2024-09-28 14:27:59
The legendary curator Kasper König is also an art collector. You provide the auction of your collection yourself with the Van Ham auction house. Now he won’t live to see it go under the hammer.
Maybe that’s already there, a provocative relationship to art, succumb to a large number of aesthetic questions. Kasper König must have understood early on that he would not be able to find his way out of the circle of fascination he fell into in 1962 as an 18-year-old apprentice at the Cologne gallery owner Rudolf Zwirner. The way Cy Twombly’s manuscripts were celebrated as important paintings at the time is a fascinating reminder of his long life as a loyal art and artist friend.
When the exhibition’s organizer, longtime museum director and former Städel school director Kasper König died in August at the age of 80, it was long known that there was a large collection from his working life. The king made no secret of the many possessions and gifts he kept with him.
Large parts went to the Ludwig Museum years ago. A drawing was exhibited at the Thomas Fischer Gallery in Berlin in 2018. And now the first and second pieces are being auctioned in two sections at Van Ham in Cologne.
The best science in Van Ham’s marketing book
The entire collection is said to have included “over 600 paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures by 179 artists,” an almost impossible-to-lose collection assembled over a period of 60 years. The Cologne auction house has created an excellent catalog in which the art historian Günter Herzog, with the support of the collector’s active memory, has given each piece its special history. This is science at its best and will have its importance as the foundational text of the far-reaching history of modern art.
No one would expect them to do great, wonderful works in a collection that is never kept but is always displayed in the collection rooms and workplaces. But there must have been possessions in the early years that exceeded private standards. We are now seeing that Kasper König probably bought the impressive “Snowfall” installation from Dusseldorf gallerist Alfred Schmela in the 1960s.
Today it is one of the central Joseph Beuys works in the legendary collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Basel. The fact that König had no money at the time and borrowed from the art dealer Franz Dahlem is one of the little-kept secrets that has been revealed as little as an indication of his strong foundation in Switzerland.
The collection derives its true charm from the wonderful mix of loud and quiet artistic sounds. Hanne Darboven’s Stn writing etudes next to a misty forest sketch by Caspar David Friedrich. A sparse wooden frame by Richard Artschwager next to the “Lucky Clover Tower” by Thomas Bayrle.
William Nelson Copley’s nude sleeper next to a “highly pigmented acrylic” mouse by Katharina Fritsch. “Dark cloud” by the shy photographer Bruno Goller and a green motorcycle shirt with the title “Polizei” on the back that Christian Jankowski auctioned during one of his performances.
A magical smorgasbord. And it’s best when Kasper König stands in front of things and tells old stories. In fact, the collection is something like a dictionary for him, containing all the memorabilia of a life that was very passionate about art.
It is inevitable that in a long life following the footsteps of modern art enthusiastically, one or two find us on your own wall. Kasper König was always a hunter, but never a strategic gatherer. And now, when going through the catalog, the basic communication structure of the collection becomes clear.
Basically, for Kasper König, the collection is like a constant conversation with the artists. This also includes sending a bunch of postcards to an unmanageable group of friends and acquaintances and often getting less thank-you mail in return.
But it cannot exist without these many connections. A question that is sensible, confusing, intelligent, it wants to be and it is, and the players honor the closeness that cannot be broken with a long-lasting friendship. This collection also testifies to a great social talent.
Leisure life with art and artists
Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming presented it in the early 1990s. Monumental, gray on gray. The photographer is not really close to his model. Maybe there was also some shame involved. Money. The fact that the film documents “the emotional world of an unemployed carer,” as the description says, is a bit daring to ask. But people readily agreed that it should be considered “evidence of a close relationship between the emperor and Pei-Ming”: “As an almost contemporary chronicle, the work gives an idea of their collaboration.”
Kasper König carefully accepts the fact that some of the players he participated with are no longer in high positions. All the more because he doesn’t like to show anything, no direction, no style, no reinforcement process.
The importance of this leisure life with art and artists is exactly the fact that the balance is effortless and open. König’s collection – if you look closely, a wonderful collection and, even more, an unusual pleasure – is a great testimony of the life and work of a person who is as independent as he is passionate about art.
He approached everything he wanted to show from a deep knowledge. It must seem like a mystery to the youth of the explorers with their attention stakes. Kasper König maintains a freedom that is controlled by some of his company.
“The Kasper König Collection. Your Private Selection”October 1st and 2nd, 2024, Van Ham Auction House, Cologne
#Dead #Guardian #Kasper #König #Collection #sale