Waiting to Exhale

The fact that 50 percent of buyers at Christie's strong sale of impressionist and modern art on Tuesday night were American helped assuage fears that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and volatility in the stock market would slam the art market. Even the upset at Sotheby's the following evening — several much-hyped lots failed to sell or fetched prices below expectations — was blamed on overpriced estimates and lackluster material by a number of experts, not performance in the financial markets.

But it may be too early to exhale. The contemporary sector of the art market may be more susceptible to Wall Street's woes, and it's Warhol, Hirst, and Prince that are going on the block next week.

Michael Moses, co-founder of artasanasset.com, a website featuring art indices, said that the index for post-war and contemporary art is more correlated to financial assets that the others, which include old masters and impressionist and modern works.

"New wealth tends to go to new things, and a lot of new wealth is created on the finance market," he said.

Dealer Richard Feigen concurs. Referring to the stock market, he said, "If we end up with a few bad days, I think it's going to have a dramatic effect on the contemporary market."