U.S. art buyers defy economy at Sotheby's auction

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American art collectors defied a sinking U.S. economy on Wednesday, making up nearly 70 percent of buyers at a Sotheby's New York sale that saw records smashed for work by artists Edvard Munch and Fernand Leger.

American buyers made up 67 percent of buyers at the Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art auction, double the number of U.S. buyers who were successful as Christie's rival sale on Tuesday.

"It shows any attempt to draw a facile relationship between what's happening in the financial markets and what's happening in the art auction market is irrelevant," said Simon Shaw, head of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art department.

"While stock markets are turbulent. For every bidder that we lose because their portfolio has gone down we typically gain another who doesn't see an interesting return -- interest rates are pretty hopeless, stock markets not looking very exciting -- so we pick up new people like that," he added.

But he said the state of the U.S. economy had certainly influenced the type of sale Sotheby's put together.

"I would be lying if is said we didn't feel a responsibility to produce a small, tightly edited carefully curated sale. We certainly did," Shaw said. "We didn't feel that this was a moment to be having long flabby sales with overpriced material."

The sale made a total of $233.3 million, meeting Sotheby's estimates, with an average lot value of $5.7 million, up from $3.5 million six months ago, the auction house said.

Leger's "Etude pour La Femm en Bleu" (1912-13) sold for $39.2 million, almost double the previous $22.4 million record, while Munch's "Girls on a Bridge" (1902) fetched $30.8 million, nearly triple the former record for the artist's work.