Fall Art Auctions Struggle

Despite auctioneers selling about 1,600 works of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art within the last week, the only serious moment of excitement came from a $6.2 million banana.The conceptual artwork, “Comedian” by Maurizio Cattelan, had a crowd of at least 300 jammed into the Sotheby’s salesroom to witness its absurd triumph — becoming the world’s most expensive fruit in a series of sales where several more traditional artworks failed to muster even a single bid.There were certainly other highlights.

A collector, identified as the hedge-fund billionaire Kenneth C.Griffin by the art-market newsletter the Canvas, and by three art advisers who requested anonymity to discuss private business, spent more than $121 million for a 1954 Surrealist painting by René Magritte called “The Empire of Light.” (A spokeswoman for Griffin declined to comment.) A beauty mogul’s Claude Monet picture of water lilies from the 1910s went for $65.5 million.

Lower estimates and smaller sales also helped promote a rare depth of bidding in some cases.But it wasn’t enough to hide the doldrums of an auction market that continues to sag behind its 2022 sales records, when a pent-up supply of masterpieces during the pandemic pushed the fall sales to $3.2 billion.This time around, the three major auction houses — Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips — sold $1.3 billion in art, squarely within expectations but down 40 percent from last November and 60 percent from the market’s peak in 2022.One reason for the slump is a supply contraction: few wanted to sell prized paintings during an election season, when rich collectors were uncertain about how economic conditions might shift.

A hangover from the pandemic sales frenzy also left discretionary sellers with little motivation to engage.By last Friday, market analysts sang a common refrain: the results weren’t great, but they could have been worse.“The art market has been flat for more than 10 years, regardless...