Snapshots 2009: Art world beyond India

Collectors in response to the economic crisis selected the best 20th-century classics and Old Masters. They ignored some contemporary art even as prices halved and sales dropped. Here are some snapshots of the international art world in 2009.

* The Renaissance painter Raphael’s chalk drawing topped auction sales in 2009. The drawing sold at Christie’s London, setting an auction record for a work on paper. It sold for $47.5 million, thus beating a Matisse still life, which made an artist record of $45.6 million.

* Sotheby’s London sale in February tallied $26.15 million, the lowest at its Part I contemporary auctions since 2005 in the city. Christie’s International failed to sell Bacon and Rothko. Marc Newson’s aluminum ‘Lockheed Lounge’ chair sold at Phillips de Pury & Co in April for £1.1 million, an auction record for contemporary design.

* David Hockney’s portrait of philanthropist Betty Freeman got $7.9 million May 13:at Christie’s NY, setting an auction record for the artist. Their $93.7 million evening tally represented almost a 73 per cent fall from May 2008. The previous evening, Sotheby’s took $47 million, down almost 87 per cent from the $362 million auction just a year ago when just a single Bacon’s 1976 triptych fetched $86.3 million.

* Dealers reported renewed demand for contemporary art at the Art Basel fair. A Takashi Murakami diamond-encrusted sculpture went for $2 million at the VIP preview.

* A new Leonardo da Vinci drawing was publicly announced October. A chalk, pen & ink work of a girl in profile sold for $19,000 in the late 1990s at auction, was examined by forensic expert Peter Paul Biro, who found a fingerprint that corresponded to one on his painting St Jerome. London-based dealer Simon Dickinson valued at £100 million.

* An Andy Warhol painting of 200 $1 bills got $43.8 million at Sotheby’s in NY in November, whereas a Rembrandt portrait fetched $32.9 million. A Yves Saint Laurent owned Art Deco chair took $28 million.

* Shanghai-based collector Liu Yiqian forked nearly 170 million yuan ($25 million) in November at Poly International Auction Co in Beijing, a record for a Chinese painting.