NEW York’s all-important November auction season begins this week, when hundreds of impressionist, modern and contemporary artworks, many valued at US$1mil or more, are set to hit the auction block at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips.

The three houses’ sales are expected to total roughly US$1.9bil to US$2.5bil.

The sales come on the heels of a torrent of material that hit the market in Europe and Asia earlier this fall, often to mixed response.

A grim October sales week in Hong Kong was followed by mediocre results in London. Paris presented a pleasant bright spot, but art market insiders seem to agree that the success of the New York sales season is more an open question than usual.

“The market is obviously down,” said Alex Rotter, the chairman of Christie’s 20th century and 21st century art department. “Do I want to say that? No. Do I have to say it to be believable? Yes.”

Because an auction house is at essence a middleman serving as a bridge between buyer and seller, in a down market the houses can be caught in a Catch-22.

“Our market is always dictated by the supply,” said Jean-Paul Engelen, Americas president at Phillips. But unless heirs are selling works they’ve inherited from a relative’s estate, or someone is in financial straits, people are less likely to consign their art if they can’t be reasonably certain that it will sell.

One way around this is for an auction house to offer a guarantee that a work will sell for a minimum price, effectively purchasing it before the auction.

If no one bids past that minimum when the work hits the auction block, the auction house – or a third party that has guaranteed the work – owns it; if it fetches more than the agreed-upon price, the guarantor gets a percentage of the upside.

“More people are electing to take guarantees,” said Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s global chairman and head of global fine art. She suggested that sellers think of this as an insurance policy.

“They should take a guarantee if it’s offered,” she continued. “That’s my advice right now.”

Still, not every work is something an auction house or third party wants to guarantee, and not every seller wants to give away part of the potential profit.

So auction houses might cajole sellers to lower the minimum amount a work can sell for, which is known as the reserve price.

“We’re really in a situation where sellers’ expectations are as great as they’ve ever been, and there’s downward pressure from buyers,” Lampley continued.

“I think it’s a positive occasion to address auction strategy with consignors and encourage them to make things enticing, and try to get as many bids as possible.”

Many sellers seem to have done this, so for the first time in years comparative deals can be found at the November auctions.

“You’ll see in our sale that some of the prices are already reflective of a slightly different market environment if the consignors were really listening,” Rotter said.

“The ones who wanted to engage are willing to have a real discussion: Should they sell their stocks that are 30% down, or their painting that might also be 20% or 30% down, but still for much more than they paid for it?”

Rotter pointed to a Warhol from 1964, Sixteen Jackies. A similar Sixteen Jackies sold two years ago at the Macklowe sale at Sotheby’s for about US$34mil.

The forthcoming work at Christie’s has a low estimate of US$25mil, about 25% less. Estimates do not include auction house fees known as premiums; totals do.

A superb work by Francis Bacon, “which in my opinion is a US$70mil painting in a healthy upmarket, is priced at about US$50mil,” Rotter said.

Similarly at Phillips, a Hero painting by Georg Baselitz from 1966 is estimated at US$6mil to US$8mil, “which is a conservative estimate,” Engelen said.

“The record is US$9mil, which is why I’m confident that it will sell.”

Not everything carries a bargain-basement estimate. Sotheby’s has a particularly glittering lineup, starting with a single-owner sale on Nov 8 featuring works owned by the late arts patron Emily Fisher Landau.

Leading that sale will be a Picasso from 1932, which the auction house has priced in excess of US$120mil. Sotheby’s will also sell a series of major, if slightly more esoteric pieces from the estate of the late collector Chara Schreyer, which includes a hanging work by Lee Bontecou estimated to sell from US$600,000 to US$800,000 and a 1984 deep basin sink by Robert Gober that carries a US$2mil to US$3mil estimate.

There are other super-high-priced lots on offer: A self-portrait by Jean-Michel Basquiat is expected to sell for US$40mil to US$60mil.

Hardly slacking, Christie’s will sell art from the estate of music executive Jerry Moss (the M in A&M Records), including an exceedingly rare painting by Frida Kahlo, from 1928, estimated from US$8mil to US$12mil.

Its 20th century evening sale is filled, in particular, with a series of world-class works including a painting from Magritte’s L’empire des lumieres series, estimated at US$25mil to US$35mil, and Diebenkorn’s Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, from 1965, which carries an estimate exceeding US$25mil.

Even Phillips, normally a showcase for canvases whose paint has barely dried, seems to have moved firmly into trophy territory. “This season, we’re much more blue-chip than cutting-edge,” said Engelen.

This stellar lineup of lots, some in the same families for decades, has auction house leadership expressing confidence in this season’s success.

“We always say that the art market is resilient in all climates, because many of the opportunities we present are quite literally irreplaceable,” Lampley said.

“That’s real, and it’s what keeps the art market healthy in more challenging economic moments.” — Bloomberg

James Tarmy writes for Bloomberg. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.