Christie’s International sold $16.9 million of paintings and jewels in a two-day sale in Dubai, below estimates, as falling oil and equity prices dented the boom in Middle East art.
The highlight, a trio of vast calligraphy works called “Triptych (La Passion avec croix, ame et bagages, and triangle bigames)” by Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi sold for $482,500, compared with a $400,000-$600,000 estimate. The auction house had estimated the sale of jewelry on Oct. 29 and modern art yesterday would together tally $32 million to $43 million.
“It’s a bargain for the buyers,” said Tariq al-Jaidah, a collector from Qatar, at yesterday’s art auction. He spent more than $300,000 on three works including $170,500 on an untitled piece by Lebanese artist Nabil Nahas that was estimated to be worth $150,000 to $200,000.
Record fuel prices encouraged Christie’s and rival Bonhams to begin auctions in the oil-rich Middle East two years ago. Since oil prices peaked on July 11 at $147.27 a barrel, the commodity has dropped 55 percent as a banking crisis dried up credit, driving economies toward recession.
Christie’s sold 70 percent of the lots offered yesterday, compared to 84 percent at its first sale of the year in April. The auction house said it didn’t provide price guarantees to the sellers.
Parvis Tanavoli, whose sculpture “The Wall (Oh Persepolis)” sold for a record $2.84 million in April, offered a 3 meter-tall bronze sculpture, “Poet in Love,” that fetched $242,500, against a low estimate of $400,000. Mohammed Ehsai’s “Loving Whisper,” depicting ribbons of red calligraphy on a black background, sold for $482,500 against an estimate of $300,000-$500,000. Sale prices include buyer’s premium. (Bloomberg)

Henry Kravis and Richard Fuld are among the art collectors who will make millions of dollars at New York’s auctions next week while many other sellers’ hopes could be dashed.
Christie’s International and Sotheby’s are mounting their two-week, bellwether November sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary art starting on Monday — with many of the works gathered before the brunt of the global financial crisis.
Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co. co-founder Kravis and Lehman Brothers Chief Executive Officer Fuld are among the sellers. The auction houses guaranteed them payment even if the artworks don’t sell, and they could see even bigger profits if the works sell for more than the guarantees.
“Right now I’m seeing a market frozen in expectation, waiting to see what the next two weeks will bring,” said private New York dealer Christopher Eykyn. “There is a sense that the market is re-calibrating and the auctions will provide a new yardstick as to what the new level is.”
On the heels of the red-hot May auctions, which tallied $1.56 billion, the sales are projected to total up to $1.76 billion.
Just this week, the art market received a no-confidence vote.
A 1909 cubist Picasso painting, “Arlequin,” estimated to sell for $30 million, was yanked from Sotheby’s Nov. 3 lineup. The seller withdrew it for “private reasons,” Sotheby’s spokeswoman Diana Phillips said. Dealers speculate that the seller wasn’t willing to lower the minimum price. (Bloomberg)

Two Sienese panels dating from the 15th century have been recovered in an English parish church, in a village in Yorkshire, just outside the town of Sheffield. More precisely this extraordinary discovery occurred in St. John e S. Mary Magdalene’s Church in the small town of Goldthorpe. 
A sensational retrieval, considering that the two paintings had been “abandoned” for years in the Lady Chapel, an architectonic area of the church where it was very difficult to see them in their splendour.  Nobody ever thought that these works could have an important value. There were no suspects of them being an ancient work and especially no desire to study them or record them.  But at last even these paintings, after many centuries, have been noticed and analysed. Indeed, as soon as the first suspect emerged, Christie’s auction house was called in for a consultancy and in turn sought advice from Everett Fahy of the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

A precious painting by Pablo Picasso was the announced star of Sotheby’s upcoming auction to be held on 3rd November in New York. In just a few days Sotheby’s will put up for auction all high-level proposals, in the session dedicated to impressionist and modern art, which includes in its élitist range of choices various pieces by Degas, Munch, Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Kandinskij and Picasso.
Yesterday, a sudden and unexpected change of course was announced, then published on the New York Times, regarding the piece that was considered one of the highlights of the event: Picasso’s “Arlequin” from 1909 has been withdrawn from the auction; this painting was estimated at more than 30 million dollars, equivalent to about 24 million euros.

Christie’s International has assembled $350 million of art in Abu Dhabi, combining highlights from its Oct. 30 auction in nearby Dubai with a Rothko, a Bacon and two Monet works as it seeks to woo emerging-market buyers.
Christie’s is betting that cash from emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia and Russia will stop the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression from triggering a similar slump in the art market.
The size of the Abu Dhabi exhibition “gives you some idea of the growth and our belief that it will be consistently maintained over the next period”, said Jussi Pylkkanen, chairman of Christie’s Europe, in a telephone interview. “There’s no other way we’d be bringing $350 million worth of art to the Middle East”.
Contemporary-art auctions in London by Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury & Co. between Oct. 17 and 19 made a combined 59 million pounds ($91 million), against minimum estimates of 106.2 million pounds, according to Bloomberg calculations.
“There’s certainly an adjustment, but in the early 1990s, we didn’t have the breadth of buying that we have today”, said Pylkkanen. “Then the top of the market was very much driven by Japanese and there was nobody else around them and the truth is that today’s art market is a very global one”. (Bloomberg)