FIFA Art-Edition. Football World Championship 2006

Short Introduction

The original of Go for it, Stars will be auctioned and a print will be on sale throughout the world during the World Cup. On the occasion of a reception held in Munich on 8 June, the participation of the Bremen-based artist in the FIFA World Cup edition was announced. Owusu-Ankomah was happy when he made the acquaintance of Franz Beckenbauer and when talking to the German Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, the focus was on the artist´s brother Papa Owusu-Ankomah, who is Ghana´s current Minister of the Interior and used to be, just like Schily, Minister of Culture and Sports.

As such common ground creates closeness easily, it may well be that the first print of Go for it, Stars will soon decorate the walls of the German Minister´s office. As I have found out, the same applies to the print by Tobias Rehberger, who was, alongside Owusu-Ankomah, two-time featured artist of the exhibition Around and Around, curated by Peter Herrmann.

So far so good.

But then, some odd occurrences have begun to take place, occurrences we want to share with you. Please read the following table attentively; you will find a detailed interpretation further below:
(Last update 20 July 2005)

In mid-June, Peter Herrmann started a correspondence with a leading staff member of artfacts.net as he wanted to point out that the rankings established by the company were misleading and incorrect. So the mentioned staff member replied that Mr Herrmann was right in criticising such Western self-centricism. He assured him that, in the future, he would definitely bear this aspect in mind.

Apart from the fact that it is in the nature of the ranking methods not to produce objective results (also due to the situation prevailing in many African countries) we are pleased with this manifestation of good will. In the aforesaid correspondence, Mr Herrmann explained how the mechanisms of market delimitation operate via declassification and was able to illustrate how this could damage business interests.

Incidentally, the famous Kunstkompass (Art Compass), published annually by the German business magazine Capital, fosters discrimination in a much more difficult way. The table, claimed to be a binding guideline, actually takes account of 149 museums, 53 of which are German, 50 North American, the rest is based in other european countries.

It was just then that the artists and gallerists involved were confronted with the price table for the FIFA World Cup edition. The Brands-United art consultant probably used, for simplicity´s sake, the ranking table established by artfacts.net as the two tables are, to a great extent, congruent and as there is, to our knowlegde, no other table accessible on the Internet.

Unfortunately, this FIFA-list is far from being unproblematic and the ranking as such questionable. As one of the few non-european , or better, non-western-artists, Owusu-Ankomah managed to be included in this rather unbalanced categorization, his penetration from top to bottom starting at 8600 points. Even according to the grading method, Owusu-Ankomah would have occupied a position far superior to that of Mr Loye from Nigeria, who has no ranking and a smaller degree of fame.

The classification done by Europeans is, although equally questionable, more compelling. But where an artist is not included in the ranking, categorizations are based on the GNP of their country of origin. In this case it is Owusu-Ankomah who has bad luck, for he was assessed this way in spite of his ranking. This is where a double discrimination begins. Owusu-Ankomah can be considered a high-level example. Artfacts.net share this point of view and have expressed a feeling of alienation regarding the FIFA´s procedure and the consequences of their data being used by the association.

Our arguments, however, failed to induce Brands-United to make corrections. We would have wished for a slight evening out, or better still, no grading whatsoever.

Africa is on the agenda of international politics. A particular role is played by Ghana. Times are favourable for a will to avoid such discrimination in the future.

In Ghana, many are happy about Owusu-Ankomah´s participation. In defiance of the situation, we will not lose track of this fact.

Peter Herrmann. August 14, 2005

©2005.FIFA