Worlds’ top art auction houses report brisk business

An insightful news report in The Wall Street Journal highlights how global auction houses ‘clean up’ as keen investors vigorously vie for art. Columnist KELLY CROW makes following observations in a detailed news report:

• The pace of art buying varies around the world, though. Christie's sold $1.2 billion of contemporary art last year, up 27% from a year earlier. Collectors in the US shopped cautiously last year, with Christie's sales in America dropping 3%, to $1.9 billion, from the year before.
  
  
• Its sales also were down 64% in Dubai, to $18.6 million. On the other hand, European collectors—particularly those from Italy and Switzerland—stepped up their bidding. Christie's sales in Europe totaled $2.2 billion, up 29% from 2010.
  
  
• Christie's greatest triumph came from Roy Lichtenstein, whose 1961 comicbook-style painting of a young man staring through a peephole, ‘I Can See the Whole Room…and There's Nobody in It!’, sold for $43.2 million in November, setting a new record for the Pop artist. Sotheby's fared even better with Clyfford Still's jagged abstract, ‘1949-A-No. 1’ that sold for $61.7 million in November. Impressionist & modern art sales proved a disappointment, though.
  
  
• Both houses seized on collectors' wider interest in contemporary art, a category that includes works created since 1949. The style is particularly popular with newly wealthy, younger buyers who want art made by their generational peers.
  
  
• Looking ahead, expect the top houses to bolster their offerings online as well. Christie's said nearly a third of its bidders last year shopped by bidding online, a 2% rise from 2010. Christie's also got $9.5 million from its first online-only sale of lower-priced goods from the estate of actress Elizabeth Taylor in December. Ms. Taylor's pricier jewels and couture clothing were still sold the traditional way, in a series of live auctions that brought in an additional $147 million.