Auction Houses Clean Up as Art Gains Appeal

Want to know where investors are placing some of their biggest bets? Look on their walls.

Art prices swelled last year, lifting sales at Christie's International PLC to $5.7 billion last year, up 14% from the year before. The London-based auction house said on Tuesday that the total includes $4.9 billion in auction sales and $808.6 million in art sales it brokered privately, as galleries typically do. The private-sale total doubled from a year ago, it added.

Christie's Priciest Paintings of 2011

View Slideshow

Christie's

Artist: Andy Warhol Title: 'Self Portrait,' 1986 Sold for: $27.5 million

Christie's auction sales matched those of its chief rival, Sotheby's, which said it auctioned off $4.9 billion of art last year, up 14.5% from the year before. Sotheby's, which is publicly held, said it would disclose its private sales later this month.

Steven Murphy, chief executive of the privately held Christie's, said collectors and investors alike see art as a potentially safe haven for their cash at a time when the broader financial outlook remains volatile: "Everyone is doubling down on art," he said. "That's why our market is so strong now."

Overall, art values rose 10.2% last year, according to art-market analyst Michael Moses, whose New York firm Beautiful Asset Advisors runs indexes that track shifts in the sale prices of thousands of artworks that have sold at auction more than once over the years.

The Top 10

The priciest lots sold at auction at Christie's in 2011

$43,202,500	Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), I Can See the Whole Room!...and There's Nobody in it!, 1961
$38,442,500	Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Self-Portrait, 1963-1964
$35,906,000	George Stubbs, A.R.A. (1724-1806),Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath
$33,682,500	Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Untitled No. 17, 1961
$29,133,148	Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Femme assise, robe bleue, 1939
$28,666,155	Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Study for a Portrait, 1953
$27,522,500	Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Self-Portrait, 1986
$25,282,500	Francis Bacon (1909-1992) ,Three Studies for Self-Portrait, 1974
$22,482,500	Claude Monet (1840-1926), Les Peupliers, 1891
$22,482,500	Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958),Paysage de banlieue, 1905

Source: Christie's

The pace of art buying varies around the world, though. Collectors in the U.S. shopped cautiously last year, with Christie's sales in America dropping 3%, to $1.9 billion, from the year before. Its sales also were down 64% in Dubai, to $18.6 million. On the other hand, European collectors—particularly those from Italy and Switzerland—stepped up their bidding. Christie's sales in Europe totaled $2.2 billion, up 29% from 2010.

Christie's greatest triumph came from Roy Lichtenstein, whose 1961 comicbook-style painting of a young man staring through a peephole, "I Can See the Whole Room…and There's Nobody in It!," sold for $43.2 million in November, setting a new record for the Pop artist.

Sotheby's fared even better with Clyfford Still's jagged abstract, "1949-A-No. 1," which sold for $61.7 million in November.

Both houses seized on collectors' wider interest in contemporary art, a category that includes works created since 1949. The style is particularly popular with newly wealthy, younger buyers who want art made by their generational peers.

But price levels for these contemporary artists tend to shift unpredictably, which also attracts speculators seeking to profit from changing art values. Christie's sold $1.2 billion of contemporary art last year, up 27% from a year earlier.

Asia flexed its expanded purchasing power in the marketplace last year thanks to an influx of new collectors from mainland China who ratcheted up prices for hometown favorites like scroll painter Qi Baishi as well as global mainstays like Pablo Picasso. Christie's said 13% of the bids it fielded last year came from collectors in greater China.

For the first time, Asian art also became Christie's second-biggest seller of the year after contemporary art, with sales of $890.1 million. Christie's priciest work of Asian art last year was Cui Ruzhuo's $15.9 million scroll painting, "Lotus," from 2011.

Sales of Impressionist and modern art proved a disappointment, though. Christie's sales of this high-profile category dropped 26%, to $883.3 million, last year. Its top price in the segment was $22.4 million for Claude Monet's landscape "Poplars," but the house failed to find a buyer for another major work, Edgar Degas's ballerina sculpture, "Little Dancer, Age 14." The Degas was priced to sell in November for at least $25 million, but bidding stalled at $18.5 million.

Dealers said this reshuffling of Christie's marquee categories reflects Asia's rising clout but also underscores the dwindling supply of Impressionist and modern masterpieces still circulating in the marketplace. The majority are already tucked away in museums, ostensibly for good. (Auctioneers are working harder to promote easier-to-find Surrealist painters like René Magritte, who is known for painting green apples and bowler hats, and Paul Delvaux, known for his lounging nymphs.)

Looking ahead, expect the top houses to bolster their offerings online as well. Christie's said nearly a third of its bidders last year shopped by bidding online, a 2% rise from 2010. Christie's also got $9.5 million from its first online-only sale of lower-priced goods from the estate of actress Elizabeth Taylor in December. Ms. Taylor's pricier jewels and couture clothing were still sold the traditional way, in a series of live auctions that brought in an additional $147 million.

The art market will be tested again next week as Christie's, Sotheby's and smaller auctioneers Bonhams and Phillips de Pury & Co. kick off a two-week round of major auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art in London.

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com