Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 44 2024

The art market Monopoly continues: after a good eight years, the Endeavour event and entertainment group wants to part with Frieze, along with two tennis tournaments. A press release states: “'Endeavor's portfolio includes iconic, global, and must-attend events spanning sports, entertainment, and the arts,' said Mark Shapiro, President and Chief Operating Officer, Endeavor. ‘As part of Endeavor, Frieze and the Miami and Madrid Open tournaments have each grown significantly, from Frieze launching successful fairs in Los Angeles and Seoul to the Miami and Madrid Opens setting year-over-year attendance and sponsorship records. We are proud of this progress and confident that these unique assets are well-positioned for success in the future.’'’ Maximilíano Durón writes about the background at Artnews: “The news comes after Silver Lake, a private equity firm based in Menlo Park, California, announced it would take Endeavor private after being listed on the New York Stock Exchange for three years. The equity value of the deal was set at $13 billion, with Silver Lake agreeing to pay $27.50 per share, representing a 55 per cent premium on its October 2023 share value. At the time of the deal, Silver Lake already controlled around 71 per cent of Endeavor's voting rights’.”

A positive impression of the art fair Contremporary Istanbul has Arun Khakar from media partner Artsy : “And it's this confluence of local and international, perhaps, that will guide Contemporary Istanbul into its second [sic!] decade, where both the city's galleries and its global perspective will take it firmly into its next chapter. Indeed, Güreli strikes a confident tone. ‘This is our Grand Palais,’ he joked.” Gabriella Angeleti from The Art Newspaper is also impressed: “Outside of the Spanish and Latin America focus, several local galleries are capitalising on the tailend of the Venice Biennale (until 24 November), like the Istanbul-based gallery BüroSarıgedik, which is showing a selection of paintings by Gülsün Karamustafa, who represents Türkiye in this year's edition of the biennial.” The fair's owner also owns the Turkish edition of The Art Newspaper. I was in Istanbul for Monopol.

In his opinion, the only supposed rivalry between the art centres of London and Paris obscures the view of the real problem, explains Christie's CEO Guillaume Cerutti in The Art Newspaper: “In truth, the real issue is not the rivalry between London and Paris, but the decline of all European centres in the face of American dominance and the rise of Asia. Over the past decade, the US has accounted for 40% to 45% of the art market, while China has risen from 5% in 2004 to 20% in the past decade. Since 2019, the combined share of auction sales in London and Paris has declined from 24% to 21% of sales globally. At Christie's, Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art auctions in London and Paris now account for only about 25% of global annual sales, compared to 35% to 40% a decade ago.”

The autumn auctions in Paris, which were accompanied by high expectations, were a flop, notes Bettina Wohlfarth in the FAZ: “At the high-profile autumn auctions, which were held in mid-October concurrently with the Art Basel Paris fair, François Pinault's auction house did indeed offer the largest selection among the major auctioneers and generated the highest turnover. A total of 82.2 million euros was raised in in-house and online auctions. In the peak year 2023, the total result was still 126.7 million. [...] Sotheby's auction of works by Joseph Beuys from the Jörg Schellmann collection was not very successful. Of the 27 lots, ten did not find buyers, including major works”.

The new report by Art Basel and UBS, “Survey of Global Collecting 2024”, has just been published. According to Ursula Scheer of the FAZ, young collectors are currently less willing to spend: “However, these young people are also showing new reluctance to buy. In 2023 and 2024, it is no longer millennials, but members of Generation X who, on average, spend the most on art. The fact that works by female artists are becoming more and more popular could have something to do with the generationally ‘horizontal’ transfer of wealth from their husbands to their wives upon their death, but it also corresponds to the general trend towards previously possibly undervalued artists.” At Artnews, Daniel Cassady comments : “However, according to McAndrews, the spending shift, which comes at a time when the amount of billionaires is actually rising (there are 141 more billionaires that there were last year, according to Forbes) doesn't mean people are buying less art. They are just buying less expensive art. That means that despite the growth in billionaire wealth, some HNWIs are starting to cut back on how much of their personal wealth they allocate to art. This peaked at 24 percent in 2022 but fell to 15 percent in 2024.”

In the Netherlands, government and civic engagement have preserved an early painting by van Gogh for the homeland, writes Kerstin Schweighöfer in the FAZ: “Jacqueline Grandjean, director of the Noordbrabants Museum, bid for the painting at the auction, but was outbid after just a minute and a half. After the hammer came down, she contacted the painting's new owner. She tried to convince him of how important it was for her museum and the people of North Brabant. Instead of the auction price of 6.3 million euros, the sum of 8.6 million euros that is now being asked was raised: “'There are 2.6 million people living in our province,' said director Grandjean. 'If everyone donates one euro, we're off the hook.' Some visitors pointedly put a euro on the counter at the ticket office. A pay terminal for donations by card was set up in the museum hall where the painting can be seen. On top of that, the museum organised a ‘Gordina weekend’ and a hayride through Brabant villages.” Would something like that work in Germany? Or is the state responsible for everything in our country?

How museums manage to make new acquisitions in times of empty coffers and high prices is the subject of an in-depth investigation by Ted Loos in the New York Times: “Some museums are exploring splitting the costs of a work of art with other museums and owning it jointly, part of a growing discussion about whether sole ownership really needs to be the end goal.”

With two rulings on harmonised copyright protection in the EU and the freedom of panorama, deals the Legal Tribune Online. On the latter, dpa explains: “'Photos of copyrighted works from public places are allowed if no aids were used when taking the photos that would create a different impression than photos from generally accessible public streets and landscapes,’ explained Jonas Kahl, a specialist lawyer in copyright and media law. If it remains with this impression, you do not have to ask the author before publication. ‘On the other hand, a drone can take pictures that provide a completely different perspective than the street and landscape that can be seen by the general public.'” Accordingly, climbing a ladder or throwing the camera into the air could also lead to unauthorised recordings. Copyright law is obviously broken.

With a changed consciousness, museums worldwide have been looking at their ecological footprint for some time, Alina Tugend also in the New York Times: “Those numbers became 'the holy grail,' she said, and if museums wanted to borrow items from other museums, they typically had to agree to those climate controls 24 hours a day. But all that is being questioned now and many other museums in Europe and the United States and their insurers are re-examining the issue. The Bizot Group, an organisation of the directors of the world's largest museums, last year issued new green guidelines noting that it is now known that ‘museum collections survive exceptionally well under much wider climatic conditions than traditionally assumed.’’

While the Western art scene is largely boycotting Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, a number of Italians see no problem in working with it, reports George Nelson at Artnews: “In a recent conversation over WhatsApp with ARTnews, Bonami, who has worked with V-A-C for 14 years, rejected the idea that [Leonid] Mikhelson's ties to the Russian military should disqualify the curator from working for GES-2. ‘Sorry, but the ethics of curating is a bullshit concept that I don't indulge in,’ Bonami said. ‘I could write a list of my colleagues who are collaborating with, to the say the least, ethically questionable people—but this is not the point … Sanctions are economic, not cultural. To sanction culture is a white crime that kills people's souls.’’ Bonami was director of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin from 1995 to 2017. His fellow Turinese Francesco Manacorda may have a different opinion on this. He resigned from his post as director of the V-A-C immediately after the invasion and now heads the Castello di Rivoli.

A six-part podcast by Elena Gorgis on Deutschlandfunk radio focuses on art rescuers in Ukraine: “The art rescuers are people who rise above themselves in crucial moments. This podcast tells their story and explores the question of why art is being targeted in the war against Ukraine. And how people are trying to save it.”

In Die Zeit, Tobias Timm accuses the state of Bavaria (paywall) of not restituting works that were once owned by Alfred Flechtheim, despite clear recommendations. The perfidious thing is that the state has used the new federal regulations on the establishment of arbitration courts to further delay the matter: “The state of Bavaria has not returned anything to the heirs of the Jewish gallerist. It has not even allowed the three cases to be assessed by the Advisory Commission on Looted Art. Although German museums have been obliged to do so since 1998 at the latest, through the Washington Principles on Nazi-looted art. In response to a question from DIE ZEIT about the three cases, a spokeswoman for the Pinakothek referred to the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and Art. The Ministry ignored questions about the recommendations for restitution by the general directors in the summer of 2023. Markus Blume announced that the restitution requests of the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim should first be submitted to a future arbitration court, as soon as it is established in the coming year.”

Austria is not exactly covering itself in glory in its handling of cultural artefacts from a colonial context that came into public ownership unlawfully, as can be seen from an article by Olga Kronsteiner for Der Standard: “Before the national election, the issue was only mentioned in the Green Party's election programme. When asked at the BMKÖS, they confirmed that a draft had been in existence since March, which had been ‘discussed with the coalition partner at both the technical and political level’, but had not met with their approval. At the end of June, the ÖVP had announced that they no longer saw a chance of passing the law before the election.”

Yves Bouvier, former Freeport king, owes Switzerland 712 million francs in taxes, reports Fedele Mendicino in the Tribune de Geneve. In The Art Newspaper, Kabir Jhala and Vincent Noce cover the story: “Bouvier's appeal in Swiss federal court to overturn this ruling was rejected in August. He has also been ordered to pay the costs of the court proceedings. [...] Central to the court's latest decision is the fact that Bouvier, despite paying taxes and claiming residence in Singapore, where he moved to 2009, spent the majority of most years during the aforementioned time period in Switzerland. The ruling finds that the bulk of Bouvier's business and personal relationships remained in Geneva. For example, in 2009, he spent 23 days in Singapore compared to 229 in Geneva.”