Slowing Down?

The high expectations going into the important fine art sales in New York City are starting to fade.  Christie's held its Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale on Tuesday and the results were far below the pre sale estimates.

The sale had a pre sale total estimate range of $188.8 million to $277.7 million, and totaled only $144.3 million. 11 of the 46 offered lots failed to sell for a rather poor 76% buy through rate for the impressionist/modern sector.

After a record-busting spring when collectors chased hard after art trophies, the art market is showing a few signs of fatigue, particularly when it comes to paying ever-higher prices for Impressionist and modern art.

Christie's Tuesday evening sale of Impressionist and modern art failed to meet its own expectations, thanks to the failure of a few of its priciest pieces. The sale follows its Monday sale of estate goods from dealer Jan Krugier that also fell flat.

On Tuesday, the house managed to sell an Alberto Giacometti 1954 painting of the artist's brother, "Diego in a Scottish Shirt," for $32.6 million, but the work only garnered a single bid—by the anonymous outside investor who had agreed upfront to buy the work if no one else outbid him. Eleven of the 46 offerings in Christie's $144.3 million sale failed to find takers at all, and the sale fell below its $188.8 million to $277.7 million presale estimate.

Dealers said it may be too soon to gauge whether Christie's performance reflects an overpriced batch of mediocre material or broader jitters in the marketplace, but collectors said prices have been steadily ballooning all year long. This time around, they chose to sit out and watch. Plenty turned up to follow the action at Christie's packed Rockefeller Center saleroom, from New York collector Donald Bryant to Alexander Calder's grandson Sandy Rower. But neither did any bidding, and the drama of the evening came more from watching big-ticket items bomb than anything else.

One of the sale's expected stars, Amedeo Modigliani's androgynous portrait of a 1920s dandy, "Mr. Baranowski," was priced to sell for $25 million but stalled without a bid and went unsold. The seller of Picasso's 1963 "Painter and His Model in a Landscape," wanted at least $25 million for his scene of a couple in the grass. Before the sale, specialist Brooke Lampley said the seller took his pricing cue from a November 2011 Sotheby's BID -4.27%  sale of a similar Picasso from 1967 that sold for $23 million. But on Tuesday, bidders at Christie's turned up their noses at the comparison and the "Painter" failed to sell without a single bid.

Picasso remained popular in other forms, though: His cheery 1937 portrait of his blonde mistress, "Woman in an Orange Beret and Fur Collar (Marie-Thérèse)," sold to a dealer in the saleroom for $12.1 million, edging over its $12 million high estimate with Christie's fees. A Chinese telephone bidder paid $2.6 million for another Picasso drawing of another of the artist's lovers, "Woman Who Cries I," over its $2.5 million high estimate.

Asian bidders, who emerged as serious players during the recession, reinforced their purchasing clout once again in these sales, taking home works by Henry Moore, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. Chinese bidders competed particularly hard for works on paper, and Japanese bidders took home at least three works by Russian modernist Marc Chagall, once a favorite of Russian collectors.

The sale also contained a few sleeper hits. Coming into the sale, New York dealer Simon Capstick said he was expecting a fight over Wassily Kandinsky's "Black and Violet," a colorful, lively work of geometric abstraction from 1923 that was priced to sell for up to $7.5 million. He got one. Bidding on behalf of a British collector in a silvery tie sitting beside him, Mr. Capstick kept pace with several rivals until the Kandinsky topped $10 million. At that point, he bowed out and the winner, another dealer, eventually won it for $12.6 million. After the sale, Mr. Capstick said collectors are willing to splurge on "good, rare things" like the Kandinsky—but he said some other offerings in Christie's sale felt "overpriced."

Source: The Wall Street Journal