The May 12 contemporary sale at Sotheby’s is remarkable for its sculpture offerings. Among these is Robert Gober’s Untitled, 1990 (est. $2.5-3.5 million), a hyperrealistic male torso — inspired in part by a Hieronymus Bosch painting and found sheet music — that is cast in beeswax with wood, oil paint and human hair and whose back is mysteriously tattooed with notes of the scale. Standing in sharp contrast to Gober’s conceptual sobriety is Jeff Koons’s Baroque Egg with Bow (Turquoise/Magenta), a piece of serious eye candy from his "Celebration" series of 1994-2006 (est. $6-8 million).

As a strong work with a reasonable price tag, Cy Twombly’s early abstraction MYO, 1951, in oil-based house paint and earth on canvas (est. $250-300,000), represents what the auction houses are betting today’s buyers are searching for. "We tried to approach the sale conservatively," says the Sotheby’s New York department head Alex Rotter. "Not everything in an evening sale has to be a million dollars." In addition to moderating its prices, the house is shying away from overexposed artists, apart from Koons, offering not a single Damien Hirst piece or Richard Prince "Nurse." It does, however, have one of Prince’s "Joke" paintings, Can You Imagine, 1989, whose estimate, $600,000 to $800,000, says Rotter, "is back to years ago. We are in a new market."

For its postwar and contemporary sale on May 13, Christie’s has similarly adapted to the new economy. "We’ve been just ruthless and walked away from any number of deals if clients’ expectations were too high," says Robert Manley, the head of the firm’s evening sales. "We’re insisting on putting on attractive estimates." The house has some prime guarantee-free material from the estate of the Los Angeles collector Betty Freeman, most prominently the David Hockney evocation of California dreaming, Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966-67 (est. $7-10 million; see page 76). Other Freeman highlights are Roy Lichtenstein’s Frolic, 1977 (est. $4-7 million), which quotes a Picasso 1932 beach scene as well as Lichtenstein’s own 1962 Pop classic Girl with Ball, and Sam Francis’s important early abstraction Grey, 1954 (est. $2.5-3.5 million), which debuted in the Museum of Modern Art’s famed 1956 "Twelve Americans" exhibition, in New York.

Leading the various-owners portion of the evening is Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park No. 117, 1979 (est. $4-6 million), a luminous, fresh-to-market painting, from his most desirable series, with pentimenti of erased lines and a carefully worked surface. The last major canvas from the series to come up, the 1971 Ocean Park No. 44, sold below its estimate for $5.2 million at Sotheby’s New York last November. If this one manages to match expectations, it would break the artist’s current record, $6,760,000, set in May 2007 at Christie’s New York by the figurative Berkeley #5, 1953. "It’s exactly what people are looking for in a Diebenkorn," says Manley. "You just can’t find them with this dynamic color and in such good condition." The session also contains a work by another notable California artist, John Baldessari: the text-based Painting for Kubler, 1966-68 (est. $1.5-2 million).

The contemporary week concludes on May 14 at Phillips de Pury & Company. "We’re taking a sober perspective and concentrating on bringing out the best product," says Michael McGinnis, the Phillips head of contemporary art. Among other highlights, the house is offering the Gober cereal-box sculpture, Untitled, 1993-94 (est. $2.5-3.5 million), Cecily Brown’s Suddenly Last Summer, 1999 (est. $600-800,000), and the Philip Guston still life Anxiety, 1975 (est. $1-1.5 million). Dan Flavin’s Untitled ("Monument" for V. Tatlin) 22, 1964, in white fluorescent lights from an edition of five (est. $400-600,000), and Banks Violette’s Not Yet Titled (Microphone Stand), 2006 (est. $60-80,000), round out the mix.

"New York Sales Preview" originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Art+Auction.