At tonight’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, Sotheby’s opened the fall auction season with a Spartan, though respectable showing as three masterworks fetched prices in excess of $30 million. The top earner was Kasimir Malevichs 1916 Suprematist Composition, which sold for $60,002,500, breaking the artist’s previous record, set at Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg in May 2000, when another Suprematist Composition, from 1919–20, earned $17,052,000. The painting also smashed the record for any Russian work, set by Wassily Kandinskys Fugue (1914), which went for $20,900,000 at Sotheby’s New York in May 1990.

The evening’s second highest earner, Edvard Munchs Vampire sold for $38,162,500 (est. in excess of $30 million) to a telephone bidder; the underbidder was Victoria Gelfand, a Russian-speaking Gagosian director who was sitting next to Larry Gagosian.

Edgar Degas's Danseuse au repos (c. 1879) sold for $37,042,500 (est. in excess of $40 million); the work last sold at Sotheby's London in June 1999 for £17.3 million ($28 million). Like the Malevich, the Munch and Degas both set records.

“The market for masterpieces is still very much alive,” said Sotheby’s specialist Emmanuel Di-Donna at the sale’s conclusion.

Despite these three large numbers, the results were mixed overall. The sale earned a total of $223,812,500, well below the pre-sale estimate of $317.8–475.4 million. Of the 70 lots on offer, 20 failed to sell, for buy-in rates of 36 percent by lot and 32 percent by value.

The art world is clearly in a very different place from six months ago, when a 52-lot Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening sale earned $235.3 million and prompted buy-in rates of 21 percent by lot and 10 percent by value.

But tonight’s result was hardly the financial bloodbath that some were predicting. The majority of lots sold well below the published pre-sale estimates, indicating that Sotheby’s was able to drive reserves down into acceptable and decidedly lower levels. And the house managed to sell all but four of the 16 guaranteed lots.

“The sale did exceptionally well,” said London dealer Libby Howie, who bought fauve Maurice de Vlamincks Le Remorqueur for $3,666,500 (est. $4–6 million) on behalf of a client. The work last sold at Sotheby’s London in 1976 for £90,000.

But I wasn’t going to go any higher.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.