$1.4B in Art Expected To Sell At May Auctions

Sotheby's and Christie's International may auction almost $1.4 billion of art in New York next month as collectors including David Rockefeller and the Israel Museum sell to take advantage of soaring prices.

The world's two largest auction houses are stepping up marketing of impressionist, modern, and contemporary art for the May sales, which could match their record auctions in November, based on high estimates from the companies. Christie's shows works in Seoul this week, then in New York starting May 4. Sotheby's unveils highlights of its offerings in London tomorrow.

New buyers from as far as Russia and China are driving up prices. Rockefeller paid $10,000 in 1960 for a Mark Rothko painting that's now valued at more than $40 million, said Sotheby's. Andy Warhol's "Lemon Marilyn" may fetch "more than $18 million" at Christie's, 72,000 times the cost of the finished work in 1962.

"Art prices have been on such an upward spiral for so long that they're lost their moorings," said Michael Steinhardt, a New York investor and art collector. "My intuition is it won't last forever."

November's sales took in almost $1.4 billion, including commissions. The most expensive work was Gustav Klimt's $87.9 million portrait of Vienna hostess Adele Bloch-Bauer at Christie's. May's top lot is Rockefeller's Rothko. So the continuing supply of art indicates collectors are eager to sell.

Steinhardt, whose collection ranges from Jackson Pollock paintings to Judaica, disposed of some Egon Schiele pictures in the boom and said he'd have sold more works if his wife had let him. The art market has special risks because no one really knows the value of a painting, he said.

"With a stock you can say it's trading at the top of its range," he said. "A painting may have gone straight to the moon and you have no sense of what it's worth."

Works by the top contemporary artists have quadrupled their auction value in 10 years, according to index-maker Art Market Research. Prices of private deals have risen much more, and are starting to be reflected in the auction rooms, said Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby's European chief of contemporary art.