A week of art milestones: Frida Kahlo, Gustav Klimt masterpieces smash records • FRANCE 24 English

Well, for some insight, we can bring in art historian Ernst Olrich Leeben. Good morning and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Good morning. I’m glad to speak with you. First, I just want to get your reaction to the sales that we saw this week. There are very astonishing results. But uh when you look at the pictures and the rarity and the popularity of these artists, there is a reason for uh the fact that they can reach prices like this in the current art market. The picture by Gustaf Climpmpt is been has a wonderful story and a very uh very dramatic provenance. So if somebody really wants a picture like this, this is certainly one which you would like to find and it comes from the very very prominent collection. So it’s um it’s no astonishment for me in a way. And Freda Carlo is just an artist who is used today like a trademark. So she has a very high profile um and there is a good reason for reaching prices like this. You mentioned that there’s a story behind the Climpmped piece. Can you just briefly share it? Yes, the the picture uh by Miss Later had been um been painted by Gustaf Climpmpt and then taken away from the family uh which was persecuted because they were Jewish in Vienna after 1938. And there was a whole story of uh the uh daughter um of the later family who is portraited and that she actually gave um the information that she was an illant daughter of Gustaf Climpmpt. So she uh survived as uh like in hiding in Vienna and the picture could stay with the family and it it’s just very rarely that you have such a dramatic background to a picture. And for those of us who aren’t members of the 1% so most of us I imagine it’s hard not to see auctions like this and think you know these works should be in museums or other public places. What do you think about that sentiment? Well, I think that it’s very important that these objects come to the museum, but when you see uh how many of these artworks have actually been in museums in a in a not legal way like I just think of the wonderful portrait by Climp which is now in the Neuer gallery in New York which um uh is the portrait of Adela Blockbau and which through long procedures of the descendants of Adela Blockbau was given up by the Beladair Museum in Vienna and could be claimed by the uh rightful owners and they put it on the market and so it was was be able to to bought by by the Noa gallery. I think it’s it’s very good if these pictures are in public galleries, but you should always look for the history and very often um many prominent pictures, especially from those uh artists from the beginning in the turn of the century were claimed were were ordered by um clients and by collectors who had to leave Germany or Austria um or were looted in France. And so it’s just only just that these works come back to the rightful owners and often leave museums where they had been not in the right place. Yeah. You’re saying that they were made to begin with for for private clients. Uh do we know anything about the people that that buy these artworks today? What what do we know about about them? Well, it’s very interesting that um Mr. Laa bought the painting of Adela Blobbau for the Nea Gallery and also the portrait of Miss Lra came from the LA collection. Um I think today there is so much money out there and there are people who want to really have a trademark or a very prominent picture. So that I think explains that pictures by artists like Freda Carlo or Gustaf Clim to have an international very high standing that they can fetch these prices which for a normal living person seem completely um abstract. What what do these this week’s sales tell us about the art market more broadly? Would you agree with that that analysis that that it wasn’t doing so well but now it might be bouncing back? Yeah, I think that this the art market for contemporary art and for modern art like these paintings are to be considered for modern art are bouncing back. But I was very interested in the context of um the highest price for a picture by a female painter like the one by Freda Carlo um is much higher than uh a picture from the Barack painter from Italy who is Artameisia Gentilelesi who is one of the most wonderful uh female painters from Barack and her prices can’t compare with the Freda Caro. So I think it’s really like a hype for certain artists which is um a fact but which doesn’t really say the last word about the the quality of a picture or of the artist. There are many many other artworks out there which are right now not in favor. And being myself a specialist in the decorative arts and furniture of the 18th century, there is no reason that these objects go for nothing today. And that pictures like this because they come from very very prominent people who get exhibitions in big museums who are whose pictures are portrayed on t-shirts on fashion and all kind of things. they fetch these prices and that’s the reason why I think it’s a hype in a society which goes more and more influenced by influencers by mass um communications with the internet. So it’s a it’s something which has nothing to do really with artistry or the real science. It’s a kind of hype or something like the new world functions today. Hm. And given given that hype, do you think that the people who buy them are buying them for for pure love of the art itself or is it sort of an economic? I just hope that I just hope that from my the bottom of my heart that these pictures won’t disappear in a bunker or in a safe and that they can be at least for the enjoyment of a collector who still has some feeling for the art and can appreciate it as an incredible wonderful artwork. And and just finally, if if you yourself could have bought any piece from the last uh week, is there any that that stood out to you, what would it have been? I know, for example, there was a golden toilet that was on sale. Yeah, I there was a picture in the louder collection by an Lutri Ka who is from the Dston Bridge uh group from the turn of the century of the last century. I think I would have gone for that because he was a colorist and his colors are so vibrant and so full of life that I would have gone for that and hung it straight into my drawing room. All right. Um Ernst Olrich Leeban, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you again so much for speaking to us today. That was art historian Ernst Olrich Leeben on this year’s this week’s record uh art auctions in New York.

It’s been a major sales week for the art market in New York, with a Gustav Klimt portrait fetching more than $236 million on Tuesday, making it the second-most expensive painting ever sold at auction, and a surrealist self-portrait by Frida Kahlo selling for $54.7 million on Thursday, breaking the auction record for a work by a woman. Both pieces were sold by Sotheby’s, whose total sales for the week surpassed $1 billion, with Christie’s close behind. The surge has led analysts to declare that the art market is rebounding after a three-year slump, and art historian Ernst Ulrich Leeben joins us for more insight.
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