The Fall Art-Market Season: Early Warning Signals

In the current faltering economy, what are the prospects for the staggering amount of high-priced art about to change hands (or not) at the November sales of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York?

One factor that stock analysts scrutinize in evaluating publicly-traded Sotheby's is its monthly sales totals, posted on its website. For September, the numbers are down: $78.57 million last month, compared to $79.72 million for September 2005.

But wait. STOP THE PRESSES! Here's a bizarre news flash: I just went back to the Sotheby's website to give you the link for the monthly results (which I had previously copied off the website), and found that Sotheby's has mysteriously removed the pages reporting monthly results for January to September 2006, leaving only the figures for the first two weeks in October (for which there are no comparables in the 2005 figures, which are monthly, not weekly). Did someone decide that no news is better than bad news?

Privately held Christie's doesn't report monthly totals, but does post individual sale results on its website. Since those figures are in the currencies of the different countries where the sales take place, I'll let someone else crunch those numbers. (Christie's press office declined to give me the September totals in dollars.) I did, however, add up the New York sales results for September 2005 and 2006, and this year was the clear winner: $65.82 million for 14 auctions last month, compared to $51.07 million for 11 auctions in September 2005.

As for the series of contemporary art auctions concluding today in London, Linda Sandler of Bloomberg reported yesterday that "prices...may be stalling," based on weekend results at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips. But Sotheby's noted that the £31.4 million total for its London contemporary sales was "significantly over" the £20.6-28.8 million presale estimate. (It should also be noted, however, that the sold total is beefed up by the amount of auction-house commissions, while presale estimates are not.)

And how did London's recently concluded Frieze Art Fair fare? The end-of-fair press release trumpeted a "record success." But the only sales it quantified were those of the fair's yearbook and magazine. And the only "record" cited was attendance.

By contrast, last year's end-of-fair release stated: "Sales figures are predicted to exceed last year's £26 million." This year---no prediction. The final release about last year's sales, issued last November, boasted £33 million in contemporary art sales.

In today's Bloomberg, Sandler reported that Frieze co-director Matthew Slotover blamed the lack of financial data on the fact that "big galleries won't tell us their sales." If they did tell last year, what does that indicate about this year---another case of "no news is better than bad news"?

UPDATE: Here's a more recent (and more bullish) report from Sandler on the London contemporary auctions.