Market jitters to hit high art costs, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

According to MSNBC the ascent of art prices is starting to slow after a decade of rapid growth as another blockbuster round of sales kicks off this week.

Collectors are expected to buy up to $2bn in Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art at the auctions, which begin Tuesday in New York. The amount, if realised, would be almost three times that of two years ago.

But worries are mounting that the art cycle is turning as jitters spread through financial markets.

"A lot of Wall St guys now, the ones who were buying contemporary art, are worried about losing their jobs, their bonuses, and when your financial wellbeing is under threat the first thing you stop doing is buying multi-million dollar artworks," said Ian Peck, the chief executive of Art Capital Group, an art finance house.

"The market now is clearly at a peak. I expect a correction, but it will be very targeted, it will be a correction for contemporary artists whose prices have become overheated."

His views were echoed by dealers and collectors, who mentioned Richard Prince, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst as examples of such artists.

Mr Peck said the market would not suffer a severe fall because there was a much broader international market of buyers than there was a decade ago. But he said those international buyers tend to go for the more well established names.

Art prices rose by 13 per cent in the 12 months to June, less than the 20.5 per cent rise in the S&P 500 index, according to the Mei Moses All Art index. In the past ten years, the Mei Moses index had risen by an annual average rate of 15.5 per cent.

Michael Moses, who co-created the index, said: "The returns ... show a slowing of the torrid rate of growth in the market for most collecting categories."

He estimated that the prices of postwar and contemporary works rose by 20 per cent during the 12 months to June, compared with 55 per cent the previous year.

The November auctions are usually the second biggest of the year, after the May sales.