Business Notes COLLECTIBLES

Prices for fine art during the past decade seemed to move in only one direction: up, up, up. But with real estate values sagging and stock markets slumping, prices for paintings are starting to stumble too. In auctions last week at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York City, artworks on the block sold for a total just under $100 million, or about 40% below expectations. An estimated one-third of the pieces went unsold. Among the jilted paintings: Willem de Kooning's Woman as Landscape, which was expected to fetch as much as $12 million.

A prime reason for the disappointment was that the auction houses had placed vastly inflated reserves, or minimum acceptable bids, on their paintings. Says Richard Feigen, an international art dealer: "Their estimates and reserves are now insane, sometimes double what the market will bear." Prices for older masterpieces are expected to hold up well. Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet should bring more than $40 million at auction this week. Other safe bets: 20th century classics (Picasso, Matisse) and postwar Americans (Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko). But experts think prices will soften dramatically for paintings by some young superstars (David Salle, Eric Fischl, Anselm Kiefer). Says Feigen: "No more seven-figure prices for artists barely out of their 30s."