"Six-year art boom ends as auction prices fall 4.5%", reports The Financial Times (January 9, 2009). "Prices of contemporary works, which had risen the most, fell 11 per cent..." Not bad, if true. In my informal opinion poll, one Art Basel exhibitor, a NYC gallery with 2007 sales of nearly $4 million at the show, was only able to close $300,000 in December. Another smaller London dealer says he's only in business today because he decided not to come to Art Basel (and pay the big cost). We'll see what happens next December.
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A report from Palm Beach: jewelry dealers are buying at the homes of individuals who lost money to Bernie Madoff on behalf of Saudi and other mid-Eastern buyers; women are spreading their jewelry on kitchen tables, trying to salvage whatever they can.
I was on South Beach loading a van on Sunday. A well dressed gentleman came up to me and said: "I have never done this before, but do you have any work for me." I didn't but it left we with a shiver down my spine of where we are headed.
Once I built a railroad, made it run, brother can you spare a dime.
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