Korbinian Kohler in conversation with art historian and WELTKUNST editor-in-chief Lisa Zeitz

In the Berlin editorial offices of ZEIT WELTKUNST, they speak in late summer 2025 about good and silly art, about money and vernissages, about appreciation and the state of today’s art market. And also about how much art reveals about our society. Queer painting, artificial intelligence and the role of nature in art also find their place in this stimulating conversation.

KORBINIAN KOHLER:
Let us go straight in medias res. One approach is to say that art and philosophy have something in common, in that they fulfil two tasks. On the one hand, they reflect the state of society; on the other, they initiate new social directions, so to speak, and break through societal walls. Art does this through representation, philosophy through words. Would you agree?

LISA ZEITZ:
In principle, I think this observation is correct, but I wonder whether art always has to take on tasks. Art can document society, art can also take or indicate new paths – but is that its task? Or can art, for example, simply be decorative, or so personal and remote that it has nothing to do with society at all?

But that raises the question: at what point does something become art?

Actually, I would answer: art is what artists create and declare to be art. But there is also a fluid transition into other fields, for example design. I am convinced that some things are only design, some things are only art, but in between there is a grey area – if the word were not so ugly. Grey area sounds so boring, when in fact the space in which something moves between art and design is particularly lively.

But is it enough for someone to say, firstly, I am an artist, and secondly, what I do is art, for it actually to be art?

Which authorities judge whether someone is an artist? Is everyone allowed to call themselves an artist? Perhaps so. We can still distinguish between good and less good art.

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KORBINIAN KOHLER:
In Bavaria, there is this somewhat simple saying: Kunst kommt von Können – art comes from skill – because if it came from wanting, it would be called Wunst.

LISA ZEITZ:
Yes, which is really rather silly.

Both laugh.

KORBINIAN KOHLER:
But the reason I ask is this: the whole art market seems overheated. Is that a danger? And is the art world perhaps experiencing a certain silliness in the process? Could it be detrimental to the seriousness, or even the significance, of art and individual artworks and artists?

LISA ZEITZ:
You mean, when a work by Banksy shreds itself in front of everyone during an auction? That was silly, yes. But I believe the art world can withstand a little silliness.

The art market is not one single large marketplace, but consists of many different art markets and milieus. Billionaires at the very top end of the price scale sometimes make headlines at auctions with hammer prices in the double- or triple-digit millions of dollars, but that does not mean the market is overheated. Globally speaking, the art market has generated less revenue over the past two years than before.

It is true that the mega-galleries at Art Basel communicate sales in the tens of millions. But that is only the very top tier, which is of course also the most closely observed and the most widely communicated. The art market also consists of many small galleries doing serious gallery work with one, two or three employees. That has nothing to do with an overheated art market. As I said, there are many different art markets.

Incidentally, I am pleased when huge sums are spent on artworks at auction, even if the prices may be exaggerated and have something to do with sensationalism – an auction is, after all, a bit like a theatrical performance. For a long time, I reported on the art market in New York for the FAZ, so I regularly attended the evening auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. People dressed up and went there as if attending a theatre performance.

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Today, things look different. Of course, media and technologies today are far more diverse than they were in the Renaissance. What we are experiencing today is an incredibly polyphonic concert.

KORBINIAN KOHLER:
Which topics move us today?

LISA ZEITZ:
Oh, that is a big question. Freedom, war and peace, artificial intelligence, colonialism … there is so much. For example, we recently dedicated an entire issue of Weltkunst to queer painting, because we noticed that the LGBTQ community has initiated quite a lot and that its themes are currently very present not only in photography and video art, but also in graphic art and painting.

The trend towards figuration can also be observed among other groups that have long been marginalised. In a figurative sense, this can be read as art giving people a face, depicting other realities of life. In African art, too, and among many artists with African roots, figurative painting has been a major theme for several years now. I was very impressed by this last year in the exhibition curated by Koyo Kouoh at the Kunstmuseum Basel.

KORBINIAN KOHLER:
In the art scene, there is the artwork itself, the artist, the gallerist, the museum and the collector. Has this art scene perhaps itself become its own art world – perhaps such a, and now I am being a little harsh, navel-gazing world – that it takes itself so seriously that it forgets what it is actually about, namely the artwork?

LISA ZEITZ:
This being-there, whether at Art Basel or the Venice Biennale, for example, can feel a bit like a school trip. Who comes to the vernissage, who is invited to which party? For many, it is a kind of lifestyle, and one may certainly view that with humour.

The collecting of art and objects says a great deal about society. When the price keeps rising – ten million, twelve million, fourteen, or even a hundred million – these are dimensions that an ordinary person can no longer relate to their own reality of life. But from a sociological perspective, it is interesting.

So I am pleased when artworks achieve insane prices, because it also means that art occupies an elevated position in society and receives appreciation. I am very curious to see what Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer from the Leonard Lauder Collection will achieve this autumn; it is estimated at 150 million dollars.

Money is, after all, a form of appreciation. That should by no means mean that money is allowed to be the measure of all things. But it is certainly interesting when individual works are so coveted that two collectors keep driving each other higher and higher, a little like gladiators in the arena. Every person has a different taste, and tastes change.

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KORBINIAN KOHLER:
Yes, but it could become more interesting, especially for art advisors, if collectors also become more autonomous because they have more art expertise on their phone.

LISA ZEITZ:
Good advisors are not only good because they have art expertise, meaning information that one could theoretically retrieve with AI on a phone. It is also about networks of people, about understanding things and about empathy.

Who needs an art advisor? Those are people who, in a sense, would like to be taken by the hand – probably by another human being, not necessarily by a well-designed programme. But who knows? Some may also be satisfied with a digital programme tailored to their own taste in art and offering promising investment tips.

After all, people also say that AI is not so bad in psychotherapy in some cases.

KORBINIAN KOHLER:
What, for you personally, is good art?

LISA ZEITZ:
That is difficult to answer in just a few words. Good art has to move me in one way or another.

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Lisa Zeitz was born in Heidelberg in 1970 and studied art history in Freiburg, Florence and Munich. She worked as an art market correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in New York and has been editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Weltkunst and the specialist publication Kunst und Auktionen since 2012. Her newsletter appears every Friday, and once a month, in her podcast Was macht die Kunst?, she speaks with artists and museum professionals.