$80 Million? Try a Tenth of That. Art’s New Numbers.

TWO Madoff victims and a hedge fund manager are among the sellers at this spring’s important auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art.

You could say a faint whiff of desperation is in the air: the catalogs are a shadow of what they were six months ago, as are the values and — for the most part — quality of the paintings, drawings and sculptures on offer.

When the season kicks off at Sotheby’s on Tuesday night, the two most expensive works of the evening — and of the week — will be a portrait that Picasso painted of his daughter, Maya, when she was just 2 ½ years old and one of Alberto Giacometti’s rare sculptures of a cat. Both are estimated to fetch $16 million to $24 million.

That’s a lot of money in today’s world. But over the last five years, art values escalated to the point where prices had to pass the $80 million mark to create sticker shock.

As recently as six months ago, sellers, their bank accounts flush with cash incentives from Sotheby’s and Christie’s, readily parted with rare treasures like Degas pastels and Bacon self-portraits. After all, they were ensured astronomical prices no matter what, and many of them were betting that the good times were about to end.

These collectors were right and ended up the season’s winners. But in November the music stopped, and auction houses found themselves out millions of dollars when works they had guaranteed either failed to sell or brought far less than expected. Sotheby’s, a public company, reported $52 million in losses last fall, and its stock plummeted from a high of $61.40 in 2007 to about $10 a share now. Because Christie’s is privately held, its finances are more difficult to gauge.

Immediately after the November sales, both auction houses announced that they would give guarantees — an undisclosed sum promised to a seller regardless of a sale’s outcome — only when exceptional pieces or collections come to market. Instead, they are offering some consignors what is called an advance, prepaying a portion of the expected sale proceeds upfront; if the work doesn’t sell, the money has to be returned.

But now collectors are loath to part with anything if they don’t have to, and few high-value pieces are coming to auction. In addition, auction houses are consciously trying to keep estimates low in hopes of creating the illusion that there are bargains to be had.

“It’s been tough,” admitted Brett Gorvy, a co-head of Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department. “How do you persuade people to sell at new price points without financial incentives? How do you put together a relatively risk-free sale?”

He and his colleagues at Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Company are playing it safe, assuming that buyers will too. The buzzword this spring is conservative, with catalogs filled with blue-chip artists rather than emerging names.

“There’s more comfort in Impressionist and modern art because it has been less volatile,” said Guy Bennett, head of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department in New York. “We haven’t seen the rapid acceleration that other markets have.”

In years past dealers took their cues from the auction houses, often organizing shows of artists who had sold well. Now the opposite is happening. Capitalizing on the highly praised exhibition of “Mosqueteros,” a show of late Picassos at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s are featuring the artist on the covers of their Impressionist and modern art catalogs.

Auction house experts are also avoiding once-ubiquitous artists whose market cachet has been diminished. What is for sale is art that is perceived to be safe and commercial. “These are things that will sell,” said Tobias Meyer, worldwide director of Sotheby’s contemporary art department, describing his coming sale. “Works that gives the message the market still exists.”


One Pricey Cat
ARTIST: Giacometti
TITLE: “The Cat”
AUCTION HOUSE: Sotheby’s
ESTIMATE: $16 million to $24 million

For collectors of sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, the dog is king, but some might say cats run a close second. This one happens to be one of the most expensive works in Sotheby’s sale on Tuesday. Although Giacometti was best known for his depictions of the human figure, he produced bronzes of both animals and once even told a writer: “The dog is myself. One day I saw it like that in the street. I was that dog.” Cats, some scholars say, were the artist’s metaphor for the vulnerability of the human race, and his renderings of them are particularly rare; there hasn’t been one at auction since 1975, when a similar sculpture fetched $130,000 at Sotheby’s in New York (over $500,000 in today’s dollars). On Tuesday Sotheby’s will once again be featuring a cat in its sale of Impressionist and modern art. Made in 1951 and cast in 1959 in an edition of eight, it is being sold by an unidentified Swedish collector who bought it in the 1960s. The auction house expects it to bring $16 million to $24 million. (Earlier this year, dealers say, Sotheby’s tried to sell the sculpture privately for a higher price.) Whether this will be catnip for collectors is anyone’s guess. A second cat from the same edition is rumored to be for sale privately in New York.

Once in a Lifetime
ARTIST: Monet
TITLE: “Sailboat on the River Seine, Argenteuil”
AUCTION HOUSE: Sotheby’s
ESTIMATE: $1.2 million to $1.8 million

Because the best Impressionist paintings are either hanging on museum walls or secreted away by collectors who are loath to part with them, anyone looking for one in today’s economy will most likely have to rely on a timely death. Estate property has its benefits. For starters, estimates are nearly always low because the heirs are generally trying to raise cash to pay taxes. And because auction houses set the estimates for these works and this year want to make them as enticing as possible to lure buyers, there might be bargains in store. Collections from estates are also usually fresh to the market. This spring Sotheby’s was able to win a group of three paintings — this Monet along with two canvases by Pissarro — that have been in the same family since the early years of the 20th century.

They come from the estate of Marian Kingsland Frelinghuysen, an heir of Henry O. and Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer, celebrated collectors who left the bulk of their collection — which included prime examples of masters like Degas, Cassatt, Courbet, Manet and Monet — to the Metropolitan Museum of Art after Mrs. Havemeyer died in 1929. But some works stayed in the family. Among the best is Monet’s “Sailboat on the River Seine, Argenteuil,” from 1872, which has been in the Havemeyer family since 1901 and will be sold on Tuesday. A small canvas, measuring 1.6-by-2-feet, it is conservatively estimated to bring $1.2 million to $1.8 million. Monet painted the sun-dappled scene at his home outside of Paris. It is an early landscape as well as one of his first attempts at depicting outdoor light.

Already Sold?
ARTIST: Kippenberger
TITLE: Untitled
AUCTION HOUSE: Sotheby’s
ESTIMATE: $3.5 million to $4.5 million

After the November auctions, top officials at Sotheby’s and Christie’s stopped offering sellers financing. But rules are made to be broken, and this spring Sotheby’s has given Dakis Joannou, a Greek industrialist, a guarantee for works he is auctioning on May 12. Sotheby’s is protected, however, by having what is called an irrevocable bid, meaning that a buyer has already agreed to purchase the art for an undisclosed sum. And if someone else wants to pay more? Then the original bidder gets a percentage of the profits. The highlight of the group, and the cover image of Sotheby’s May 12 sale, is a 1988 self-portrait by the German artist Martin Kippenberger. The piece is an example of the kind of art that is considered a safe sale these days. Depicting himself as paunchy, middle- aged and slumped over, the artist shows himself clad in nothing but white underpants. (He painted it, along with a series of others, after looking at a photograph of Picasso dressed similarly.) The two yellow balloons he holds are thought to be either a metaphor for aging or for the buoyant art market of the 1980s. Sotheby’s is banking on the fact that Kippenberger’s profile in the United States has never been higher, thanks to a major retrospective of his work on view at the Museum of Modern Art. “Kippenberger is someone who appeals to an international market, and his prices haven’t accelerated,” said Tobias Meyer of Sotheby’s. “This painting is very rare.” Of all his work, self-portraits are the most desirable.

The Big Blue Egg
ARTIST: Jeff Koons
TITLE: “Baroque Egg With Bow (Turquoise/Magenta)”
AUCTION HOUSE: Sotheby’s
ESTIMATE: $6 million to $8 million

From 1994 to 2008 Jeff Koons created five versions of the monumental sculpture “Baroque Egg With Bow,” each in a different color. Part of the artist’s “Celebration” series, in which Mr. Koons fashioned oversized children’s toys in shiny colors, the egg to be auctioned this week belongs to Daniel S. Loeb, a hedge fund manager who bought it from the Gagosian Gallery in 2004 . As part as Mr. Loeb’s recent efforts to sell the egg, Mr. Gagosian featured it last fall in “For What You Are About to Receive,” an exhibition held at the Red October Chocolate Factory in Moscow where contemporary art experts said he was asking around $20 million for it. When it remained unsold, Mr. Loeb decided to try his luck at auction. Sotheby’s estimates that the sculpture will bring $6 million to $8 million. Although it is not considered as important as some of Mr. Koons’s other monumental sculptures, the price is remarkably low considering that in June his “Balloon Flower (Magenta),” also from the “Celebration” series, sold at Christie’s in London for $25.7 million.


When It Rains It Pours
ARTIST: Tamara de Lempicka
TITLE: “Portrait of Madame M.”
AUCTION HOUSE: Christie’s
ESTIMATE: $6 million to $8 million

While the odd painting by the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka comes up at auction every year or so, the market is flooded with them this season. Six are for sale in two consecutive evenings at Sotheby’s and Christie’s this week (four at Sotheby’s and two at Christie’s), and six more will be up in day auctions. Ten of them belong to Wolfgang Joop, a German fashion designer, who is taking advantage of the fact that in these tough times he can get star billing for his paintings, whereas a year ago, when there was no end of quality works for sale, these paintings would have been relegated to the back of a catalog. As fate would have it, Christie’s is also selling two important canvases by Lempicka. Epitomizing Paris in the roaring 1920s and 1930s, Lempicka’s work consists primarily of glamorous portraits of men and women of the period. This one, “Portrait of Madame M.,’’ is for sale at Christie’s and was painted in 1932 when André Morillot, a French lawyer, commissioned Lempicka to paint his wife, Marie-Thérèse Morand Morillot, as a gift to her after their marriage in 1929.

The Sure Thing
ARTIST: Calder
TITLE: Untitled
AUCTION HOUSE: Christie’s
ESTIMATE: $1.2 million to $1.8 million

The sculptor Alexander Calder is proving to be the art world’s comfort food. In depressed times, when prices for most artists drop, his work has consistently remained recession- proof. In a dreary sale at Sotheby’s in November, for instance, four bidders wanted to take home “Deux Dates,’’ a painted metal and wire hanging mobile executed from 1964 to 1969. It ended up selling for $2.4 million, well above its high $1.8 million estimate. While his work never appealed to the Japanese who were responsible for the 1980s art boom or to the hedge fund billionaires or newly rich Russians who pushed prices in the last few years, it has, for the most part, been snapped up by low-key, seasoned collectors. As sculpture continues to be a hot commodity, works by this major American artist remain a perennial favorite. Early Calders are particularly desirable, as Christie’s knows. Among the three works it is selling is an untitled wall relief executed around 1943. Fashioned from wood and wire, it is expected to sell for $1.2 million to $1.8 million. Not only are the date and composition of this work appealing, its provenance is too. The sculpture was acquired in the early ’60s by the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and his wife, Mary. Mr. Barnes, who died in 2004, left it to his son, John, who is selling it on May 13.
by Carol Vogel for NYTimes