Buyer's Market Continues at Sotheby's Contemporary Sale UPDATED

Edward Ruscha's "Strength," selling below-estimate last night at $1.14 million.
It's a good visual metaphor for the art market's downward slide.

At the press conference last night touting Sotheby's contemporary art results, auctioneer Tobias Meyer expressed gratitude to the "collector community" who had "supported the sale."

It was actually life support---enough to maintain a weak pulse. Some veteran American collectors, including Eli Broad and Peter Brant, were present and taking advantage of attractive price markdowns. Broad's curator Joanne Heyler, who had sat beside him in the saleroom, told me immediately afterwards that they had purchased a Ruscha (estimated at $4-6 million; hammer price---$2.1 million) and a Rauschenberg (estimated at $3-4 million; hammer price---$2.25 million). [UPDATE: Carol Vogel of the NY Times reports that Broad also bought a Judd and a Koons.] Brant told me that he had picked up a couple of works, but wouldn't say which ones.

"It was obviously a challenging night," admitted Sotheby's contemporary specialist, Alex Rotter, before announcing to the press the sale results, This auction was 68% sold by lot, 71% by value---a little better than figures for last week's Impressionist/modern evening sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. He announced the total with buyer's premium---$125.13 million, but not the hammer total, which I later learned was $108.92 million---only slightly above half of the low end of the $202.4-280.4 million presale estimate of hammer total.

Another big collector/buyer at the sale, who was sitting in the front row with fashion designer Valentino, placed winning bids on two Warhols and one Joan Mitchell. Outside the saleroom afterwards, Valentino said he had not been the purchaser and the man (still beside him) who had done the bidding told me that he was a collector but if I didn't know who he was, he wasn't going to tell me. (I assume I should have known who he was, and that Carol Vogel and/or Lindsay Pollock will identify him in their reports.)

Two of the three auction records achieved during the sale were disappointing, when compared to presale estimates for those works: Phillip Guston's "Beggar's Joys" fetched a hammer price of $9 million ($10.16 million with buyer's premium), nowhere "in the region of $15 million," which had been its estimate. Richard Serra's "12-4-8" was hammered down to dealer Larry Gagosian (who also bought last night's other Serra) at $1.4 million ($1.48 million with premium), below its estimate of $2-3 million.

John Currin's previous auction record of $847,500 was easily smashed by "Nice 'n Easy," hammered down at $4.8 million ($5.46 million with premium), exceeding its $3.5-4.5 million estimate.

The biggest failures were Lichtenstein's "Half Face with Collar," unsold at $11 million (estimate: $15-20 million) and Freud's "Naked Portrait Standing," unsold at $6.75 million ($9-12 million). The top lot, Yves Klein's "RE 11 Archisponge," fetched $21.36 million, with premium, short of the artist's $23.56-million record and (at a hammer price of $19 million) below its estimate, "in the region of $25 million."

You can find the complete results here.