The art world’s mood brightened considerably once the contemporary sales got under way. At Christie’s on November 13, it was clear from the beginning that things were going to be different; once again, high estimates were being left behind. The second lot of the sale, a cartoonish Yoshitomo Nara picture of a blank-faced girl, brought a more than double-estimate $1,497,000. Lucian Freud’s "Ib and Her Husband," a 1992 portrait of a spooning couple, (estimate on request, in the region of $18 million), sold for $19,361,000, a record for the artist.

Records were also notched for Ed Ruscha, Richard Prince and Gerhard Richter. The top lot was, perhaps not surprisingly in light of last season’s results, a Rothko, "Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange)," from 1955 (est. $25–35 million), which went for $34,201,000—just under half the price the artist commanded at Sotheby’s in May.

The second highest price of $23,561,000 was paid for a turquoise "Liz," silkscreened and painted by Andy Warhol in 1963 and consigned by the actor Hugh Grant, who reportedly bought it for $3.5 million six years ago. Christie’s estimated it at $25–35 million and gave Grant a guarantee. In this case, disaster was averted, but the price was a bit disappointing, being slightly under the low estimate. Interestingly, another Warhol portrait, of the boxer, Muhammad Ali, from 1978, fared much better, tripling its high estimate to bring $9,225,000.

Sotheby’s recouped considerably on November 14, achieving the highest-earning sale in its 263 years in business and racking up some huge contemporary art prices. Francis Bacon’s "Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1" from 1969 (est. in excess of $35 million) sold for $45,961,000, shy of the record but certainly a disappointment to no one, while a Bacon self-portrait from the same year, estimated in excess of $15 million, went for $33,081,000. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s "Untitled (Electric Chair)," from 1981–82, (est. $8–10 million) brought $11,801,000. Jeff Koons nudged Damien Hirst off his perch to become the most expensive living artist (at auction) when his corny valentine "Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold)" sold for $23,561,000 (est. $15–20 million)—more than double the $11,801,000 paid the previous night for Koons’s giant diamond-ring sculpture, "Diamond (Blue)" (1994–2005), which Christie’s had been displaying on its front sidewalk for weeks before the sale. In both cases, the buyer was Koons’ dealer, Larry Gagosian.

Once again, the market showed its hearty appetite for postwar and contemporary works already deemed canonical by critics and art historians. And basically the same old crowd was doing the buying. Art advisor Thea Westreich says, "It’s very interesting to note how many of the lots were captured not by the international market we keep hearing of, but by the same players. In terms of blue-chip contemporary, it looks like mainly Americans and Brits."

Lately, the auction houses have been telling consignors and the public that the market is crash-proof because the pool of buyers is so much deeper and more globally diverse than ever before, so that crises in local markets can’t have too much of an impact on the art market as a whole. Whether or not that is really true, at least for now the English-speaking art world has expressed its continuing confidence in contemporary art, and given the Impressionist and modern departments of the auction houses something of a warning.