Art Auction Houses Predict 25% Bump

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• Auction Houses Counting on Russians

  Nov 30, 08 1:28 PM CST
  With dwindling sales and empty showrooms, art auction houses are increasingly relying on what they have dubbed RR: rich Russians. Houses are hoping the record price drawn by a Kasimir Malevich painting earlier this month is proof that the Russian market will escape the downturn that's affecting other sectors. Of the three major houses, Sotheby's has most aggressively courted Russia’s well-heeled aficionados, the Economist reports, and has been rewarded with a 30-fold increase in sales over the last 7 years.
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• Major Works Fail to Sell at Christie's

  Nov 13, 08 9:16 AM CST
  The art world bust continued last night at the Christie's contemporary auction in New York, where almost a third of the 75 works on the block went unsold. Not a single collector bid for the highlight of the sale, a self-portrait by Francis Bacon estimated to sell for around $40 million, Bloomberg reports. And in a sign of the times, a collection of 16 drawings put up by the CEO of bankrupt Lehman Brothers sold for just $13.5 million, below the low estimate.
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• Contemporary Art Goes Bust at Dismal Auction

  Nov 12, 08 7:58 AM CST
  Collectors from Steve Martin to Valentino packed the Sotheby's saleroom in New York last night, but its contemporary art auction barely pulled in $125 million—far below the low estimate of $202 million. For those who could afford it, works were going at bargain-basement prices. "It was a half-price sale," said Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier collector, who spent $8 million on American modern art in just 90 minutes.
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• Art Market Stalls at Grim Fall Sale

  Nov 4, 08 7:00 AM CST
  In New York last night Sotheby's held a lackluster auction that portended a grim year ahead for the once buoyant art market. Of 70 lots at the sale of impressionist and modern art, fully 25 found no buyers. There was one bit of good news for the market: a work by Kazimir Malevich, the Russian painter and one of the fathers of abstraction, sold for a record $60 million, presumably to a Russian or former Soviet buyer.
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• Sotheby's Pulls $30M Picasso on Market Jitters

  Oct 28, 08 8:26 AM CDT
  A painting from Picasso's Cubist period that was one of the highlights of the fall auction season has been pulled "for private reasons," Sotheby's New York office said yesterday. The withdrawal of Arlequin, a 1909 work which was estimated at more than $30 million, had been rumored for weeks as art prices began heading south, reports the New York Times.
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