Going, going under?

Plummeting sales. Huge debts. London's auction houses are taking a hammering

- ANNY SHAW

As champagne glasses clinked ahead of the Sotheby's contemporary month and the great art sale earlier this and good of the art world gossiped about Frieze, behind the scenes things weren't so rosy. So slim were the number of lots in one of the most prestigious sales of the year that works from the lower value day sale had to be brought upstairs and installed in the main galleries, "so they didn't look like they'd been robbed", according to one insider.

In fatter times, London's marquee sales in October used to be big-ticket affairs, with several hundred million pounds-worth of art being traded at Sotheby's, Christie's, Phillips and Bonhams during Frieze Week. Not now.

That evening sale racked up just £37.5m from a meagre 23 lots-compare that with £96.1m in 2022. If it wasn't for national treasure David Hockney, whose sun-drenched tribute to the south of France, L'Arbois, Sainte-Maxime sold for £13.2m, "the Sotheby's sale would have been a complete disaster", says one former auction house executive.

Christie's equivalent sale brought in £81.9m from 52 lots, and while that was up a little on the previous year, commentators point out that this was effectively two sales in one. For the first time in decades Christie's pulled its June sales in London to focus on October - a sure sign of a market in decline. Phillips also took a hit with its October evening sale, which fell by 17 per cent in value.

The London art market has suffered particularly, blighted by post-Brexit regulations and the subsequent rise of Paris as an art centre, but there is a wider problem of a global fall in auction sales too. Ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, a depressed Chinese economy and a looming US presidential election have made the wealthy jittery about buying and selling high-value art. Some American buyers are said to be funnelling their coffers into political campaigns rather than art.