Zilkens' News Blog

Zilkens' News Blog 8 2024

The world's economic elite met in Davos and just a few days later in Munich, experts from all nations and genders met to discuss the security situation. Russia was not there, but it was on everyone's minds and those who wanted to forget it were made aware of the significance of a human life in an environment of totalitarian rule by Navalny's death. At the end of the week, the Russian war of aggression against the Ukraine enters its third year and countries that should actually be in favour of the idea of freedom are suffocating in the quarrels of their two-party system, additionally fuelled by someone who was sentenced to a high fine for accounting fraud and refuses the necessary help against the aggressor.

There are huge disparities between the regions of the world, which pose a particular challenge for people: In the last 60 years, the world population has quadrupled from 2 to 8 billion; the internet has reached most corners of the world; the production and distribution of goods has become globalised; traditional world religions have lost ground to aggressive ones; gender roles are disintegrating in some places; economic policies are becoming eco-ideological, weakening the development of the countries concerned. And this is just a small selection of the changes that have to be coped with in a human lifetime. Change also means dealing with fears and moderating them. If you don't do this, you shouldn't be surprised that you no longer reach large sections of the population and that they dream in their cocoons of a world whose foundations no longer functioned in 1960. On Friday evenings there is a newsreel on German television, hosted by Welteke(l) - who, after a few years' break, has rediscovered the FDP as a bashing partner, just because this party has the audacity, against the will of all the do-gooders in the European parliaments and administrations, to let the Supply Chain Duty of Care Act fall through due to its lack of practicability. The little gossip monkeys (those who grew up with tin toys know what is meant) in the studio are frenetically clapping their hands at every platitude.

Television can do other things too: in England, a 45-year-old has now been made happy because a little landscape painting by Constable was lying dormant in his father's estate, having been bought for £30 at auction around 13 years ago. The owner was told the happy news on breakfast television. Now the expected proceeds are said to be around 200 - 300,000 British pounds and the pre-auctioneer, who did not recognise the work, is left in peace. 13 years is not that long ago, considering how long Rybolovlev and Yves Bouvier started fighting about artworks and value.

In between, art and culture are supposed to move in free exchange - and even the reading of Hannah Arendt's "Origins and Elements of Totalitarianism" fails due to the shouting of ignorant people who don't want to expand their knowledge either. In such a climate, everything soon comes to a standstill. It will be exciting to see how the Venice Biennale will present itself this year.

The insurance industry has to find its way in between. Increasing uncertainties are leading to more diffuse risk descriptions and the associated insurance policies are becoming more expensive. HISCOX has now discovered that selfies pose a risk to art. Presumably narcissists prefer to stumble backwards into the objects of their egocentric desires. Or are the climate-desperate iconoclasts who document their actions statistically categorised as self-idiots? Luckily, the Mona Lisa is smiling behind armoured glass.

Art Karlsruhe and Bregenz both start on Wednesday. In between lies the Black Forest, that would be something: a short break from two contemporary art fairs with cuckoo clocks.

A brilliant start to the new week with Kobel's Kunstwoche. Stay with us

Stephan Zilkens and the team at Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH in Cologne and Solothurn