Early Warning Signs - Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

According to Alexandra Peers of NYmag.com, every auction season seems to bring new record-breaking sales ($72.8 million for a Rothko!), and next month, art valued at roughly half a billion dollars will go on the block in New York. Till then, the city to watch is London, as Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips de Pury host multimillion-dollar sales of contemporary art starting October 12.

These are the first such auctions to take place since the economy turned queasy—and they’re more than double the size of the usual London auctions. The total estimates for all three houses are in excess of $300 million. Will the bubble finally burst at these sales? Probably not. (Given how strong the pound and euro are against the dollar, they could even look unrealistically robust. In particular, Russian buyers, and Russian art, will be out in force.) But there will be more disappointments than usual, and probably a higher percentage of works unsold than collectors have come to expect during this long boom. And so the real speculation concerns which artists might be most vulnerable in a potential downturn.

Will the obsession with young contemporary artists finally simmer down? Is the climb in Chinese art prices going to continue? Is there such a thing as too many Warhols?

Here is one of the 5 points that Peers see impacting auctions in the coming weeks:

The auctioneers’ hope: That Lisa Yuskavage, with her deft, unsettling caricatures of women, will continue to sell well. Her record at auction, in May 2007, was $1.384 million. Her painting Lupe & Lola II has a suggested starting bid of $300,000 at Sotheby’s.
The problem: Contemporary artists are the most susceptible in a downturn, and one of the biggest worries in the art world is that if the market softens, only the most prominent painters in any given school or style may hold their value. One dealer put it bluntly: “Wouldn’t you rather have a John Currin?”
The prediction: The painting won’t sell much above its low bid, dulling some of the frenzy for recent painting.

To see the other four click here