ART MARKET - Sotheby's, Christie's Contemporary-Art Sales Total Drops 17%

Next year's going to be very tricky," said Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the London-based Fine Art Fund and a former Christie's employee during the last major art market recession, in the early 1990s. "People aren't going to put things up for sale. Volumes at auction could be 30 or 40 percent down on this year. It's going to hit the auction houses badly."

A Bad Year for Contemporary Art at Sotheby's and Christie's (ARTINFO)

At the beginning of the 1990s, the battle cry among dealers was, "Stay alive until '95." Many didn't. By some estimates New York lost 40 percent of its galleries and blue-chip art declined in value by two-thirds. Nobody has any idea how many artists dropped out. The established artists whose prices declined the most were the ones who experienced the greatest speculation -- Ed Ruscha and Donald Sultan among them whose prices dropped an amazing 80 percent from their high-water marks. As we know, Ruscha's market came back and then some. As for Sultan's. . . .

The Good, The Bad, and The Greedy (artnet)

ANNUAL SALES of contemporary art at Sotheby's and Christie's International's flagship auctions in New York and London contracted 17 percent in 2008 after more than doubling over the previous two years, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg News. The world's two largest auction houses took a combined total of just below $2 billion with fees at their regular series of mixed-owner sales in New York and London this year. In 2007, the same group of auctions achieved a record $2.4 billion. In 2006 they raised $1.1 billion.

 Sotheby's, Christie's Contemporary-Art Sales Total Drops 17% (Bloomberg 5/12)

PERFORMANCE - Over the long term, however, art as an investment has performed quite well. We know this from data we collect for our several Mei Moses Art Indexes, which track the market's performance back to 1957. Our complete analysis is available to subscribers at www.artasanasset.com. Unlike stocks and bonds, works of art are unique. They trade infrequently.

Art That Beats The S&P (Forbes)

CANADA - The auction realized $543,000 in total. The 68 per cent sell-through affirmed the softening of the Canadian resale art market highlighted last week by the Sotheby's/Ritchies and Joyner Waddington's auctions in Toronto. In its first Canadian sale in June this year, Bonhams sold 70 of 87 Canadian paintings consigned for bidding - an 81 per cent sell-through that realized an estimated $1.5-million.

Bonhams Canadian art sale reveals slowing market (Globe& Mail)