010 - Me in HD on a 1950s TV walking

me Collectors Room

Hello Smart Art Lover,

Do you still remember the swan song of the Berlin art world? Apart from the Flick Collection in Hamburger Bahnhof, I also mentioned Thomas Olbricht, who has already left Berlin with his collection. After the financial crash of 2008, his foundation erected a bulky building with five luxury flats in Auguststraße right next to KW Institute for Contemporary Art. From the street, one could enter the exhibition rooms through a large café with ticket counter and an even larger museum shop with a nice selection of unimportant stuff. Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Olbricht, habilitated physician, endocrinologist and chemist from Essen, and as Wella heir to one of the richest men in Germany, curated exhibitions with parts of his collection for ten years. The takeaway: the gentleman collects everything, really everything, thus also collects curious things like objects of a cabinet of curiosities, such as the ones found in Ambras Castle in Innsbruck. Bizarre and refreshingly different. To refer to the special energies inherent in the works in his collection, he called his privae collection moving energy Collectors Room or in short me Collectors Room. Even back then this sounded like a successful children's film with a lovable collector's villain.

Fed Up With It

Now ten years have passed. Mr Olbricht and his wife Claudia have not set foot in Berlin. He is fed up with the collectors room and would rather concentrate on stamps in his new house in the south of Essen. For this reason, 500 works will be auctioned tomorrow (Saturday) at Van Ham Auctions under the title From a Universal Collector - The Olbricht Collection. Needless to say, the auction house will be presenting a number of works valued at six figures, such as George Condo, Daniel Richter and Gerhard Richter. But I also recognise a collecting strategy. Mr. Olbricht liked to get his hands on shooting stars like Terence Koh and Christian Rosa. Once bought super hot, they are now considered burnt in my eyes. Much more exciting are the design objects and curiosities from the Wunderkammer. But why does one of the richest men in Germany auction off part of his collection after exactly ten years?

Nonsense

Markus Woeller addresses the question in the daily newspaper Welt of whether the whole thing is just a ten-year tax-saving scheme. The collector himself says nonsense. His children and grandchildren have no use for his collection. And it would be a pity to let the things gather dust in the warehouse. The auction is intended to pass the works and their energy flows on to a younger generation of collectors. Balderdash. He is on the board of the Folkwang Museum in Essen and could also donate this collection to the museum. But apparently there were such plans and disagreements ten years ago, which is why Mr. Olbricht first built his me Collectors Room in Berlin. But there is no proof of this. I think the whole story is neither good nor bad, it is somewhere in the grey area. Thomas Olbricht is a collector and a businessman who is intent on utilising his advantage. That's what makes a good businessman. But he does it a little clumsily. By the way, the rooms are being extensively converted. In 2021 the collector Peter Janssen will move with his Samurai Museum Berlin from Zehlendorf to Mitte. Sayōnara Auguststraße.

From a Universal Collector - The Olbricht Collection Auction
Saturday, September 26th, 2020
from 10 AM Wunderkammer
from 3 PM Modern & Contemporary Art
Van Ham Auctions

Smile in the face of horror

As from now, you can log in to the OVR - Online Viewing Rooms and also buy works from Berlin galleries. For art fairs, 2020 is the year of horror. After Hong Kong and Basel, Art Basel decided to cancel Miami Beach. Frieze in London and FIAC in Paris will not take place either. MCH, as the owner of Art Basel, was in such dire financial straits that the progressive son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch stepped in as a new major investor. The hope is now the online viewing rooms, which the art market has been offering as a digital alternative for some time. With a forced smile, the fair is selling me the whole thing as an exclusive event. Anyway, I wish all galleries very good sales, but this format is nothing more than a PDF with magnifier function and text. Where is the third dimension? I want to go through high-resolution virtual spaces and experience the artworks in all their digital materiality. Artland goes in this direction. But OVR makes the whole thing look as if I am watching Avatar on a 1950s TV.

I remember a highly recommended Art Basel conversation from mid-May. Marc Spiegel talks with top gallery owners Jeffrey Deitch, Sadie Coles and David Zwirner about how to deal with the lockdown. I learn that the online market has risen from pre-Covid 10% to 20%. Experienced collectors continue to buy even without seeing the works in the original, sometimes at very good prices. But the new art buyers are hesitant. And are rather not buying. When I transfer this to the Art Basel OVR, that's fine for the moment, but not a good prospect in the medium to long term. My clumsy wish to the queen and princes of art fairs: develop better online formats. Please.

OVR:2020
Online from Friday, September 25th, 2020
Art Basel

My online favourite of the week

MyArtWalk solves a simple problem. You tap the exhibitions you want to see in the app and the algorithm will create a path with Google Maps. Simple and good. The founder Dr. Heinke Hagemann met me for a coffee during the Berlin Art Week. We quickly became friendly and start a collaboration together. I will publish tours for Berlin on this platform as well. Together with BerlinViews and Berlin Art Week, this is my third collaboration as scary-art.org in three months. YEAH!

myartwalks.com

Be brave, gentle and smart.

Yours,
Florian