Philips de Pury is old school. After an auction, when the crowds clear out and a handful of stalwarts linger to dissect the sale, they break out the champagne. This time, it was justified.

In the last major sale of the fall season, Phillips' auction of contemporary art—the boutique auction house generally concentrates on art of the last 30 years—raised a strong but unspectacular $42.3 million. That was midrange in its own presale projections, with 85 percent of the artworks sold. Far from a blowout, but a relief given the cutting-edge, even risky, nature of the art.

Andrew Terner, a veteran New York art dealer who makes a market in Pop Art and Pablo Picasso, said no one was more worried than art dealers before these huge semiannual sales of Impressionist, modern, and contemporary art. But the auctions "defied expectations and defied gravity," he said. "The market is bigger than we realized—it shrugged off the financial markets." Said Christie’s auctioneer Christopher Burge, simply, "We have very well-heeled clients."

All told, the auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips de Pury totaled $1.7 billion, compared to $1.4 billion six months ago at a similar round of spring sales. But these two weeks were being watched for more than just totals. With financial markets erratic, the dollar low, and the art world having experienced several years of price run-ups, there were many questions on observers' minds. Here’s what we learned this time around:

The art boom’s not over—yet
Of course not, is the obvious answer, but not the complete one. An industry rallied at a difficult time, but the auctions were underpinned by dealers who were buying their artists at retail prices, and that’s not a sustainable business strategy. And there were telltale signs of trouble: Bill Ruprecht, C.E.O. of Sotheby’s, said that three buyers flew in for a $25-million-plus Vincent van Gogh the company offered last week, but none—perhaps spooked by the stock market’s 350-point swoon on the day of the Sotheby’s sale—ended up bidding.

At Phillips de Pury, which has in the past been something of a canary in the coal mine on the market’s direction, works by often-undentable art superstars Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst didn’t sell, and many of the others sold just a nudge above their low estimate. Maybe the post-auction toasts were really to a narrow escape.
 
People are still making money in art
Not just sellers—like Hugh Grant, who watched as the Warhol he paid $3.6 million for in 2001 soared to $23.7 million, including the auction house's commission, though that was at the low end of the estimate—but investors. The auctioneers back-stopped many sales by offering outside dealers, collectors, advisers, and banks the chance to guarantee pieces in exchange for a share of the upside if they soared. The auctioneers had over 100 such arrangements in place—their own guarantees or ones by third parties—before the season, and, by and large, they proved profitable. (Sotheby’s reported a $14.6 million loss related to paintings at its Impressionist and modern art sale that sold under their guaranteed amount, but amply recovered that in its sales of contemporary art.)

Sotheby's shareholders fared less well; the stock took a hit after the house's November 13 sale and second quarter earnings release and have yet to recover. Shares closed yesterday at $38.27, down sharply from its 52-week high of $61.40.
 
Art-world outsiders are bidding aggressively to get in
Forgotten in all the speculation about whether the art market would crash was the fact that some collectors had been hungry to participate in these sales for months. Denied access to or put on waiting lists for new works by the hottest artists, they bid aggressively at auction when given a chance.
 
One of the factors powering his sale, says Michael McGinnis, Phillips de Pury head of contemporary art, was that some of the works were by artists that collectors couldn't obtain any other way. “You have to be privileged” to get them through dealers, he says. Among those were conceptual painter Rudolf Stingel, who earlier this year had an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Los Angeles painter Mark Grotjahn, who is collected by Charles Saatchi and has an upcoming show at the Gagosian Gallery. The Stingel, Untitled, climbed to $1.9 million, triple its expected price (it was bid on a by a woman who had arrived straight from the airport, her rolling Louis Vuitton luggage in tow). Gortjahn’s Untitled (Orange Butterfly MO2G) made double its estimate, or $937,000.

When it comes to Picasso, better late than never
One of the biggest questions of these auctions was whether Picasso’s last wife, Jacqueline, would finally get her due. Picasso is something of a Henry VIII of the art market; collectors know his paramours well and have their favorites. Images of Jacqueline have long lagged, price-wise, behind the Grecian Olga, the voluptuous Marie-Therese and the tortured, angular Dora Maar. Picasso’s Femme accroupie au costume turc (Jacqueline), painted in a single day on November 26, 1955, and estimated at $18 million to $25 million, finally gave Jacqueline parity. Sold by the Nahmad family of Monacan art dealers, it brought $30.8 million.

But it's worth noting that Christie’s had marketed the painting not as an image of Jacqueline but as (which it also was) Picasso’s homage to Matisse. In fact, it called it "the most Matisse-like of all his works" of the period. When an auction house tries to market a Picasso for its similarities to a Matisse, the art world has changed.

Christie’s wins
Sotheby’s set the two highest prices of the sales season—$45.6 million for a Francis Bacon, Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1, and $39.2 million for a Paul Gauguin, Te Poipoi, selling the latter to Hong Kong real estate developer Joseph Lau. But while Sotheby's recovered from a lackluster sale that took place the first week, Christie’s raised $937.5 to Sotheby’s $749.8 million in the two weeks. (Phillips' sales conclude today and are expected to total about $60 million to $66 million.)