Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 21 2022

Dear reader of Kobel's Art Week

after 3 months of war, the intensity of the news ebbs away, while the Russian army continues to blithely destroy human lives and cultural sites on behalf of its junta. It is sad that there are Russians who, even outside the brainwashing zones, prefer to cling to the results rather than face the unpleasant truth. As a result, they make themselves complicit in what is happening in Ukraine right now. Will the Russian people be held responsible for their collective guilt 80 years after the end of the war, which will hopefully come as soon as possible?

Ernst Jandl was probably the inspiration for the latest invention from Hasenkamp - the result of experimental poetry is called FLXSM and stands for a revolutionary box that is considerably more environmentally friendly than anything else on the market. The plastic buckets of the competition come nowhere near the environmental data and at the end of their life they are plastic waste that, if things go wrong, pollutes the world's oceans. And mostly Murphy's Law applies. Rumour has it that the Q-Plus crate developed by Hasenkamp 20 years ago, which can withstand 800 degrees Celsius for an hour, is one of the last jobs Mister Q invented for James Bond. The art forwarders of the Hasenkamp Group from about 20 countries met at the weekend to also deal with the question of how to make the business model more environmentally friendly and resource-saving. Finally, Prof. Dirk Boll of Christies reported on the challenges arising from the changes in the art market industry caused by Corona. The art market has a turnover of about 65 billion USD in 2021 but only a fraction of this is accounted for by NFT, the nature of which is not understood by many. Christies sees itself as the market leader in the NFT sector. Only a marginal part of NFT's trading volume has a relationship to art and may have already passed the zenith yet again.

Last week's auctions in New York were record-breaking - the market is not weakening. There were also good auction results in Germany. At the weekend, the Kunsthaus Lempertz auctioned works of art for the Malteser Ukraine Hilfe and donated the corresponding surcharge. So far, more than 300,000 EUR have been raised and the auctions will continue this week.

And once again Russia - better Russian avant-garde, unfortunately not to be sneezed at, but rather not quite genuine: Comes from well-sounding names like Peanuts Kopper and Governance Codex Cromme and should be auctioned at van Ham in Cologne. Beltracchi could not happen to him, Markus Eisenbeis had announced to everyone who should hear it when one of his competitors was in trouble because the provenances were unclear. The material offered by van Ham had as its actual provenance only the art dealer who looked after the collections. Only after the CID became interested in the offer were the works withdrawn from the auction. The only way out of this predicament is to record all works of art from the moment of their creation using digital technologies that unambiguously register the fingerprint. This would let us distinguish between originals and forgeries, which the electronic bouncer would reject before the auction with a "You can't come in here".

Additional security for the market and for insurers, who then no longer have to compensate a lot of money for false work. This could actually be rewarded in the calculation if the prices were not already so low.

We wish you all a good start to the week - only three weeks to go before the art world meets again in Basel ...

Yours, Stephan Zilkens and the team of Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Solothurn and Cologne