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Art records are not what they used to be.
After a week that saw the highest grossing auction ever, the art world is poised to see yet more record-breaking sales in New York, fuelled by a new generation of billionaire buyers.
Half a billion dollars' worth of art changed hands at Christie's impressionist and modern art auction last week, setting the stage for the New York market to break the one billion dollar barrier for the first time in a single season.
It has been a good year for the art market.
A portrait by Austrian symbolist Gustav Klimt fetched 135 million dollars in June in a private sale, setting a new record for the highest price paid for a single work, only to be eclipsed when a trademark drip painting by Jackson Pollock went for a reported 140 million dollars last month.
A work by Paul Gauguin set a record for the French post-impressionist when it reached 40 million dollars last week, with works by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele and his German contemporary Ernst Ludwig Kirchner also scaling new heights.
The Christie's sale netted 491 million dollars in just two hours.
"I've never seen anything like it," said veteran auctioneer Christopher Burge. "It was the most extraordinary auction I've been involved in."
New-found wealth, speculation, economic prosperity and financial confidence together with some rare pieces coming up for sale all helped contribute to the record-breaking bids.
"There has always been some speculation, yes, but I think a lot of it are serious collectors, who have a great deal of money", said Gilbert Edelson, vice president of the Art Dealers Association of America.
"There seems to be a great deal of power in the art market, prices have been going up, especially with post-war material because there is a diminishing number of really great French impressionists or post-impressionists available.
"Also there's a new generation and that new generation, many of whom have made their money relatively recently, are putting their money into post-war contemporary art," he said.
Experts suggest the market is still nowhere near the heady heights of the speculative bubble of the late 80s to early 90s, when Japanese collectors sent prices through the roof in a buying frenzy that ended with a sharp correction.
Michael Moses, who co-produces the annual Mei-Moses art index, said today's prices, high as they were, did not yet show cause for concern.
"I think there's a lot of momentum running here but I think it doesn't compare to the kinds of increases we had in the '85 to '90 period."
He said that while prices in the late 80s were increasing at an alarming rate, the same was not yet true of the current market.
"I think potentially there could be room to run here. I don't think we're at a bubble because the prices haven't been going up that fast for that long.
"Art has always been expensive and right now high-end wealth is really very, very high and the supply of important works is small," he explained.
Among the new generation of collectors are buyers from India, China and Russia, where Christie's for the first time put a Picasso portrait on show ahead of its intended sale in New York last week.
While the buyers are often after works from their native countries, Chinese buyers especially are eyeing increasingly broader horizons, according to Bendetta Roux, a spokeswoman from Christie's.
"First-time collectors are going after works that they're familiar with and when they feel more comfortable they gravitate towards other genres", she said.
But the market remains dominated by American and European buyers -- the collectors who have traditionally been the driving force in the art world.
Among the billionaire US collectors are Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn, Eli Broad, who made his fortune in the insurance industry, Hollywood movie and music tycoon David Geffen and New York cosmetics king Ron Lauder.
It was Lauder who paid 135 million dollars for the Klimt portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" in a private sale in June.
In October, Geffen sold three major works -- Pollock's "No 5, 1948," which went for 140 million dollars, a Jasper Johns that sold for 80 million and a Willem de Kooning, which reached more than 63 million.
The paintings were bought by three financiers building new collections -- testimony to the emergence of a younger generation of buyers with new tastes.
Works by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons are on offer this week at Christie's and Sotherby's sale of post-war and contemporary art, which according to Edelson are the most interesting categories at the moment.
"That's the part of the market that is really very active."
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AFP 121327 GMT 11 06
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