International News Digest
GALLERIES FEELING THE SQUEEZE?
The Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Jörg Häntzschel looks at the impact of the bank crash on the art market in New York. Although he suspects that galleries and auction houses will be hit hard, no one has yet issued a statement about the financial crisis. “No comment from the three big auction houses, Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips de Pury,” writes Häntzschel. The city’s most important galleries—Gagosian, Zwirner & Wirth, Marian Goodman, Deitch Projects, and Gladstone—have also remained silent. “And who wants to talk down a nervous market with bad news? No one could say anything about the Frieze Art Fair in London in October, about the auctions at the beginning of November. Only a director from Yvon Lambert was willing to provide information: ‘The last two weeks have been noticeably quiet.’” Although a few collectors here and there have apparently taken their names off waiting lists, there is no trace of panic among New York dealers, who can still choose among buyers.
“What distinguishes this crisis from others is the new internationalism of the market,” writes Häntzschel. “When New York investment bankers drop out, Moscow oil barons jump in. There are fewer risks for artists whose works have obtained spectacular prices in the last years. . . . But things could turn out to become slightly tougher for younger names.”
WHITHER LEHMAN?
In his article, Jörg Häntzschel also takes a look at the impact of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. For its November auctions, Christie’s has announced the sale of works by Barnett Newman, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and others from “an important private collection.” The seller is apparently Kathy Fuld, a trustee at MoMA and the partner of Lehman CEO Richard Fuld. Häntzschel wonders whether the auction might just be “a panic sale”: “Someone saves what is to be saved before the prices crash through the floor.” However plausible, the assumption is likely false, since the deal between Fuld and Christie’s was sealed months ago, before Lehman Brothers’ insolvency.
For Häntzschel, it is clear that the crisis will hurt the New York art market, but just how is anyone’s guess. Again citing the case of Lehman Brothers, Häntzschel notes that the firm’s arts funding is done through a separate entity called the Lehman Foundation. According to Lehman spokesperson Brian Finnegan, the Lehman Foundation is not affected by the firm’s bankruptcy. “We have enough means to fulfill our contracts,” Finnegan told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Häntzschel wonders how funding promises can be kept when the bank is being dismantled and sold. Finnegan had no comment.
Also unclear is the fate of the Lehman art collection, which includes thirty-five hundred international contemporary works. That figure includes nine hundred works—from Marlene Dumas to Damien Hirst—acquired through a takeover of the Neuberger investment firm. A paragraph in the acquisition contract between London’s Barclay’s Bank and Lehman calls for Barclay’s to keep on loan for one year the art from its part of Lehman. After the year, Barclay’s will have the option to sell part of the art collection. “What then?” wonders Häntzschel.
BANKSY FAILS TO SHINE
A recent auction of works by the guerrilla street artist Banksy has failed to fulfill its great expectations. As BBC News reports, 80 percent of the lots—including works by Bansky and Sam Taylor-Wood—went unsold at the Lyon & Turnbull auction. Banksy’s Fungle Junk—a mural painted on the side of a van—was withdrawn from the sale after bidding reached only half of the $270,000 estimate. Lyon & Turnbull blamed not only the financial crisis but also the artist’s refusal to authenticate the works.
TALE OF TWO PORTRAITS
Kate Moss—whose portrait by Lucian Freud sold for close to seven million dollars at an auction in 2005—is not faring so well with her own work. As Agence France-Press reports, the Lyon & Turnbull auction in London also featured a self-portrait of the British model made with lipstick. Though the work did not sell during the auction, it was purchased afterward for sixty thousand dollars by an unidentified buyer. Lyon & Turnbull had estimated the self-portrait at seventy-one thousand dollars. The work is not signed but bears a lipstick imprint of Moss’s mouth. The original owner was musician Pete Doherty, who added his own blood to the canvas along with the phrase WHO NEEDS BLOOD WHEN YOU HAVE LIPSTICK? Doherty fared even worse: His self-portrait, estimated at seventeen thousand dollars, failed to sell—either before or after.
ANOTHER CLASH BETWEEN ART AND FINANCE
There is another financial scandal behind the currently strained art relations between Liechtenstein and Germany. As Le Monde’s Lorraine Rossignol reports, Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein has refused to lend works from his private collection to Germany.
Last year, it was discovered that a host of wealthy Germans had been transferring their money to the Liechtenstein principality in order to evade taxes at home. While the revelation comes as no surprise, what’s troubling to His Highness is the way in which the information was obtained. According to Rossignol, German's secret service paid between $5.6 million and $7 million to get the information from a former employee of the LGT Bank, which belongs to the royal family.
Prince Hans-Adam II has interpreted the move as an aggression, reminiscent of earlier—more bellicose—relations between the two countries. “The principality has already survived three German Reichs and hopes to survive a fourth,” wrote the prince in a curt letter to Berlin’s Jewish Museum, in which he requested the return of an artwork on loan to the museum. “The collections of the prince will refrain from consenting to loans to Germany as long as this country’s application of fundamental juridical principles will appear questionable to Liechtenstein,” wrote the prince.
Rossignol recalls that the disagreement has yet another history: the Nazi’s despoilment of the royal Liechtenstein collection during World War II. “From that, it can be understood that Liechtenstein worries about not seeing its works restituted by the so-called Fourth Reich,” writes Rossignol, who seems to suggest that the works might well be confiscated as a penalty for offering German taxpayers a tax-free haven. Berlin’s Jewish Museum received yet another refusal from the principality on a loan for its current exhibition: “Pillage and Restitution: Jewish Culture from 1933 to the Present.”