“There were a lot of disappointments in the middle range,” Hoffman said. “The rich don’t feel the need to buy at the moment unless it’s really special. And then they’ll pay a lot of money for it.”
“Sotheby’s and Christie’s are especially good at getting their top buyers for the key lots,” Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the London-based Fine Art Fund, said in an interview.
A U.S. collector paid a record $2 million for a Edvard Munch print of a doomed femme fatale, and a Russian gave $65,000 for a crocodile handbag in auctions this month as top works attracted wealthy buyers.
