“It was a difficult decision. But the safety and health of our community come first”: This or similar read the messages in mid-December. While the art crowd enthusiastically celebrated the return of the art fairs in Basel, Cologne or Miami in autumn, the completely renewed Omikron virus forced them to withdraw again.
With the approaching fifth wave in mind, the antiques fairs Tefaf in Maastricht and the Brussels-based Brafa canceled their editions for spring 2022 without further ado but also to.
On the one hand, a group that is socially and ecologically concerned is formed. More and more exhibitors are worried about the ecological and psychological consequences of their manic mobility. In the future, they would prefer to rely on local trade fairs.
Even if the industry is still a long way from the virtues of “humility, solidarity and a sense of responsibility” that trade fair impresario Lorenzo Rudolf had demanded of his industry at the beginning of the pandemic – under the pressure of the crisis, the mores in this shark tank seem to be gently changing to change.
During the crisis, retailers realized that they could reach their customers without the expensive exhibition booths
When Art Basel suddenly thinks about a 1.6 million dollar “Solidarity Fund” for weaker galleries, or when it passes on state corona aid to galleries in Cologne as discounts on stand fees. When a fair like in Miami relies more on galleries with “exciting concepts”, the rampant discussion about a new solidarity and the return to content seems to find an echo even in the most elegant gambling den of capitalism. Of course, the trade fairs want to ensure the survival of the art market in this way. With the words “That shows that galleries can be enormously collegial”, Art Basel Director Marc Spiegler also used the decision to polish the image of a notorious institute.
On the other hand, a splendid high-price area is digitally encapsulated. As much as the pandemic plunged the dealers into despair, it proved to them that new clients can be reached even without the overpriced booth economy in white. If you follow the “Gallery Insights Report” of the online art magazine Artsy The pandemic year 2020 mainly brought the realization that “by far the best virtual sales tactic” was video conferences and private “walkthroughs” with collectors via Facetime or similar apps.
The online auction app “Fair Warning”, which Loïc Gouzer, ex-director of Christie’s auction house, developed in 2020, is another example of the creative emergencies of this phase. In this digital sphere, auction houses have recently also made a name for themselves. In 2021 they reported sales records again after the pandemic-related slumps in the previous year. This does not only apply to the German houses Lempertz in Cologne, Grisebach in Berlin or Ketterer in Munich.
The trend is moving from galleries to auction houses and from analog to digital
With Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips, the industry’s three international flagships also achieved a year-on-year increase in sales of 405 percent in the second quarter. These successes are one part of the “seismic shift” (Vanity Fair) from the stationary art market to the auction houses. The other is the turn to the digital. Her face is Noah Horowitz, the former America boss of Art Basel, who moved to Sotheby’s last August.
The galleries had also opened up to the digital market at the beginning of the pandemic, Zwirner in New York, for example, with online viewing rooms on his “platform”. And the shrunken Frieze New York or Art Basel Hong Kong paved the way in May with their additional online offer of “hybrid fair”, which all trade fairs have meanwhile followed more or less resolutely. At the same time, of course, Sotheby’s was also offering its “Gallery Network” to dealers. They were able to present entire exhibitions on the auction house’s well-frequented website.
“The auction houses are pushing even more into the territory of the dealers. Noah knows them all. Bad news for art fairs,” wrote the well-known British art critic Georgina Adam after the personality became known on Twitter. Now the largest auction house has a well-networked contact person for these lucrative “hybrid sales” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/. “The international sales force of Sotheby’s is much greater than that of any individual gallery,” explained Horowitz.
Auction houses like Sotheby’s benefit from the fact that the stationary art market is losing more and more customers. The growth rates over the past year have been enormous.
(Photo: Dominic Lipinski / imago images / ZUMA Press)
The fact that the sharply drawn lines between galleries and auction houses are blurring was suggested by the latter’s entry into the gallery domain of private sales and exhibition organization. At Sotheby’s, the experiment began in the late 1990s. In 2007, rival Christie’s followed suit with the acquisition of the later dissolved primary market gallery Haunch of Venison. The magazine quantifies the growth in this segment at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips Artnet for 2020 now to 50 percent. But there is also the complementary movement: The Berlin gallery owner Johann König not only organizes his own trade fair. If he sells consignments from third parties in addition to his own artists, he enters the secondary market. “Blobification” is what observers call this mutual “intertwining” of the business areas of galleries, trade fairs and auction houses.
In any case, the strongest ones are the auction houses. As the first of the international houses, Sotheby’s will in future also hold auctions from Germany. In the summer of Cologne, it added a fifth “selling center” to its four European locations. With Alexander Klabin, a hedge fund manager has also been heading the new “Sotheby’s Financial Servives” section since summer 2020. It offers less financially strong customers tailor-made loan portfolios. Art Basel will have to make an effort if it wants to catch up with these digital all-round service providers. The success of analogue events such as the Berlin-Munich trade fair “Paper Positions”, regional trade fairs such as Art Karlsruhe or small trade fairs in Luxembourg, Rotterdam or Antwerp should not change this shift in power.
Whether the Frieze will be successful with its fair in Seoul planned for autumn, the market’s latest feverish dream, is also in the stars, as is the cooperation between Art Basel and the Singapore fair SEA Focus in January. After all, even the guests of the last Art Basel missed the prepandemic euphoria, despite the “excess liquidity” built up by the pandemic. In addition, almost all trade fairs with a glut of conventional painting and sculpture rely on the old Adenauer motto: “No experiments”. In the long run, the good old art fair can hardly be dragged into the 21st century. It may be suitable as a backdrop for the symbolic celebration of the “indispensable” physical encounter. But the art market of the future will be governed by the disembodied power of online selling.