Romantics be warned: Anyone who dreams of the world of art as a refuge for misjudged geniuses who let their visions become untouched by the ignorance of their contemporaries should rather leaf through an illustrated book about Van Gogh than watch the documentary “Is that art?” on Arte .
In four half-hours, the filmmaker Felix von Boehm and the art critic Silke Hohmann from "Monopol" magazine invite you to a tour de force through the art world and the multi-billion dollar business of the global art trade.
At its epicenter, the world's largest art fair Art Basel at its home location, the exploration begins along seemingly simple questions: Who makes the art?
What does she cost?
Who buys them?
And what constitutes art anyway?
Ursula Scheer
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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Stars such as the German-Polish sculptor Alicja Kwade, the Gießen-born performance artist Anne Imhof and the Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafa appear as protagonists.
Young, female, postcolonial: The contemporary selection represents different art genres, temperaments and career paths with their own challenges.
This creates a variety of insights.
Boafa, who we watch over the shoulder as he creates his finger-painted portraits of black people, owes his fame to Instagram as the call for non-white artists grew louder.
His works are so highly traded on the auction market that he and his gallery owner are happy to put limits on speculation.
Alicja Kwade is presented as an art entrepreneur in the implementation of a monumental project that is produced in Berlin by her large team and presented in the Californian desert: impossible without capital to back it up.
Anne Imhof, winner of the 2017 Venice Biennale Golden Lion, thinks aloud about the limits of art.
She runs a veritable company, both creatively and financially.
Collectors come into play like Karen and Christian Boros, gallery owners like Johann König, auction houses like Christie's, for which Dirk Boll speaks, art critics and museums.
The elements of a well-oiled machine become visible, in which supply and demand determine each other, driving production and prices and creating fashions.
Much is only touched on in a hurry - the show "Diversity United" in the controversial Kunsthalle Berlin, for example, remains a neutral foil.
Is the art market a business like any other?
No, that's what makes this documentary, which looks out into the world from Berlin, so appealing.
Ultimately, what is dealt with is ideal, in which collectors such as Manuela Alexejew-Brandl seek self-expression and the artist Alicja Kwade, who ends up alone with her work in the desert, senses something like eternity.
is this art
, on Sunday at 12.30 p.m. on Arte and in the media library