Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 42 2024

Silke Hohmann from Monopol is impressed by Swinging London and the new layout of Frieze: “Placing all the big names next to each other, at the back, is bold, but coherent. After all, everyone can be sure of finding their way to White Cube, Sadie Coles, Gagosian or Ropac anyway. After the VIP opening at 11 o'clock on Wednesday morning, the blue-chip dealers such as David Zwirner or Jay Jopling then waited for almost half an hour for the wave of collectors, including international greats such as Maja Hoffmann, Dakis Joannou and Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, who were either stuck in the narrow connecting corridors between the tents or did not make their way to the rear of the fair until later. Perhaps because they allowed themselves to be captivated by the young art scene in ‘Focus’.”

Stephanie Dieckvoss draws a positive conclusion in Handelsblatt: “For the most part, the galleries are sticking to the concept of the art object. This involves less risk. Above all, there is a lot of ‘handmade’ work, reflection on history, and the processing of individual and collective memories – a mirror of our time. The fair has shrunk back to health and is returning to its ideals of promoting new contemporary positions. In the global mix, there is a lot of exciting work to discover.”

Daniel Cassady and George Nelson have written a multi-faceted overview of the Frieze week for Artnews: “An art adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, told ARTnews that this year's fair is proving positive for works priced in the low to mid-range, spurred on by the reconfigured layout. [...] Sales at Frieze may have trumped expectations on the first day, despite the ongoing doomsday art market narrative, but Sotheby's evening sale of contemporary art that evening failed to catch the same wave.”

Although the first day of Frieze was certainly busy, there were also downsides, notes Scott Reyburn in the New York Times: “The footfall on the preview day of Frieze London, a contemporary art fair, was noticeably less hectic than it has been in previous years. ‘Frieze is a solid art fair, but Art Basel Paris clearly has the edge,’ said Wendy Cromwell, a New York-based art adviser who is attending both fairs this month. Matthew Marks, David Kordansky, Casey Kaplan and Marianne Boesky, U.S.-based dealers who had been regular exhibitors at Frieze London, were notable absentees at this year's edition, choosing instead to exhibit in Paris.”

Gina Thomas, writing in the FAZ on 12 October, is not entirely convinced by the content on offer: “In terms of renewal, Frieze is following the strategy of supermarkets, which rearrange products so that shoppers looking for their favourite items also take a look at other shelves. In the revamped entrance area, visitors first encounter two solo presentations of explicitly political content – the more curated Frieze programme, which focuses on younger or overlooked talent, relies on such contributions. [...] The fact that these statements occupy the most prominent place at the entrance and are echoed in many booths in clichéd anti-colonialist, identity-political and feminist works says a lot about the priorities that Frieze also wants to set with its tiresome contemporary emphasis on female artists from yesterday and today.”

George Nelson's report from the sidelines of the Frieze could just as easily have appeared in BUNTE instead of at Artnews: “Art is secondary to partying for more people than you might think at Frieze London—as at any major art fair. Anyone who is—or wants to be—a hot ticket rocks up on the VIP days to see art and to be seen seeing art, before hobnobbing at the evenings’ gallery dinners, parties, and after-parties. The scene, like Art Basel Miami Beach in December, attracts its fair share of celebrities, as well. Bill Murray, Mickey Rourke, FKA Twigs, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tom Ford were just a few of household names to grace the fair's aisles.”

Heidi Bürklin's uninformative article on both Frieze fairs for the WeLT is mentioned here because it is not (yet?) behind the paywall.

Hardly any journalists still take the trouble to visit the satellite fairs. That's why there's only a ‘Best Booth’ list of Emi Eleode's 1-54 at Artnews.

Scratching the lower estimate sums seems to be considered a success in London, as suggested by the headline of Anne Reimer's follow-up report in the FAZ: “A breath of optimism wafts through the auction halls”. She does the auction houses a favour by not calculating the premium from the results, although it is not included in the communicated estimated price sums. Stephanie Dieckvoss also gives the all-clear in the Handelsblatt, after pointing out the weakness of the individual auctions in detail: “You can draw different conclusions from the auctions. The hype surrounding the very young has completely disappeared; this means that price speculation surrounding them will hopefully also be over in the long term. This is particularly good for the artists and galleries. Good prices are achieved above all in the mid-range segment with established names, be it from modern or contemporary art. Solid, revised estimates help to sell art, but artist records are now rare. On the other hand, liquid buyers can purchase good art at moderate prices. However, you have to look carefully at what you want. The days when you could rely on auction weeks are over. The houses' offers are increasingly different. The London auctions have calmed the market. One can only hope that it continues.” Colin Gleadell, on the other hand, points out the obvious downsizing at Artnet (paywall): “The pressure of putting together major June sales in London (which Christie's largely chose to sidestep) was no doubt one factor for the weaker result, along with the competition for supply (and collectors' attention) from market events in Paris, Hong Kong, and New York. The limited number of guarantees could be a sign of Sotheby's pulling in the reins. There were just six, for a combined low estimate of £13.6 million ($17.7 million) - one-third of the sale's value, compared to almost three-quarters at Christie's on Wednesday.”

A Beuys auction in Paris is part of a larger trend, according to Bettina Wohlfarth in the FAZ: “The fact that an extraordinary ensemble by the German action artist will be auctioned at Sotheby's in Paris on 17 October confirms the growing prestige of the city on the Seine as a European art capital. The 27 works from the Jörg Schellmann collection could have been auctioned a week earlier in London, in parallel with the Frieze art fair currently taking place there. Instead, Sotheby's and the collector decided to offer them at the Art Basel Paris fair. Representatives of major European, American and Asian museums are expected in the French capital for the fair. According to Sotheby's, it is they who the auction is aimed at.”

Boris Pofalla has only modest hopes for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in the WeLT: “The language of the reformers is confident and steely. But one thing is clear: the success of the SPK's re-energising depends on two important factors that neither Hermann Parzinger nor his successor Marion Ackermann can control. The urgently needed money has yet to be approved by the Bundestag. And the 2,000 public sector employees who keep the giant ship running must be taken along on the journey into the brave new world. Nothing will happen against their will, and that includes codetermination, the establishment of ‘process acceleration tools’ or the desired ‘improved service orientation’. The reform of the SPK is not least a matter of its corporate culture, and that cannot be decreed. So it's not a coup de main, but a process.”

There has been movement in the seemingly endless discussion about a workable regulation for dealing with looted art. Christiane Fricke summarises in the Handelsblatt: “On 9 October 2024, the federal, state and local governments reached an agreement in a so-called administrative agreement to establish an arbitration court for Nazi-looted art. Unlike its predecessor, the ‘Advisory Commission’, the new ‘Court of Arbitration for Nazi-looted Art’ is to be a one-sided body, i.e. it can be called upon by only one party, and is to make legally binding decisions. This means that, for the first time in Germany, heirs of despoiled Jewish collectors will have a genuine legal claim to cultural property in public ownership that was lost as a result of persecution. [...] The arbitration award that concludes a procedure is therefore equivalent to a state court judgment. However, it precludes further proceedings, for example before state courts. Only if the gravest of errors has been made can the arbitration award be reviewed by the competent higher regional court upon application.”

The Kunsthaus Zürich is not only home to the controversial Bührle Collection, but also to its antithesis. An obituary by Thomas Ribi for the Jewish collector Werner Merzbacher in the NZZ: “He escaped the Nazis as a child, survived in Switzerland and donated the most popular work of art in the collection to the Kunsthaus: Werner Merzbacher has died at the age of 96.”