Christie's Strong Bids: What Do They Mean?

As the first of this week’s four consecutive evening sales, last night’s auction was so singular that it could not really serve as an indicator of how the art market is responding to last week’s plunge in stock market prices and disappointing results at Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist works. Yet the strong prices achieved last night for everything from a striped wood barber pole ($16,250) to an early abstract painting by Willem de Kooning ($5.3 million) was a confidence builder.