Silver Linings

Robert Rauschenberg Bridget Riley Edward Ruscha Jean Dubuffet Cy Twombly Mark Rothko Gerhard Richter Joseph Mallord William Turner

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The noticeably thinner crowds at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair last December may not have put smiles on the dealers’ faces. But many fairgoers were happy. In fact, a number of seasoned attendees reported that they encountered less competition for primary-market works. "It’s so much better for me," says Hadley Martin Fisher, a Manhattan real estate developer and grandson of the museum patron Emily Fisher Landau. "I don’t have to make a split-second decision. Now you have a day to make that choice as a collector." Fisher was thrilled to get the undivided attention of the New York dealer Zach Feuer, from whom he purchased two new animation pieces by the much sought-after young Berlin-based artist Nathalie Djurberg for $18,000 apiece.

Savvy collectors have not retreated from the art market despite the slumping economy. In fact, those driven away by the speculative climate of the past few years are getting back into the game and taking advantage of the more rational prices on top-tier pieces. There were already signs of change last fall at the New York sales. The estimates still reflected boom-time expectations, but sellers wishing to avoid painful buy-ins had to slash reserves. The billionaire art patron Eli Broad smelled opportunities at Sotheby’s contemporary event, winning four works for less than their low estimates: an untitled Donald Judd stack piece from 1990 (est. $2-3 million) for $1 million; Jeff Koons’s Wishing Well, 1988 (est. $2.5-3.5 million) for $2 million; Ed Ruscha’s Desire, 1988 (est. $4-6 million), for $2.4 million; and Robert Rauschenberg’s Bantam, 1955 (est. $3-4 million), for $2.6 million.

Conditions were similarly buyer-friendly at the Christie’s Paris December sale of Impressionist works owned by the late fashion legend Jeanne Lanvin, where the New York collector and dealer Nathan Bernstein bought Renoir’s 1890 portrait of his son, Pierre (est. €200-300,000; $254-380,000), for €265,000 ($335,358). Even if this were a flush time, "it was a bargain," says Bernstein, who collects pictures of artists’ children. He figures that prices are 30 to 40 percent of what they were a year ago. Bernstein has purchased more art for himself and his clients since last October "than in a very long time. I believe in the market," he says. "People who still have money are buying art because it can be enjoyed aesthetically and will keep its value or appreciate."

Nevertheless, Bernstein has been unable to unload a prime but overshopped 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that a cash-strapped New York collector had already offered to "all the usual suspects." The initial price was $4.5 million, a figure that quickly dropped by more than $1 million. "Nobody wants to pay even $2.5 million for it," he says.

Sellers like the Basquiat owner are increasingly willing to bypass the auction houses. For dealers, this is a double-edged sword. "We are getting more consignments," says a major London contemporary-art dealer, "but we can’t move them." The Gagosian Gallery will not say whether it has been reducing prices, but a trade source notes that two of the new large-scale "Rose" paintings by Cy Twombly, in a show on view at its London branch through May 9, each sold for "around $6 million" — significantly lower than the original asking price of $7.5 million.

It is generally not easy to uncover substantial details about private-market transactions, but news reports indicate that last year’s $600 million dealer-brokered sale of items from the collection of the late dealer Ileana Sonnabend has left a few billionaires feeling buyer’s remorse. Gagosian in New York recently held a show of Warhol paintings, sculpture and works on paper, some of which were for sale, that were supposedly part of the Sonnabend trove. The exhibition raised eyebrows and suggested either that some of the initial deals had unraveled or that the purchasers — who included the American hedge-funder Steve Cohen and the Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman — needed to flip their investments for the ready money. Efforts to reach the players were unsuccessful, but a source close to the situation says that of the handful of works that sold, all were discounted between 10 and 20 percent from their Sonnabend price tags. "The important thing to notice is that while prices haven’t changed that much for quality works, they are becoming available for sale."