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In the first days of December, the auction houses auction like in the old days: analog.
The printed catalogs have been sent, the offer is online.
Bidders can take part in the auctions via the Internet or by telephone.
Or secure one of the few places in the auction room in advance.
Everything (almost) as usual.
The houses have had livestream experience for a long time anyway.
It is noticeable that in December 2020 every house is offering fewer lots than in previous years.
A major reason is the inevitable and consistently confidently handled relocation of a large part of the consignments to the online auctions.
So you could counteract the paralyzed situation in the spring season.
The online auctions held up to then had lots in the lower, usually four-digit estimate range.
It quickly became apparent that collectors were boldly turning to the digital segment.
Not least to stimulate shutdown and abstinence - in an art-loving or speculative mood willing to invest (a little bit of everything flows together).
Van Ham is auctioning Wolfgang Tillmanns' photo item "paper drop (black)" from 2001 at an estimate of 100,000 to 150,000 euros KM doublet
Source: Wolfgang Tillmanns
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The works were sometimes passed on in the five-digit price range, and quality and prices rose accordingly in the following Internet auctions.
Many an object has now landed there instead of in the “day sales” of the autumn auctions.
Nevertheless, Corona dampened the social sensitivities and thus confidence in generally prosperous developments.
Didn't the willingness to get involved at high prices initially take a back seat in view of the global economic uncertainties?
The acquisition, if it was not already negotiated before the pandemic, was often quite frustrating in this regard.
Some potential consignors of high-quality works of art preferred to wait and see.
Selected works in Berlin
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The auction house Grisebach in Berlin has in the 57 lots segment of the "Selected Works" in addition to the motif of the city of Cammin on the Pomeranian Baltic coast (estimate 500,000 euros), a series of works by Emil Nolde (estimates 40,000 up to 350,000 euros) and a densely and dynamically composed “Geisha Revue” by Georg Tappert around 1911/13 (350,000 euros).
The evening program also includes masterpieces from the Meissen porcelain manufacturer, including a flute case, a one-off from 1761, which - obviously but not certain - is assigned to the personal inventory of the most famous (not the best) Prussian flautist (250,000 euros).
Cosmopolitan city of Berlin.
Lesser Ury, city dweller with a pronounced love of the Brandenburg nature experience, portrayed them again and again in the beginning of the 20th century, the busy streets, citizens, cabs.
And the Berlin “Café Bauer” popular at the time.
A variant with a view from the balcony of the Unter den Linden boulevard is available at an estimate of 130,000 euros in the narrow range of modern and contemporary art at Neumeister in Munich.
Modern art in Cologne
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Lempertz is particularly strong in the evening auction in Cologne with works of art after 1945 and of his contemporaries.
In a passage with twelve works from small editions by Gerhard Richter - offset prints, copies from the “Gray” and “Skin” series, colored lacquer motifs behind glass, overpainted photographs - the prices range between 8,000 euros and 100,000 euros.
Lempertz is auctioning Karel Appel's painting “Untitled (Bathers)” from 1962 at an estimated price of 200,000 to 220,000 euros
Source: alfa photo
Top lot with 400,000 euros is “Half Solid Tube Piece” by Donald Judd, a red painted plywood box with an aluminum cylinder cut in half lengthways into the top (a puzzling lock, the marking of a wound?).
A nine-part work that Marcel Broodthaers developed in 1973 as part of his “Peintures Littéraire” in 1973 under the title “Shape - Image - Illustration”, callously and finely constructed, equates the typographical, literal representation of an object with the pictorial, even gives it priority (350,000 euros).
The Cologne competitor Van Ham offers a good 300 works of art in the mostly five-digit tax range.
Toplos is a monumental bronze still life, with fruits, jug and bottle on a draped tablecloth in a conventional, almost caricaturing way, by Fernando Botero (copy 4 of 6, 150,000 euros)
Abstract tendencies in Munich
At Karl & Faber in Munich there is a paper work by Franz Marc among the six-digit positions.
A sketch sheet with a stylized big cat in a cubist water color landscape (“Reddish Animal”) on one side and a furious pencil composition (“Abstract Shapes”) on the other.
In 1996 it came to the North Rhine-Westphalian collection from an auction at Lempertz in Cologne at a hammer price of 160,000 DM, from which it is now being consigned at 350,000 euros.
Karl & Faber is auctioning Jiri Hilmar's paper object in a glass case “Black X” from 1969 at an estimate of 15,000 to 20,000 euros
Source: KARL & FABER art auctions
The interests of the Ulm collector Erwin Mutschler were similar, who turned to the creations of the founders and students of the Ulm University of Design, established in 1953, and more generally to the “tendencies towards abstraction” of the decades after the war.
The works compiled in a special catalog by Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart and Almir da Silva Mavignier, for example, convey a coherent picture of the attempts at new beginnings of those years.
Fifty years earlier, it was the Expressionists who made short work of conventional image programs that declared color tone and contrast to be the primary power of an image.
August Macke's “Woman with Child on the Garden Wall” from 1913 (400,000 euros) fits perfectly into the collection of this art lover, who was enthusiastic about the aspects of artistic revision or transformation.
Market-fresh Kirchner
Ketterer in Munich has included a market-fresh painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in its “Evening Sale” with works by Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Gabriele Münter, Karl Hofer, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and all the other artists of the current canon.
“Our house” (500,000 euros) was previously owned by Kirchner's descendants and is the only reproduction of his Davos home “In den Lärchen”, in which he came to rest after troubled years around 1918 (“I live in a beautiful old one Bündnerhaus with a kitchen like Rembrandt's studio ”).
Ketterer is auctioning Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's “Our House” at an estimate of EUR 500,000 to EUR 700,000
Source: © Ketterer Kunst GmbH and Co. KG / Marc Autenrieth
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In 1938, a year after 639 of his works had been confiscated from museums as degenerate, sold abroad or destroyed, he painted “Woman with a goat” (250,000 euros) - one of his last paintings.
He committed suicide that same summer.
On the canvas under this picture, the auction house experts discovered the motif "Two dancers" (around 1928), believed lost and often interpreted by Kirchner, by means of an X-ray examination.
It forms an almost melodic undertone to the introverted mountain solitude of the young shepherdess.
The focus on color effects and the examination of the zip paintings by the American Colorfield master Barnett Newman reflects the untitled large format (150,000 euros) by Günther Förg.
Its deep black surface is divided vertically in the middle by two narrow strips of color.
Delicately and imprecisely drawn in soft orange and light gray-blue, they break and support the black surface equally.
Yves Klein, Gotthard Graubner and Rupprecht Geiger also exemplarily represent this minimalist image program in the Ketterer auction.
The impression of texture and changing lighting effects naturally play a major role in such work.
They should be inspected before the auction.
Working from home for viewing art is an all too meager option.
Dates of the auctions in December 2020
Grisebach (Berlin):
19th century art and photography on December 2nd.
Selected works on December 3rd.
Modern and contemporary art.
Special auction "Calábria Collection" on December 4th
Karl & Faber (Munich):
Modern and contemporary art on December 9th and 10th.
Special auction “Tendencies of Abstraction” on December 10th
Ketterer (Munich):
Post-war and contemporary art on December 11th.
19th Century Art and Classical Modern Art on December 12th
Lempertz (Cologne):
photography on December 7th.
Ancient art "Bischoff Collection" on December 8th.
Modern and contemporary art on December 8th and 9th
Neumeister (Munich):
Modern, post-war and contemporary art on December 3rd
Van Ham (Cologne):
Modern, post-war and contemporary art on December 2nd