Fall Auctions Still Getting Paddled

Roy Lichtenstein's Half Face With Collar, depicting a businessman tugging at his shirt, was an apropos cover image for the catalogue to Sotheby's contemporary art sale. The Upper East Side auction house was packed last night, but the tumult in financial markets continued to keep the bidding at bay.

Sotheby's sold 43 of the 63 contemporary artworks on the block, for a total of $125.1 million, well below the presale estimate of $202.4 million to $280.4 million.

Victories were few and far between. John Currin's 1999 Nice `N Easy, a painting of two nude women, sold for $4.8 million (before fees paid to Sotheby's by the buyer), exceeding the piece's presale high estimate of $4 million and setting a new record for the artist. A hanging mobile by Alexander Calder, Deux Dates, achieved $2.15 million before the buyer's premium, above the presale high estimate of $1.8 million. The top selling lot was French painter Yves Klein's 1960 Archisponge (RE11), which sold for $19 million--but that was well below its $25 million estimate.

Only four works--by Cy Twombly, Alexander Calder, Richard Serra, and Alighiero Boetti--sold within their estimated range, with the rest landing lower. And Lichtenstein's pop art painting, with a presale estimate of $15 million to $20 million, failed to attract a single bid.

The results couldn't be further from those achieved a year ago, when Sotheby's fall contemporary art sale brought in over $315 million, exceeding a $220 million high estimate and setting a sale record for the auction house. Sotheby's comparable auction in May bested that result, totalling $362 million.

Tellingly, some of the same artists that sold below estimates last night, or failed to sell at all, achieved record prices last year. In 2007 Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko set new records for works on paper. Jeff Koons set a record for any living artist at auction, with the $23.6 million sale of Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold).

Two Koons pieces were on offer last night. The more expensive of the two, an oil painting entitled Cheeky, started off to sluggish bidding.

"Shall we be a little cheeky?," teased Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's worldwide head of contemporary art, from his auctioneer's podium. After a moment, a bidder bit.

"See, that was 100,000 dollars more," Meyer said. "Still not cheeky enough."

The price crept up to $3.5 million in the end, $500,000 below the painting's low estimate.

But last night's rocky results didn't come as news to Sotheby's or its clients, as results in recent weeks have been similarly grim. On November 7 Sotheby's reported a third-quarter loss twice the size of its second quarter loss, and said it lost $42 million in guarantees for artworks sold during October and November.

Last week New York's fall auction season kicked off with an Impressionist and modern art sale at Sotheby's that brought in $223 million, well below its low estimate of $339 million, and with only 45 of 70 lots sold. Things went further south on Wednesday night at Christie's, where work from the collections of Rita Hillman and Alice Lawrence fetched $47 million, less than half expectations. At Christie's Impressionist and modern evening sale on Thursday evening, buyers passed on 36 of the 82 pieces offered, bringing a total of $146.7 million, 60 percent of what was predicted.

Tonight, Christie's will hold its post-war and contemporary sale, which will include a collection of drawings being sold by former Lehman Brother's C.E.O. Richard Fuld, expected to bring in about $20 million.

Lat fall, Christie's post-war and contemporary sale totaled $325 million, and sixteen new world auction records were set for artists. Somehow, we doubt that this evening will bring similar results.

by Liz Gunnison

Photo: Roy Lichtenstein's Half Face with Collar,1963, during a press preview at Sotheby's in New York.

Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters/Landov