Kobel's Art Weekly

Kobel's Art Weekly 9 2025

Regine Müller is impressed by the relaunch of Art Karlsruhe, as reported in the Handelsblatt: ‘The last Art Karlsruhe attracted 50,000 visitors. This year, three days before the opening, there were already twice as many registrations as last year. The concept seems to be working.’ Christiane Meixner, writing for the Tagesspiegel (possible paywall), takes a more critical view of the offerings: ‘Even though the new dual leadership of Olga Blaß and Kristian Jarmuschek has tidied up the fair, which has existed since 2004, and given it a more visually calm look, in some places there is still a colourful, distractingly decorative offering. In particular, there is a lot of noise building up in Hall 4. It is quite difficult to discover the pearls in between. But they do exist.’ Brita Sachs's verdict in the FAZ is also mixed: ‘Visitors who want to scour all four halls should plan in plenty of time and wear comfortable shoes. This is recommended because, while not everything is convincing in all of them, discoveries can be made everywhere. Those who see art simply as wall decoration will be well catered for, decorative, entertaining, with colours to match the furniture. Art is always also craftsmanship, but the latter often pushes its way to the fore.’

The fire disaster does not appear to have harmed the success of Frieze LA, rather the opposite, as the report by David Cassady and Maximilíano Durón for Artnews suggests: ‘In 1897, amid rumours that Mark Twain was seriously ill, the famed author told a reporter, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” That statement might as well have described Thursday at Frieze Los Angeles. By the end of VIP Day, the fair had sent out a 1,500-word email reporting ‘strong sales’, an ‘energetic opening day’ and a long list of sold-out booths and major sales.’ The picture painted by Carlie Porterfield from California for The Art Newspaper is not quite so rosy: ‘Some out-of-towners were more blunt, including a dealer at Felix who said: ‘You really feel the effect of the fire.’ The lines leading up to the tower rooms, which can run through the length of the hotel lobby, were noticeably shorter, and several attendees remarked being surprised how much less crowded the pool seating was during the VIP preview on Thursday afternoon. While the fair seemed quieter, there was some debate as to whether the demure mood was due to uneasiness after the fires or the overall downturn in the art market at large. ‘There's a general consensus that things are slowed down,’ Mills Morán, a co-founder of Felix and gallerist at Morán Morán, says.’ Frauke Steffens reflects on the future in the FAZ: ‘Many gallerists are hesitant to answer the question: Will the tariffs threatened by Donald Trump's government also affect the art market, and to what extent could they impact on the buying mood in the long term? In Santa Monica, some people don't want to comment on this openly: ‘You won't hear anything about this from us or from many of our colleagues,’ says the representative of a gallery with several locations in Europe.’

The Investec Cape Town Art Fair was once considered an insider tip. Outside the African continent, only the Italian Finestre sull'Arte is still interested in the current edition. info/de/nachrichten-im-fokus/das-spiel-zwischen-den-pavillons-ein-uberblick-uber-die-12-investec-cape-town-art-fair (German machine translation), for which Camilla Nacci reports at great length and favourably.

Angelica Villa reports on the resignation of the CEO of Art Basel's sister fair Masterpiece London at Artnews: ‘Lucie Kitchener, the CEO of stalled design fair Masterpiece London, which shows works by antique dealers and designers, stepped down from the role in December, a representative for the fair's parent company MCH Group told ARTnews recently. The departure was the latest shift for Masterpiece, which has not staged a fair since 2022; the MCH representative said that ‘future plans are under review’ for the brand, though further details were not provided.’

Luxury goods may not be as safe a bet as the major auction houses had hoped for as a new business area, fears Mealnie Gerlis in The Art Newspaper: ‘While auction sales were down across the board last year, at Christie's the biggest drop came in luxury goods, which plunged 31% to $678m in 2024. By comparison, 20th/21st-century art sales fell by 15%, and the beleaguered Old Masters sector by 29%.’

The possible effects of Trump's tariffs on the art market are discussed by Bernhard Schulz for Monopol: ‘In general, changes in customs tariffs will be difficult for smaller galleries to absorb. They are more likely to withdraw from international business. They don't have the resources that were available to the London art market after Brexit: the transfer of artworks from one third country to another and the storage of originals in warehouses or free ports.’

The radio programme ‘Die Spediteure der Kunst’ (The Art Shippers) by the Austrian broadcasting company ORF provides an insight into the past and present of the Austrian art transport industry.

‘Birkenstock sandals not art’ is the headline of Legal Tribune Online and Handelsblatt renders the judgement as ‘BGH erlaubt billige Kopien von Birkenstock-Sandalen’ (BGH allows cheap copies of Birkenstock sandals).

APA reports on the planned sale of Pierre Bourdieu's estate: ‘The archive of photographs by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu from the time of the Algerian War, which has been curated by Camera Austria since 2001, is moving to Paris: in the future, the archive will be managed by the Centre Pompidou’.

Christian Fricke selects a cover image for works by Walter Dahn for the current exhibition at the privately run Haus Mödrath near Cologne in Handelsblatt: ‘A glance at the composition of lenders for the show at Haus Mödrath reveals something about market penetration in Germany. The bulk of the exhibits were contributed by Sprüth Magers, followed by the Wilhelm Otto Nachf. collection and a whole range of predominantly anonymous private collections, mainly from the Rhineland. In fact, however, Dahn's collection is international. As a key figure of the ‘Neue Wilden’ (New Fauves), his works, initially brokered by Paul Maenz, not only found their way into important German museums, but also into numerous international private and institutional collections, including the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, the MoMA New York and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Ultimately, it would still be possible today to acquire works from Dahn's central work phases.’

Annegret Erhard draws a modest conclusion from the outgoing term of office of Minister of Culture Claudia Roth on the subject of Nazi-looted art in the WeLT: ‘Now that the draft presented jointly by the federal government, the federal states, local umbrella organisations, the Jewish Claims Conference and the Central Council of Jews in Germany to establish an arbitration tribunal at the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg has passed the cabinet, the advisory commission is obsolete after the processing of the applications already in progress. This is unnecessary, because the individual weak points could easily have been dealt with favourably.’

According to dpa, Bavaria appears to be dealing with Nazi-looted art in the state's own collections in a particularly questionable manner. de/heftige-kritik-am-umgang-bayerns-mit-ns-raubkunst : ‘The Free State has marked around 200 of its works as clearly looted art in an internal list, but has not shared this information or initiated any restitution proceedings, the heirs of the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheims complained in a letter from their lawyers. There is a high probability that around 800 other works are also looted art.’

As suspected here last week, the lawsuit of the gallery owners König seems to be effective in terms of publicity, as Gerrit Bartels notes in the Tagesspiegel (possibly paywall): ‘So, three months after “Innerstädtischer Tod” was published and caused little sensation even in the literary world. But now that the application for a temporary injunction has been submitted to the Hamburg District Court, Christoph Peters' novel is the talk of the town; suddenly there is great interest in it.’

An almost touching psychological profile of the fraudster Lisa Schiff is drawn by Sarah Maslin Nir and Zachary Small in the New York Times: ‘In her nondescript Stuyvesant Town apartment, awaiting sentencing, Ms. Schiff has spent her days constructing a replica Hogwarts from Legos. Evenings at gallery openings have been replaced by meetings at Alcoholics and Debtors Anonymous. She said she writes and rewrites apology letters to her victims but that her lawyer has advised her to hold off on sending them.’ I wonder if such stories will one day be written about father and daughter Thomas?

To finish, something funny: Magnus Resch is standing as a candidate in the Artnet Annual General Meeting on Thursday for the supervisory board position (PDF) of Sophie Neuendorf.