A record-breaking sale at a German auction house is reverberating around the European art market, says Sophie Neuendorf

Sophie Neuendorf

The 1943 striking self-portrait was hammered down for €20 million ($22 million) or €23.2 million ($24.4 million) with fees —the highest amount ever paid for a work of art at auction in Germany. Including fees, the masterpiece surpassed the previous record for a Beckmann self-portrait, which was set with the sale of Selbstbildnis mit Horn, (1938), sold for $22.5 million with fees at Sotheby’s New York in 2001 (Source: Artnet Price Database). Additionally, the Grisebach sale marks the second highest price achieved for a Beckmann painting: Bird’s Hell (1937–38) sold for £36 million ($44 million), including fees, at Christie’s London in 2017.

According to several witnesses, a Swiss collector, who had bid over the phone via one of Grisebach’s partners, was the lucky buyer of the masterpiece. Self-portraits are the most famous of Beckmann’s oeuvre, and this particular work, a striking painting depicting the artist in a fur-lined robe, was painted while the German artist was living in exile in Amsterdam during World War II. Several collectors in the room bid on an array of blue chip works during what can be described as an electrifying evening. Many collectors had also come to see the evening’s star lot and to hopefully witness a record as the Beckmann piece was offered with no guarantee. Self-portrait Yellow-Pink had been on view in New York in November before arriving back at Grisebach’s historic Berlin villa for the December sale. Most likely, it had caught the eye of several American collectors as auction house specialists notably switched over to English during the sale of this particular lot. According to Grisebach’s Diandra Donnecker, the uniqueness of the work stems from the fact that it is one of five self-portraits to remain in private hands; they rarely come up for sale, and works he painted in exile are even rarer.

Traum von Monte Carlo (1939 – 1943) Max Beckmann

The Grisebach sale marks a pivotal moment for the German art market, which has steadily gained momentum over the past few years. Sotheby’s returned to the country in 2021 after a hiatus and sales in recent years have been more robust than usual, with more works going for over €1 million. Given the ramifications of Brexit, which is making import and export transactions much more cumbersome, Sotheby’s decision is hardly a surprise. Christie’s has been steadily strengthening its presence in Paris over the last few years and Amsterdam is much smaller in terms of buyer opportunities; so the EU’s largest country in terms of size and economic strength seems the logical choice for Sotheby’s – and consequently, international collectors.

The Grisebach sale on December 1 is more than double the last record achieved in Germany, which was previously held by the auction house Nagel in Stuttgart. Nagel had sold a Chinese bronze sculpture, dating to 1473, for €9.5 million. The record for a painting sold in Germany is held by Grisebach for its sale of another Beckmann work, The Egyptian (1942), for €5.5 million in 2018.

Selbstbildnis gelb-rosa (1943) Max Beckmann

For context, let’s take a look at the market. The top 5 German auction houses, in terms of value sold, are Ketterer, Grisebach, Hampel Fine Art Auctions, Lempertz, and Van Ham (in that order). Ketterer’s total sales value in 2022 thus far is over €100 million. After their December 1 sale, Grisebach’s total sales value for 2022 is also close to 40 million USD. But how does the German market compare to its European counterparts in 2022 thus far? Total sales value this year in Germany was $193 Million. The Austrian market recorded total sales of $94 Million, the Swiss market hammered down $182 Million, and the French market recorded $967 Million in sales value.

One of the strongest European markets, Germany will likely need to record a few more years of growth until it can compete with France and the UK (which hammered down over $1 Billion in total sales thus far). (Source: Artnet Price Database).

Interestingly, German artists have proven robust through global economic downturns and often surpass their US or UK counterparts in terms of value sold. The top 5 most sought after artists, in terms of value sold, are Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Franz Marc, and Max Ernst. For context, the total value of Richter works auctioned in 2022 is $223 Million in 2022 thus far – which is greater than total auction sales in Germany this year.

The Night (1918-1919) Max Beckmann

With a historically strong culture of collecting and a deeply ingrained love and value for the arts, it won’t take long for the German market to become a hub for international collectors. An abundance of private collections in Germany will surely provide ample opportunities for acquiring unique and unseen masterpieces. Many of the most important art collections worldwide are located in the country, and quite a few of these marvelous collections will be transferred to the next generation before too long.

According to Artnet data, German collectors have historically favored Impressionist and Modern art, closely followed by Post War and Old Masters paintings. Now, these same categories are tied to tedious export rules and regulations, introduced by Germany’s culture minister a few years ago (ostensibly to protect Germany’s cultural heritage). The fourth most popular collecting category is Contemporary Art, which is much easier to buy and sell internationally. With the rise of the new millennial generation of collectors, perhaps the German market is primed for a shift in wealth and collecting habits? According to Artnet data and recent sales, the country’s market is drawing an international audience and is on track to compete with France and the UK. Some notable collections to keep an eye on are those of Ingvild Goetz, Karen Boros, Ariane Piech, Nicolas Berggruen, and Desire Feuerle, to name just a few.

Sophie Neuendorf is Vice-President at Artnet.

Find out more: artnet.com

‘Atelier’ (2014). Thomas Demand.

German photographer Thomas Demand has become celebrated for his compelling, sometimes shocking, abstract recreations of the everyday. He talks to Anna Wallace-Thompson about the homogenization of our worlds, finding power in the banal, and Saddam Hussein’s kitchen.

Thomas Demand

There’s a particular moment of calm – let’s call it suspended time – when things have settled down while still retaining the memory of the movement that filled them a split second before. Think of the moment when that last dust mote finally settled after drifting down a shaft of light, or the ghostly echoes of the last flutter of a piece of paper as it relaxes into place. Or when you don’t know if the door just slammed shut or is about to burst open. Or sensing the presence of people only through their absence. That’s the moment German photographer Thomas Demand is interested in.

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In fact, at first glance, Demand’s photographs appear simply to be snaps of ordinary places, unremarkable for their sameness, from half-empty supermarket shelves to a bath awaiting its occupant. (This is something that struck him about modern urban spaces, particularly when he first arrived in the US.) Yet, these seemingly humble snaps of everyday situations have earned him a place in the collections of international institutions such as the Guggenheim and MoMA. At auction, his works have sold for more than $100,000 at Christie’s, and he was included in the sale of Mario Testino’s personal collection at Sotheby’s, alongside luminaries such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman.

‘Hanami’ (2014). Thomas Demand

So what is it about these seemingly everyday snaps that has everybody so hooked? Well, further examination reveals each portrait to be a meticulously built paper recreation. Yes, paper. Working in often quite large dimensions, Demand reconstructs the most complex real- life scenarios out of the humblest of materials. They are perfect – or rather, perfectly imperfect, for at the heart of Demand’s work is an interest in the world as a filtered rendering – that is, the paradox of examining past moments through the lens of the present – and even then, through a canny reconstruction of that original moment. “Perfection and beauty are very often seen as interchangeable,” says Demand. “However, if something is too perfect, then it becomes sterile.” And so, working from found photographs of banal scenes (be they supermarket aisles, hotel rooms or office interiors), Demand meticulously reconstructs these tableaux out of paper – warts and all. It is these sculptural paper sets – often quite large in scale – that he then photographs, imbuing the finished image with such an uncanny realism that the eye is often fooled into believing it is looking at the ‘real deal’.

‘Folders’ (2017)

“What I have been doing over the years is replacing the time frame of the [original] photograph with another time frame, which is no less a point in time,” explains Demand when we speak. “The original scenario in the media photograph may no longer be there to look at – although it may be from an event that is still in our short or long-term memory, depending on when it was taken. What I suppose you can see in my work is a paradox of time standing still that is both my own fragile paper construction (complete with all the little imperfections and details of ‘reality’) as much as it is a memory of the moment captured in the original photograph.” The sense of transience in Demand’s work is further compounded by the fact that he often discards the sculpture itself (and, in fact, originally began photographing them purely for the purposes of documentation).

‘Rainbow’ (2018)

In person, Demand is more tidy professor than wild-child artist, his neatly trimmed hair and beard perfectly in sync with his nifty vest and jacket. Get him talking, however, and you can almost hear the thoughts galloping inside his head. When he gets going, he talks a mile a minute, as if the thoughts inside him were moving faster than his ability to articulate them. They tumble out almost in a stream of consciousness, except just when you think he might be going off on a tangent, like a master conductor, Demand deftly brings all the threads together, eloquently and precisely articulating his point.His powers of observation, too, are key to the vision behind the work. Growing up in Munich in the 1960s and 70s, it was when Demand visited the GDR that he first began to pay attention to the power of mass production (or, in the case of the GDR, the lack thereof), and Warhol’s Brillo boxes, for example, remain a key influence: “I grew up in Munich, which is in West Germany, which had plenty of everything.”

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As a young artist, travels and study followed – Düsseldorf, Paris, and Goldsmiths in London – as well as the US (he is now based in both LA and Berlin). During this time he began to notice what he refers to as global “homogenization” – a hospital ward in one part of the world looks very much like it does anywhere else, for example, and, with our mass-produced products – be they Nike trainers or even the Tupperware found in Saddam Hussein’s kitchen – we are more united than we think. “When they found Saddam, and showed the photographs, there were so many remarkably recognisable objects,” says Demand. “In one way, it’s the devil’s lair, but in another, it’s possible to see it in parts as your own kitchen. Maybe it’s a little dirtier, but he had the same objects as you and me.” The resulting work – Küche/Kitchen (2004) – could truly be a picture of a kitchen anywhere. “It’s funny how far objects circulate worldwide: you look at photographs of upheavals in Africa and people are wearing the T-shirts of a local bank in Texas, or plastic sandals made in China and marketed in California can end up in Ethiopia. I am fascinated by how the everyday links us to other cultures, from the pervasive blue computer screens that illuminate of office buildings out of hours, or the industrial slickness of an airport.”

‘Küche/ Kitchen’ (2004)

‘Daily #16’ (2011)

As well as the tableaux of media images that he is known for, Demand has experimented with more intimate scenes familiar to social media. The ongoing ‘Dailies’ series begun in 2008 features an ashtray, a plastic cup shoved into a chain link fence, or even a leaf about to fall through a sewer grate. “I was looking at doing something shorter and easier,” he says. “We all have cell phones in our pockets, and the images being circulated are now private photos – subjective little notes that might not make the news, but are still a form of communication and a culture in itself.”

Read more: In conversation with Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson

These ‘smaller’ works also offer a welcome break from larger and more ambitious set- ups. “In a good year I can make five works, but in a bad one just one,” sighs Demand. “Also, working occasionally with a team of 30 people means that if you’re two months into a particular set up, it’s too late to stop, so you keep going until it works, there’s no way around it.” For example, the work Lichtung/ Clearing Demand created for the 2003 edition of the Venice Biennale took months to get just right due to it being displayed en plein air, and therefore needed to be in some harmony with its verdant surroundings, the challenge being that the Venetian foliage kept changing with the seasons while the image was being built.

‘Daily #15’ (2011)

They leave things open – can you imagine how they might they be reused for something else?” This is particularly evident in pieces such as Rainbow (2018), part of ‘Model Studies’, in which abstract circular shapes in a range of yellows, oranges and reds hint at the full potential of the building they might perhaps one day have been, yet also present themselves as abstract colourscapes.

Most recently, Demand has had a major monograph published. The Complete Papers presents a survey of his work over three decades, and proved to be both a challenge as well as something of an eye opener, as he was able to see an evolution in his work that he had never noticed before. “I thought I was pretty organised, but it turns out there were so many pieces I’d forgotten about – and now that the book is out, there are so many more pieces I realise I would still need to add,” he laughs. “I can see that my work, since the beginning, has been moving slowly towards abstraction, though photography and abstraction can be a bit of a bad marriage in that photography, by its very nature, is figurative.” So what’s the endgame? “If my work were to become too abstract then it would all become a pointless exercise. To be something, the image has to stay on the very edge of nearly becoming something.”

Find out more: thomasdemand.info

This article was originally published in the Summer 19 Issue.

Panorama of summertime in St. Mortiz

A short blast in a vintage Ferrari from the crowds of the Côte d’Azur, the two most prestigious villages in the Alps offer glamour, sunshine, fine dining and more than enough space. Darius Sanai would go nowhere else in summer

Walking through the grand dining room of Le Restaurant at the Badrutt’s Palace, I felt two dozen pairs of eyes glance up at me. Our table, a good one, was a little beyond the centre of the room, meaning a decent double catwalk’s length stretched between the landing at the bottom of the staircase leading from the lobby hall, to the sanctuary of the table. The glances – Badrutt’s Palace clientèle is far too well brought up to stare – varied between the mildly interested and the appraising. The Palace has a claim to be the grandest legacy hotel of the Alps, the epitome of old money in St Moritz, the resort which personifies Europe’s inherited and regenerated wealth. Its regular guests wanted to know who was joining them.

After a couple of days, we got to know the Badrutt’s regulars, at their tables. The lady in the Chanel glasses, immaculate in white Dior trousers and a vintage Dior jacket, sitting and nursing her green tea and water, reading the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A ringer for Greta Garbo, she could have been one of a number of German movie stars from the sixties. The young couple with a little boy who conversed with them in French, English and Italian, seemingly at will, and who had befriended all the waiters. The jolly English family, extending from a baby via teenage girls on Instagram to a paterfamilias who looked like he had enjoyed as many bottles of First Growths as he had bought and sold enterprises. After three days, we started to feel at home.

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Badrutt’s is the hotel of St Moritz; if you want to get in to its New Year’s Eve gala dinner, you had better get in your time machine and ensure your great-great-grandmother marries a significant German count. We were there in summer, when it’s easier to book a room; in fact, the occupancy ratio was perfect, with enough people around to create a buzz, but enough space not to feel remotely crowded.

If Le Restaurant, with its etiquette and dress code, suggests the formal holiday experiences of the past, around 50m diagonally below it, cut into the rocks, is the holiday experience of today. A 25m pool, with picture windows facing the mountainsides across the valley and an extensive spa and wet area. The pool is bordered on one side by a 5m-high rock formation, which serves as diving board, waterfall and, underneath, a cave. Outside on the great lawn are swings, slides and a trampoline, all with a dramatic view.

The Hans Badrutt Suite

Our rooms had the same view, albeit from a slightly higher vantage point; creams and floral curtains, subtle wood panelling and mahogany furniture suggest the tastes of the European aristocracy who form the heart of the hotel’s clientèle.

One of the most charming, and certainly the most surprising, element of the hotel is a little chalet that sits on the hillside across the road from the main building. Chesa Veglia is an ancient chalet that now belongs to the hotel, housing three restaurants, including a casual-chic rustic pizzeria, where the super-rich can eat with their hands and pretend to be normal people. We sat at a table on a first floor balcony, watching informal St Moritz in action; one of our party was invited down to make pizzas with the chefs in the open kitchen. The pizzas, Napoli-style, were picture perfect.

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Badrutt’s outdoor swimming pool

It would have been easy to chill out in Badrutt’s for five days, perhaps stepping outside for a little jewellery shopping, before sliding into the limo and slipping away across Europe. I get the idea a lot of people do; while it’s 1800m up in a high Alpine valley, unlike many villages in the Alps, St Mo is not exactly crawling with people who look like they clamber up rock faces for fun.

But the mountains either side of the broad, high, light Engadine valley are far too tempting for anyone with a little mountain blood in them to ignore. On the second day, we took a funicular train through a steep forest, emerging at an Art Deco-inspired hotel called Muottas Muragl. High on a ledge just above the tree line, the hotel’s restaurant terrace floated over the Engadine, with the valley’s lakes set as blue splashes against the deep meadows; and also over another valley branching out immediately below, which rose to a wall of high peaks thickly covered in snow and ice. In this surreal setting, on a warm, sunny summer’s day, we sat on the terrace, and chose from a short menu strong on local ingredients and with a dash of panache. Perhaps it was the clear mountain air which augmented the senses (although a lack of oxygen is supposed to suppress taste buds) but the beef tartar with cognac tasted more vivid, more limpid, than its famed counterpart at the Cipriani; and a ‘Pork steak gratinated with tomato and mountain cheese on red wine sauce with pappardelle and vegetables’ had clearly delineated flavours, unlike some mountain food. The Muottas Muragl terrace was as memorable as its name, and we lingered until the view started to fade in the late afternoon light, before staggering down the mountain through a forest.

The Alpina is built on a knoll just above the village of Gstaad, facing off against the Palace, on its neighbouring knoll.

Apart from St Moritz, Switzerland, the country where the world’s wealthy have stored their money and visited for sport for the past century or more, has a few mountain village destinations that are known to the high net worth A-list. Zermatt, Crans-Montana, Verbier, Wengen, Arosa; all have their bijou appeal, their private bank branches, and are witness to a parade of furs in winter. But perhaps nowhere epitomises what Henry James called “the happy few” (the reference was ironic, but is now not always used as such) as Gstaad. And if the Palace Hotel has been the embodiment of old money at play for more than a century, its new rival, The Alpina Gstaad, tries to take everything to a new high.

The Alpina is built on a knoll just above the village of Gstaad, facing off against the Palace, on its neighbouring knoll. For breakfast here, we were ushered through a room combining ancient Alpine timbers and contemporary art and colour, onto a granite-lined terrace next to a flowerbed and a few metres from an outdoor pool. Beyond the pool, a lawn and more flowers, and then an uninterrupted view across a broad valley to round, forested hillsides, with rocky peaks splashed with snow beyond.

It was August when we visited the Alpina. Gstaad is one of the lower Alpine resorts, at 1000m lying roughly halfway between the high-Alpine vibe of the likes of St Moritz or Courchevel, and sea level. The sunshine was hot, tempered only by a hint of glacial cool. It wasn’t a great leap to imagine the crowds on the Côte d’Azur and people leaping off yacht diving boards, a few hours’ drive in the Ferrari, to the south. But, unlike the Med, the terrace at the Alpina was both sun-splashed and tranquil. After breakfast we walked the few metres to the pool’s sun loungers and spent the day sipping Margaritas and occasionally taking a dip, being careful not to get burned in the (semi) mountain sun. We had a few other people for company, but it all felt as private as having your own villa.

In the evening, we strolled down to the village; there were no teeming hordes here, either. Just enough people, from families to retired residents and the occasional romantic couple; just enough vibe.

Gstaad may be a gentler location, but it is still very much in the Alps; on the next day we took a cable car to Wispile, at the top of the small mountain overlooking the village. From the terrace here there is a 360-degree vista, towards high, glacial peaks to the south; across spiky, meadow-lined foot-peaks to the east and west; and to the northernmost ridge of the Alps to the north, with a glimpse of the hazy lowlands of Switzerland beyond. We walked along a series of meadows, past forests and farmsteads, through herds of curious cattle, and were ourselves herded onto a rock by an Appenzell cattle dog, until its smiling farmer owner emerged from a barn to tell us she was harmless.

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A steep, zigzag path dropped down through a forest, so dark we only had snapshots of the precipitous fall beneath us; after almost disappearing through a muddy field, the path emerged again and led us to a hotel on the edge of a little village, Lauenen, where we had a refreshing beer and called a taxi to take us back to dinner in another picture-postcard village, Schoenried. This is on a little plateau above Gstaad, and at its gourmet restaurant, Azalée, we felt we had no choice but to try the Simmental beef – acclaimed throughout the Alps, and from the valley we were in. The Azalée, with its vista across the Gstaad valley, was a gentle, spiritual place to be as summer evening turned into night.

Switzerland is the home of haute-hotellerie; nowhere has a higher concentration of five star hotels in small towns and villages. These hotels have faced a challenge as a new generation of wealthy guests arrives, brought up on the casual chic of the likes of Ian Schrager’s creations and the Soho House group. How much do they bend to cater for the new guard? In some cases, new hotels have sprung up which feel a little out of place, Greenwich Village in the Alps. In the case of the Alpina, which was created in 2012 on the site of an old hotel of the same name, the balance is exemplary. The building feels local through its extensive use of timber rescued from abandoned Alpine buildings and huts, and through the local stone on display throughout. It feels contemporary through the openness of its internal architecture, its colour, light and the museum-quality art displayed throughout, courtesy of its owners. None of that would matter if the quality of offerings didn’t stack up.

Chalet style interiors of one of the bedrooms at the Alpina

Sommet, the main restaurant, has a Michelin star, the highest Gault-Millau rating in the area, and a wall sculpture composed entirely of cutlery, under which we were seated. Expecting fine but rich Alpine fare, we were surprised: then executive chef Marcus Lindner’s tasting menu is 100% vegetarian, with carnivores catered to on request (Lindner has since been replaced by Martin Göschel). Redolent of the aromas of Alpine meadows, the succession of dishes proved that meat is far from essential to a signature evening: as one example, the artichoke with truffles from Perigord, sweet chestnut and brussels sprout was as savoury and protein-balanced as you could hope. It would be hard to match such an experience – in such a refreshingly light ambience – let alone to do so in the same establishment.

Megu is the Alpina’s Japanese restaurant, bringing the flavours of Tokyo to the Swiss alps

Megu is a Japanese restaurant, overseen by chefs who have come over from the homeland expressly to create a slice of finest Tokyo in the Alpine hills. Toro tartare with ponzu sauce, fresh water shrimp and Oscietra caviar was a study in subtle contrasts. We developed a serious yearning for the crispy asparagus crumbed with Japanese rice crackers, chilli and lemon – more, please, every day. It’s fine dining with a slice of wit, and a thorough and reasonably priced Swiss wine list – pinot noirs from Malans, Cornalin from Valais, local white grapes from the edge of Lake Geneva, all wines you just can’t find outside Switzerland.

Megu–sleep–pool terrace–repeat. What’s not to love about August in the Alps?

Our thanks to the Switzerland Travel Centre for organising first-class transportation on Switzerland’s beautifully efficient train network: switzerlandtravelcentre.co.uk

badruttspalace.com, thealpinagstaad.ch