Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 39 2024

A new fair in Mumbai, to be held at the same time as Art Mumbai, which launched last year, is reported by Kabir Jhala in The Art Newspaper: “South Asia's largest commercial art event, the India Art Fair (IAF) in New Delhi, will launch an offshoot next year in Mumbai. Named the India Art Fair Contemporary (IAFC), the expo will gather between 50 and 70 galleries, mostly from India, in Mumbai's Jio World Garden between 13-16 November 2025.”

A month after Sotheby's announced plans to expand in Saudi Arabia as part of a cash injection from Abu Dhabi, Christie's is now pulling ahead of its competitors and holding auctions there, reports Kabir Jhala in The Art Newspaper: “Christie's is expanding in the Middle East, announcing today that it has been granted a commercial license to operate in Saudi Arabia. It is the first international auction house to establish a permanent presence in the country. Heading up the firm's latest location is Nour Kelani, who has been appointed to the newly created role of managing director, Christie's Saudi Arabia. Based in the capital Riyadh, she will lead Christie's client services for the fine art and luxury secondary business to ‘build on long-established clientele in the Kingdom and engage with the next generation of collectors’, according to a release.”

Christian Herchenröder analyses the eagerly awaited auction of the Kornfeld Collection in the Handelsblatt: “The quality of the collection and the strong presence of Swiss, American and German collectors in particular provided a boost. A cautious estimate before the auctions put the total at 70 million Swiss francs; without the post-auction sales, 115 million Swiss francs were raised: ‘In a difficult market situation, a very good result,’ as auctioneer Bernhard Bischoff rightly emphasised.” However, there were also painful declines: “The Kornfeld collection of works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner left a rather sad aftertaste. Along with Rembrandt, it was one of the auctioneer's top lots. However, the 19 lots that were sold out of a total of 41 offered should not lead one to conclude that German Expressionism as a whole is weakening. It is mainly the graphics, whose prices have been corrected downwards for a decade.”

Aurelie Tanaqui took a tour of Parisian galleries and art dealers for the Handelsblatt.

Vievenne Chow outlines developments in the Hong Kong auction market for Artnet: “As the action-packed Seoul Art Week wrapped up, the art world's attention turned to Hong Kong, where big-ticket auctions will soon occur. All the major international auction houses have new Asia headquarters in the city, and anticipation is running high. Since each house now has a dedicated home, they will no longer be confined to a restrictive schedule because of a lack of venues. We should expect greater diversity and flexibility in the sales calendar.”

Christiane Fricke takes up the cudgels for collecting video art in the Handelsblatt: “Collecting art with moving images is no longer witchcraft, not even for private collectors. This has been made possible by digitalisation and affordable, high-resolution flat screens that can be hung on the wall. The range of offers is wide, the price range is manageable, and as usual, it depends on the reputation of the creator and the size of the edition."

Daniel Cassady of Artnews: “Drew Watson, head of art services with Bank of America Private Bank, called the rate cut “a signal that we may be approaching the end of a broader trend of increasingly high interest rates.” He added that historically the art market tends to perform more positively in periods with lower interest. It's notable too, he said, that collectors will have more liquidity with the lower rates, which may pique the interest and strengthen the backbone of cosigners who have been holding back their best works during an economically slow period in the market.”

The art market is stagnating, while the luxury goods industry continues to grow, summarises Tessa Salomon at Artnews, quoting the “Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study” by the consulting firm Bain & Company. The report itself, however, dates from June and is such a graphic design hell that it is difficult to separate assertions from facts.

Stephanie Dieckvoss attended the Art Business Conference in London for the Handelsblatt: “Guillaume Cerutti, CEO of Christie's, gave an assessment of the situation at the start of the Art Business Conference. He tried to convey a sense of calm. Market downturns rarely lasted longer than two years. We will see a turnaround in 2025. The 22 per cent decline in auction sales in the first half of 2024 would have to be accepted. However, there are also positive business areas: ‘We have had the best six months in Europe in the area of private sales since we started offering them.’ He cites three ‘m's as the reasons for the decline in sales: “macro, money and mood”. Macroeconomically, things are not looking good worldwide, money is expensive and liquidity in the market is decreasing. This affects the mood to spend money on art.” The other speakers also seemed to have been primarily concerned with spreading optimism. That's the problem with many such conferences: the speakers are mainly there to sell their own product, and not so much to provide neutral analysis.

Charlie Engman highlights the multiple mechanisms of exploitation underlying the business models of AI applications in the creative sector in a clever essay at Artnews: “A common thread in the critiques of AI is the fear that the machines are siphoning our creative energies to fuel their own activity. AI acts as an insatiable autonomous engine, indiscriminately consuming intellectual property and natural resources while offering nothing in return, or something we neither need nor want. We are increasingly living inside the corporate imagination of algorithms designed to maximize the profits of the Big Tech companies that engineer them. Our thoughts, desires, and identities are mediated by the mechanisms of the market and anodyne commercial morality, which attempt to enclose common sense in order to control and exploit it.”

Just how seriously the supposedly art-loving region of Baden-Württemberg actually takes art can be seen from Sebastian Frenzel's report on the displacement of the Baden-Baden Kunsthalle by the Baden State Museum in Monopol: “The ministry's statement leaves open the question of why no alternative local accommodation could be found for the State Museum. However, it is possible to guess how the decision to take over the Kunsthalle came about. In the statement, State Secretary for the Arts Arne Braun speaks of having ‘found a way for the Badisches Landesmuseum to continue to be present in public with its important art and cultural history collections during the long renovation phase of the Karlsruhe Palace’. Immediately afterwards, the [sic!] announcement refers to Çagla Ilk's departure. The former director, who was praised for her ambitious programme but repeatedly criticised for low visitor numbers, was apparently left out again. ‘We only found out about the plans on Tuesday morning when a ministry employee paid us a personal visit, but apparently everything had already been decided, including with the Badisches Landesmuseum.'”

Bernhard Schulz at Monopol is not dissatisfied with the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz' (SPK) annual report: “2023 is the first full year that allows a comparison with pre-pandemic times in terms of visitor and user numbers. The SPK's annual report is now available. What used to be announced in a long-winded press conference for the record has been made available in a clear, printed form for years. Small-scale reform, sure, but it works!”

Meanwhile, at parties, as a supposed expert in the field one is already being asked about the now three-year-old ‘Wunderkind’. So here are the final words on the subject, from Laura Ewert in Monopol: “Laurent's account, which is run by his mother, shows all the Instagram nonsense that skinny girls talking into the camera use to build careers in Berlin today (and over which friendships have been ended). Of course there is also user involvement, with questions being asked like: ‘The Train. What can you see in my second picture?’ All in English, because that's what mother Lisa seems to have quickly realised: Laurent will be collected from all over the world. [...] Laurent makes art for people who don't want to know anything about menstrual blood envy. You have to accept that too. But Instagram should be shut down soon.” That should be the end of the discussion. It's not my fault that editorial offices and news agencies are unable or unwilling to limit themselves to producing serious content.

Tessa Solomon reports on another gallery closure at Artnews: “Deli Gallery, a New York City outfit lauded for its keen eye for emerging talent, will close after eight years. With the announcement, Deli joins Denny Gallery, JTT Gallery, and Queer Thoughts on a lengthening list of veteran operations in New York to abruptly shutter. On Monday, the gallery announced in an Instagram post that operations would cease on September 28, at the close of its final show”.

Hauser & Wirth has a new CEO in the form of long-standing employee Mirella Roma (partner since 2020), as reported by Daniel Cassady at Artnews: “Roma succeeds Ewan Venters who joined the gallery as CEO in 2021. Venters will remain chief executive of Artfarm, the independent hospitality group launched by gallery cofounders Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2014, until January 2025 or a successor is named.”

Ingeborg Ruthe pays tribute to the publisher and collector Christoph Müller, who died at the age of 86, in the Berliner Zeitung as one of "the most generous givers of art in Germany’: “It is not enough that only those who can afford it privately can enjoy these treasures. Art must unfold its beauty, its wisdom, its messages for many, many people. Only then does it fulfil its purpose.” Rüdiger Schaper writes in the Tagesspiegel: “It was a pleasure to exchange ideas with him and to test one's own memory. The conversations jumped from culture to politics. In memory of the Jewish art historian Max J. Friedländer, who was forced to flee from the Nazis, Müller donated a prize for art historians named after Friedländer in 2014.”