Harry Santa-Olalla runs the auction during the Gilda's Club NYC 24th Annual Gala.

New York's fall
auctions will highlight lesser known artists next week as the market searches
for diversity amid an absence of works set to make astronomical amounts.
Christie's set a record price for a living artist during its spring sale this
year, two years after selling Leonardo de Vinci's "Salvator Mundi"
for $450 million, the most expensive artwork ever sold.

Unless there is
an unexpected surge in interest neither Christie's nor Sotheby's are likely to
get anywhere near the crazy highs that they have set over the past three years
this time around. Instead, the sales, which begin on Monday, are expected to
set individual records for artists with lower profiles, with a number of rare works
that have never before been offered to the public hitting the auction block.

Auctioneers at
Christie's are particularly excited about "Hurting the Word Radio #2"
by American pop-art artist Ed Ruscha, who has long lived in the shadow of the
movement's leader, Andy Warhol. The 1964 painting -- considered Ruscha's best
work -- is priced between $30 million and $40 million. "The market wants
to know it has one of the best paintings which is a change from before when it
was more like, 'Jeff Koons is hot, I have to have a Koons," said Alex
Rotter, chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie's. "Now it's
about, 'I'd rather have the best Ed Ruscha than an average Warhol,'" he
added.

The previous
record for a Ruscha, who lives in California, was $30.4 million for
"Smash" which sold at auction in 2014. Among the other highlights at
Christie's this season is British painter David Hockney's "Sur la
Terrasse", estimated to go for anywhere between $25 million and $45
million.

Hockney

At Sotheby's the
big sales are expected to be "Untitled XXII" by Willem de Kooning,
priced between $25 million and $35 million, and Mark Rothko's "Blue Over
Red", which has the same estimate. A proven selling point is the freshness
of a lot of the paintings on offer. Hockney's painting, which features the same
lover that is in "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)" that
sold last November at Christie's for $90.3 million, has not been publicly
exhibited since the early 1970s.

"It's
important to have this fresh material. It's what generates excitement from
buyers," said Johanna Flaum, head of post-war and contemporary art for
Christie's in New York. Sotheby's is on a similar quest. This season it is
offering "Charing Cross Bridge" by Claude Monet, estimated at between
$20 and $30 million) and "Richard Gallo and his Dog at Petit
Gennevilliers" by Gustave Caillebotte. Neither have been at auction
before.

"You can't
even say it made this much 20 years ago. You can't anchor it to anything and
you can't have any expectations of a ceiling," said Julian Dawes, head of
evening sales at Sotheby's in New York. "It's exciting. There's going to
be price discovery," he added. In addition to Ruscha, the Italian Piero
Manzoni and France's Yves Klein, who all rarely make headlines, auction houses
are diversifying their offerings. Women painters, mainly belonging to the
abstract expressionist movement, continue their ascent.

'Transformation'

Lee Krasner's
"Sun Woman I" sold for $782,500 in 2011. On Thursday, it could reach
ten times that price with a pre-sale estimate of between six and eight million
dollars. "There is an incredible enthusiasm and demand for female artists
right now," said David Galperin a senior vice president at Sotheby's. The
sales will also feature African-American artists, among whom Jean-Michel
Basquiat is no longer the only reference.

This season
Charles White and Norman Lewis are expected to set new benchmarks at auction.
Less than a decade ago, they were selling for tens of thousands of dollars but
could exceed $1 million this time. "These are reappraisals. We're in this
great moment of transformation right now and I think our sale reflects
that," said Galperin.

Despite the lack
of a superstar work of art and the threat of a global economic slowdown,
Sotheby's and Christie's are entering the week with confidence. "We keep
waiting for it (a downturn) and it doesn't happen," said Julian Dawes a
Sotheby's senior vice president. "I feel a little bit of seller reluctancy
in the market," because they feel they might not get the best price,
"but the buyers are there," said Rotter. -- AFP