sothebys contemp. day auctions:
(483 lots, ill wait to let someone do the totals)

1. its a shame when cornell is so under valued that you can get one of his best collages for under 60k and he still rarely breaks a million for the boxes. i keep thinking why but the usual reasons (prolifgacy, unpleasent personal life, sweetness, tendency towards self mythology, kitsch, etc) cover a number of other artists whos work regularlly breaks the 10m celling.
2) kline works on paper, one bought in, several b/w 80 and 120, two excellent ones for thrice that bought in, he will be quickly sought by people looking for bargains quickly.
3) watching karel appels market go up is doing nothing for european abstraction in general.
4) all the albers look the same, and watching what sells and what doesnt is an amusing act in colour choice (the less or more auestre he colours the better the work seems to do, a grey and white one going for 448k, a bright green and yellow one bought in) (see also the 2.4m paid for the early Stella Black and White Maze)
5) i was wrong about the dekooning market in the last auction, as a really subpar mid 60s nude almost broke 1m
6) two or three really nice nevelsons in the mid 6 figure range, and a new survey at one of the big new york musuems in the fal, means that her rise is upcoming, ive waited almost a decade for this. (though an almost perfect white box construction from the mid 60s is criminally underpriced at 66k)
7) the twomblies where he shows less control are much more saleable then the more chaotic ones, and like a locker room, bigger is always better.
8) is it wrong that all gotliebs look the same to me?
9) who the hell is paying 254k for four wrapped magazines by christo, are christos inflated prices a way t patronize large public projects, making clients seem like patrons?
10) i wonder if the really ugly goopy early riopelle was sold to udell, does he have high six figures to throw around?(esp when other similar examples didnt sell at 40k)
11) warhol is still a lisc. to print money. perierr bottles for 390k, gretzky for 369, 4 paintings over a million.
12) lichenstien, ruscha, wesselman, wesley, theibaud, etc are doing really well, for people priced out of the warhol, johns, rauscenberg trio i think, a really gorgeous theibaud landscape breaking 1m suggests that he is not viewed as just the pie/deli guy.
13) is pettibones presence at auctions just a way to get a bargin warhol or stella, do people who buy them try to pass them off for warhols, does this say something deep about his tendencies at approrition (and do the bootleg sieres suffer teh same fate?)
14) frankenthaler and lewis doing well, w. gemma (a large stripe painting by louis, breaking mid 6 figures), but noland at 60k or 150k were both bought in, one was sold at 84k and another at 96k noland seems to be the last one to be pulled up by the colourfield revival, any reason why? (noland, i think, is the strongest painter of this crew, and should be making albers or stella numbers)
15) martin drawings from the mid 60s are doing what her paintings were doing 5 years ago.
16) my thing about ryman and surfaces might only apply to the work done in the 70s.
17) ramos' tits are one of the great pleasures of 20th arts
18) estes and surfaces is the other one, no longer are either being udner rated
19) kusuma is taking crazy all the way to the bank (one of the few success stories of femminist recliamation)
20) is the olfili market softening, w. the entire yba mess, because a fantastic afro queen drawing should go for more than 27k, adn a chapman bros being bought in at an estimate for 90, and tim/sue webster losing 200k over night?
21) madonna buying the untitled film stills for 1m might have been the great deal, if individual stills are going for a 10th of that
22) what happens in 5 years when all those asprisn fall off the tomaselli collages
23) i really want kiki smiths deer drawings for the show, but im scared of her gallerist, but not her prices 60k for 6 is a fucking bargin.
23) the chinese market is still "shit hot", and i have no idea what to look at and what to see, its like he east village in the 80s, americans are even outsourcing their art markets, i dont know whats good whats bad whats hype and whats genuinely interestnig work (same w. the new japanese artists, i think i like mr, murakami, i dont like nara at all, and achebe(sp) is fantastic, but the prices seem inflated, which might make me a racist)
24) mccraken reaching 6 figures is fantastic, tuttle steady at 5 is more than okay.
25) more photogs are being less and less ghettoized.