A Tale of Two Art Markets: Christie's and Bloomberg's

Callen Bair's Figure Painting blog beat me to this, but we have to wonder if Christie's specialist and Bloomberg's reporter, in separate analyses of Christie's first auction of the fall season, attended the same contemporary art sale.

This from Jonathan Laib of Christie's (go here and click Sept. 10):

Today's First Open sale...performed superbly, catching the energy and enthusiasm of a market clearly confident and fervent. The strength of the sale was established early on when solid prices were achieved for contemporary artists such as Richard Prince, Mona Hatoum and Ugo Rondinone. The afternoon session added yet another layer of gusto....The active bidding on the phones, in the room and through the web established a well-tuned, positive tone for the season.

Whereas Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg writes:

A whiff of caution touched the season's first contemporary art auction yesterday at Christie's International in New York...Results for First Open...were solid, especially given the U.S. economy's murky outlook. The sale totaled $12.2 million, below the $12.6 million high estimate set by Christie's....Bidders were more resistant to overpaying for younger artists whose works already were saddled with hefty estimates. Almost a quarter of the lots offered for sale failed to find buyers....Many of the lots carried aggressive estimates that are a legacy of the recent boom in contemporary art.

It doesn't make sense to read too much into a minor sale devoted to second-tier works. But with everyone jittery about the possible art-market impact of the credit crisis, we're all trying to read the tea leaves.