The art market pundits are speaking, and their predictions, at least for the short term, are grim.

As reported by Bloomberg, a new survey by the London-based ArtTactic Ltd. has found that confidence in the contemporary art market has dropped 81 percent since May 2008 and could take three to five years to recover.

“Confidence has hit rock-bottom, but prices will fall further,” said Anders Petterson, founder of ArtTactic.

The latest twice-yearly survey of 145 collectors, auction-house specialists, dealers, and art advisers was conducted over several weeks following the disappointing contemporary-art auctions last November in New York. Almost a third of lots failed to sell at Christie’s and Sotheby’s sales, and the totals fetched were barely a third of what the equivalent sales earned in 2007.

The confidence level was the lowest recorded since ArtTactic launched the survey in May 2005.

Also sounding a gloomy note was Daniel Komala, president of Jakarta-based Larasati Auctioneers, who predicts that art prices at auction could drop by 40 percent this year, according to another Bloomberg report.

Larasati's next sale is in Singapore in March, and following that it will have a sale in Hong Kong during the Hong Kong International Art Fair in May.

Komala said prices will fall as speculators leave the market. “Now the game is back to the more experienced buyers.”

He also said that auction houses made the mistake of concentrating too much on a small group of contemporary artists, which inflated those artists' prices.

“At the end of the day, you got sick of seeing the same thing again and again,” he said. “Even a beautiful girl, if you see her everywhere, all the time, she looks ordinary.”