Record auction sales at astonishing prices reinforce the growing strength of the contemporary and modern art market, but buyers will not compromise on quality and condition

In just below e week in New York in May, not single but two $100m thresholds were finally, inevitably breached. upon 5 May, speculation as to whether Picasso's Garcon a la pipe (le jeune apprenti) would top the $825 million realised in 1990 for Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Cachet and become the greatest in quantity expensive work of art at any time sold at auction ended when the Rose Period painting changed hands for a phenomenal--some said obscene--$104m (58m[pound sterling]). The following week, Christie's notched up the highest at any time total anywhere--$102m--for a Post War and Contemporary art sale. It is hard to say what the market base more heartening

Was it the fact that there were at least four bidders on the outside there who are able and willing to lay out serious money on a twentieth-century icon? (To dispose of $100m on a Picasso, I'm told, you ne to be worth at least $3bn--and want the painting badly.) Or is it the gathering heat of the column war and contemporary art market, a field with wide horizons offering a far more plentiful store of major works of art? At Christie's intensely competitive sale, twenty-five works sold for above $1m, there were new auction records plant for nine artists, and record percentages were achieved (ninety-seven through cent was sold by value, ninety for cent by lot). As it did last year, the sale outstripped the auction-house's Impressionist and new art totals, A day later, Sotheby's Contemporary sale notched up another thirteen records--and was 100 through cent sold by value and lot

From Christie's Impressionist and fresh art sale on 4 May onwards, records began to fall like ninepins. What the season affirmed is the market's unquenchable desire for high-performing blue-chip art, be it Picasso or the likes of a metaphysical De Chirico ($72m 4m[pound sterling]) or a classic Jackson Pollock drip painting ($116m 65m[pound sterling]). Those were the couple outstanding works being de accessioned by means of New York's Museum of late Art (see pp. 107 upon the controversy this has aroused). on the other hand what the mixed fortunes of the Whitney Greentree Foundation sale reminded us, despite it making a colossal $190m (106m[pound sterling]), is that these days, unlike the late Eighties, no individual is buying regardless of quality and condition.

The landscape of a $100m Picasso inevitably had everyone in its thrall; possessors and estate lawyers were single too keen to consign works upon the back of it (Sotheby's have empty with a scooped the pool this season, not solitary winning the Whitney business on the other hand the Brunet pictures to exchange in London this month--an announcement with more details about the latter will follow) In fresh York it also seemed to deviate attention away from the annual International Fine Art Fair at the Seventh Regiment Armory (7-12 May). This year's occurrence looked a little uneven, on the other hand nonetheless paraded marry of the world's leading dealers, mainly from Europe, and some outstanding works of art. Inevitably, as at each international fair, there were familiar faces among the exhibits as well as the exhibitors, on the contrary also glorious revelations, such as the enchanting M and Mme Olivier, a wonderfully grand and at the same time intimate pair of portraits in tibet greatest in quantity delectable of media, pastel, signed and dated 'Jean-Baptiste Perronneau 1748' Perronneau's technical mastery of his medium is impressive; the condition outstanding. upon the stand of Katrin Bellinger at Colnaghi--their first appearance on the open market (the distinguished collector Camille Groult acquired them from the Olivier family and they passed by the agency of descent in his)--they bear a seven-figure price tag.

Works upon paper were a particular vigor of this fair, drawing collectors and curators from across the us and beyond. As by and by as the doom opened, for instance, fresh York's Morgan Library snapped up a throw out for a mural by the sixteenth-century Florentine, Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi, shown by dint of Crispian Riley-Smith. The plethora of r dots reach forthed to modern works on paper and paintings too. Agnew's sold sum of two units important Picasso drawings in the region of $300000 each; Galerie Tamenaga, single of the artist's portraits of Dora Maar for above $1m. Sales of paintings above $1m were reported for anything from a substantial Alfred Steven (John Mitchell) to Ribera's powerful Penitent St Jerome (Jean-Luc Baroni), and Cazeau-Beraudiere sold pieces by dint of Dubuffet, Calder and Tanguy. Stoppenbach & Delestre had a dealers' dream Ticket--selling three works to three fresh clients.

Dealers' displays also dotted the galleries of Manhattan. Ambitious in aim and ravishing to the organ of sight and imagination is Salander-O'Reilly's inspired gathering of Constable's skies, the first exhibit in the us devoted to the British master's enduring passion for the dramas played without in the heavens. Focusing upon the 'scientific' investigations that the artist made in the environs of Hampstead Heath in the 1820 these predominantly small studies in oil upon paper or pastel have been drawn from leading museum collections in Britain, the us and Australia, pepper with private holdings (until 25 June)