New York auction houses eye monster sales

A $120 million Picasso, a $40 million Monet and even a $60 million Ferrari: New York's major auction houses are looking to move billions of dollars' worth of art - and a very special car - on a crisis-proof market this season.

Against a backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as worldwide inflation, the two titans of the sector, Sotheby's and Christie's, will be moving a host of big-ticket lots, though they may still have a hard time topping last year, when total sales hit a record $16 billion.

Sotheby's, owned by the French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, could come away with the lion's share of this year's proceeds after its autumn sales that started on Nov. 7 and will continue through Nov. 15 in New York, one of the top global hubs of both art and finance.

Its rival Christie's, which belongs to the Artemis holding group of fellow French billionaire Francois Pinault, is putting between $720 million and $1 billion in lots under the hammer in the coming days.

Fifty years after his death, Pablo Picasso is expected to be one of the blockbusters this season with the sale of a major work: "Femme a la montre" or "Woman with a Watch."

The depiction of the French painter Marie-Therese Walter, one of Picasso's muses, could fetch as much as $120 million, according to pre-auction estimates.

The painting is part of Sotheby's special sale this week of the collection of the wealthy New York patron of the arts Emily Fisher Landau, who died this year at the age of 102.

Also included in the collection are works by Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.

For the Landau collection alone, Sotheby's is hoping to net around $400 million.

Julian Dawes, the house's head of impressionist and...