so the christies contemparary open auction wasnt as much of a disaster--with some female artists selling well (including nevelson, neel, bourgeius and mitchell--plus some abex stuff doing alright, including some smith drawings, and the noland/louis upcheck still occurring--but iots pretty dicey:

81 works bought in (at a no reserve auction)
20 works below estimate
90 works with in estimate--most of those v. low (ie w/o the premium a sizeable chunck would be below estimate)

only one work over 1m, and two works over 500k.