or one gallery presenting artists ‘who are themselves to be seen in a close and comprehensible curatorial context’. Fair director Daniel Hug is also trying to streamline the fair once again and reduce it to around 170 participants, as he announced when asked. This explains the ‘strict standards’ in the selection decisions that the fair used to argue with Peter Femfert. Anyone who now compares Giacomo Manzù's work with that of Stelzmann will realise: They don't really have anything to do with each other. When asked about this, Femfert admits that ‘there is hardly any connection’. To publicly instrumentalise the discrimination against artists working in the GDR, which undoubtedly still exists, in order to push through one's own misguided application in the face of a fair that has not always acted happily, is a disservice to the cause.

Munich's Galerie Thomas is threatened by insolvency, I report for the Handelsblatt. Bayerischer Rundfunk has an astonishingly similar report, right down to the wording.