Picasso flops

Christie’s International had its smallest evening Impressionist and modern-art auction in New York since May 2004 as buyers snubbed Picasso and Matisse in favor of conservative 19th-century landscapes and still-lifes.

The sale at the latest auction totaled $65.7 million, below the $68.7 million-to-$97.2 million presale estimate. Nearly a third of the lots didn’t sell, as collectors and dealers chewed gum, furrowed their brows and sought signs of an elusive rebound in the art market. The tally was down 83 percent from two years ago.

“It’s not been a great sale, but the material was not fantastic,” said London dealer Guy Jennings. “There was some bidding, but it was not euphoric.”

Surprisingly, there were no bids for Pablo Picasso’s 1943 blood-red wartime “Tete de femme” (Head of Woman), which was the projected top lot and featured on the catalog’s back cover. At $7 million to $10 million, the estimate was too bold for today’s choosey buyers. Owned by the anonymous seller since 1999, it depicts Picasso’s muse Dora Maar, wearing a hat.

Sexy Bronze
New York dealer Christopher Eykyn paid $6.4 million for Auguste Rodin’s sexy bronze “Le Baiser,” cast around 1887-1901, estimated for up to $2 million. Eykyn bid on behalf of a private collector he declined to name.

Classic impressionist works priced under $3 million sold best, while most modern works — including an Amedeo Modigliani, a Max Ernst, and a Piet Mondrian — had pre-crash estimates and didn’t sell.

There was an appetite for names such as Tamara De Lempicka and Kees van Dongen. Some demand came from Russia and nearby countries, said Thomas Seydoux, head of Christie’s Impressionist department.

Corot, Monet
Auctioneer Christopher Burge sold a potpourri of art classics by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Degas and Claude Monet to an assortment of phone bidders and paddle wavers. The 40 lots were half the number the privately held auctioneer offered a year ago in the thick of the global financial crisis.

Paris Art Fair
In another sign of the hesitant demand for modern art, none of the museum-quality 20th-century works shown by dealers in a special exhibition at last month’s Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, or FIAC, in Paris found confirmed buyers. “Things are still on hold,” explained Eleonore Malingue, director of the Paris-based gallery Malingue. “Private sales take time. People don’t rush into buying a $30 million painting.”