LONDON—The turmoil in the global financial markets hit the art market with a sickening thud this weekend as a series of contemporary sales yielded the highest percentages of unsold material in recent memory, echoing the circa 1991 decline from that era’s art boom. The situation does not auger well for the more major series of auctions coming up in New York next month, when a newly sober art market will reassess the value of its greatest stars.

Sotheby’s kicked off the weekend marathon on Friday, October 17, and though it seemed a pretty lousy start, with 17 of the house’s heavily guaranteed 62 lots being bought in, for an unsold rate of 27 percent both by lot and by value, the evening would be the weekend’s best, beating both Christie’s and Phillips de Pury in statistical terms of property sold.

Still, it wasn’t a pretty picture, with the ₤22,008,250 ($38,135,896) tally trailing the pre-sale estimate of ₤30.6–42.7 million. The same sale last year brought in ₤34.9 million, with a buy-in rate of 16 percent by lot and 12 percent by value.

Andy Warhol’s suitably spooky Skulls (1976), comprised of ten silkscreened ink on canvas panels, took top lot honors, squeaking by at ₤4,353,250 (est. £5–7 million). The work, which carried an undisclosed guarantee, went to New York trader and Warhol market-maker Jose Mugrabi.

The auction’s cover lot, Gerhard Richter’s fuzzily photo-realist Jerusalem from 1995, also guaranteed, flopped at ₤3.9 million (est. ₤5–7 million).

In hindsight, Sotheby’s notably clever and proactive move to pressure sellers to drop secret reserves prior to the sale was the art market’s version of a bailout; if the reserves hadn’t been Slimfasted downward, the casualty rate would have certainly been much higher.

Another, larger Richter, also guaranteed, Abstraktes Bild (Rot) from 1991, fetched an under-estimate ₤2,841,250 from New York private dealer Nancy Whyte. Buttonholed immediately after the sale, Whyte seemed pleased, having paid a hammer price ₤500,000 below the low estimate (before the buyer’s premium). “They got the reserves down, so it wasn’t a disaster,” she said, adding, “New York will be the bigger test.”

Signs of distress selling were evident in the consignment of Jenny Saville’s large-scale and power-packed female head in oil on paper, Rosetta 2 from 2005–06, which sold to a telephone bidder for an impressively robust, above-estimate ₤634,850 (est. ₤350–450,00). Administrators of the collapsed U.K.-based financial firm Dawnay Day sold the picture to pay off creditors.

The Saville was one of eight works that sold for over $1 million; included in that smallish group was Warhol’s Two Gold Mona Lisas from 1980, which made ₤959,650 (est. ₤1–1.5 million), selling to Zurich dealer Andrea Caratsch.

Unlike Sotheby’s, Phillips de Pury didn’t rein in reserves, and it suffered the consequences: It was carnage on October 18 as the company, recently taken over by the Russian luxury retailer Mercury Group, suffered a huge casualty rate, with 32 of the 70 lots on offer failing to sell, for a staggering buy-in rate of 46 percent by lot and 74 percent by value.

The firm took in an anemic ₤5,031,650, compared to the over-reaching pre-sale estimate of ₤18.6–26.2 million.

In one of the evening’s few bright spots, Marlene Dumas’s grittily sexy Cleaning the Pole from 2000 sold to New York dealer Per Skarstedt for ₤553,250 (est. ₤400–600,000).

“I need a cigarette,” said the visibly shocked dealer moments after the sale, as a BBC documentary film crew chased the exiting crowds for sound bites. “A year ago, people would have bought without asking questions, but not in this market. I think the problem was, the dealers weren’t doing well at Frieze and didn’t want to spend any money here.”

In the context of the jarring drop in values, it was odd to see the artist Takashi Murakami smiling in the salesroom next to his Paris dealer Emmanuel Perrotin, as if to celebrate the sale of his wildly exuberant, shiny fiberglass-and-steel sculpture, Tongari-kun from 2003–04. But the large-scale cover lot failed to entice any bids at all, flopping at ₤3.2 million (est. ₤3.5–4.5 million).