2023-07-05 16:24:15
The Titzes. Top performers of the bourgeois success class. She documentary filmmaker, he management consultant. In 1995 they acquired their first work of art, a work by Klaus Rinke. Since then, Anne de Boismilon-Titze and Wolfgang Titze have been collectors. And no change in styles, fashions, or seasonal keywords has been able to dissuade her from her second job.
Willing to learn, inquisitive, with a good feeling for the latest trends, they have assembled an immense collection over the past three decades – without the ostentatious airs and graces that sometimes make art acquisition between the fair and the auction a somewhat difficult profession. It’s only been a few years since The collection is exhibited in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and the public was allowed to take part in the beautiful life story of the Titzes.
The tender title “Love Story” was intended to illustrate the improbable that has allowed the private art complex to grow like a museum. Some, of course, expected explicit picture stories and then stood a little disappointed in front of the visually rather meager art of Klaus Rinke.
Art from Abramovic to Zobernig
Anyone who spells out the collection, however, has a veritable “Who’s Who” of the artists and a handful of female artists who have defined the international scene over the past three decades. From Abramovic Marina to Zobernig Heimo.
It’s the sort of guest list at a glittering art party that’s hard to tell offhand who’s missing. However, it is not so easy to state what the collector couple is really interested in, apart from the prominence of contemporary art.
At the very beginning it still looked like a revival of minimal art and conceptual art. Carl Andre, Lawrence Weiner, Sol LeWitt, Mario Merz, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback – one thought of the Herbert Foundation in Ghent, the Netherlands, which with incomparable commitment keeps alive the memory of the strict artistic practices of the last quarter of the century.
But the Titzes didn’t allow themselves to be turned into programme-collectors. Baselitz, Kiefer, Uecker were added, Christopher Wool, Sean Scully, James Lee Byars, Wolfgang Tillmans, Wade Guyton. Overall, none of the stars that have made headlines lately are missing.
Georg Baselitz, “Step away, the coat”, 2014
Quelle: © Christie’s images limited 2023 Guillaume Onimus
The fact that the selection of artists is not exactly diverse and that Anna obviously did not succeed in convincing her Wolfgang of the attractiveness of the female art scene was already apparent at the Vienna exhibition.
And the fact that the collection represents the European-American art international in an exemplary manner limits the private museum considerably and makes it a document of the clouded view that, despite all the triumphs of discovery, all the willingness to learn and curiosity, no longer notices the global changes has.
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Even when the collection was first presented in Vienna in 2014 in what was then known as the 21er Haus and in the Winter Palace, there were rumors that the passion for collecting was gradually exhausted. Around four dozen works were to remain in the Belvedere as permanent loans. And now the Titzes are offering parts of the collection on the auction market.
For October 19, 2023, Christie’s in Paris is advertising the Auction of almost 40 works from the pool of the collector duo. The total estimated value is estimated by the auction house at 20 million euros.
“Focus on the Best”
An exact list of the selected works has not yet been published. A selection will be shown in advance in London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and New York. In any case, Gerhard Richter’s “Forest Piece – Okinawa” from 1969 is included, a kind of jungle scene that introduced a work phase of abstract painting.
Gerhard Richter, “Forest (Okinawa)”, 1969
Quelle: © Christie’s images limited 2023
The picture has been on the auction market several times and fetched $343,500 at Sotheby’s 30 years ago. Also spectacular was the giant screen “Infinity-Nets (AOTWX)” by Yayoi Kusama, which was one of the much admired highlights in the Vienna exhibition.
The collectors remain silent about the reasons for the sale and the future of their half-lifelong passion. In an interview on the Vienna exhibition, Anne Titze said: “Our goal is not to expand the collection quantitatively, but to concentrate on the best.” And Wolfgang Titze added: “Our collection will end up in museums. Art belongs to the public. Your property is not our primary concern.”
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Now it will be the case that some things that supposedly belong to the public will initially go back into private ownership. Somehow this is part of the “Love Story”. Which is why the expected art market event now bears the old fairy tale title. And as is well known, every love story has its fateful end. Gerhard Richter can paint as many jungle pictures as he wants.
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