It used to be seen as bad luck if Charles Saatchi unloaded your work. Sandro Chia's career famously crashed after Saatchi's divestment. But in the last year, since Sotheby's reportedly bought seven of his paintings from Saatchi for $11 million, the painter Peter Doig's market ascent has been meteoric.

Among the works Saatchi reportedly sold to Sotheby's last year was White Canoe (1990-91), an eerie Munch-ish scenario inspired by the horror classic "Friday the 13th," which fetched an auction-record $11.3 million in February at Sotheby's in London. The painting was expected to sell for up to $2.4 million, a top–end estimate that would have set a record for the artist. Last month, another Saatchi–parlayed painting, The Architect's Home in the Ravine (1991), sold for $3.6 million at Sotheby's in New York, neatly doubling its $1.2/1.8 million estimate. Saatchi paid £314,650 for the work five years ago.

Born in Edinburgh, raised in Canada, educated in London, and currently living in Trinidad, the 48-year-old Doig is now "Europe's most-expensive-living artist at auction" (emphasis on the modifiers). Short-listed for the Turner Prize in 1994 and a former trustee of the Tate Gallery, Doig first attracted recognition when he won the Whitechapel Art Gallery's Artist Award in 1991, shortly after earning his Masters from the Chelsea College of Art and Design. The award culminated in a solo exhibition at Whitechapel that year for which Doig produced a number of large canvases now considered his early masterpieces.

Saatchi was turned on to Doig relatively late in the game; it wasn't until 2000 that he began to pay six–figure sums to acquire Doig's work privately and at auction. Since showing Doig in "The Triumph of Painting" exhibition at his eponymous gallery in 2005, Saatchi has moved on to collect the works of Chinese contemporary artists and neophytes from all parts of the world displayed on Your Gallery and STUART, free forums Saatchi launched on his website a year ago in the spirit of MySpace.

Evicted from London's County Hall in late 2005, Saatchi plans to open a new 50,000-square-foot gallery in Chelsea in November. In the meantime, according to this week's New Yorker, Saatchi has developed a list of forum-perused prospects that he is nearly free to begin acquiring (his self-imposed year of abstinence is soon set to expire). Apparently, he's also been preoccupied with fetching stirrups.

--KELLY DEVINE THOMAS

David Rockefeller was lavishly installed in a skybox. Al Taubman was grinning like a Cheshire cat in the fourth row. Sotheby's head of client services, Roberta Louckx, situated alongside a bank of phone-addled specialists, took the winning bid via telephone.

Who bought the $72.8 million Rothko (left)?

The New York Times says it was a mysterious bearded collector in a skybox. New York magazine speculates that the buyer was one of the unidentified Russian collectors (along with hedge fund managers) who have taken on the same mystique as those late 1980s Japanese buyers whose feverish collecting met with a rather ugly demise in the early 1990s. Last week the influence of rubles in the art market was legitimized on both Sotheby's and Christie's currency boards--appearing for the first time along with dollars, euros, pounds, Swiss francs, Hong Kong dollars, and Japanese yen.

What was described as a silent boom a decade ago has turned into unmitigated jaw-dropping spectacle. The two-week evening sales of Impressionist & Modern and Postwar & Contemporary art at Christie's and Sotheby's in New York tallied $1.15 billion, just eclipsing last November's record total and attracting everyone from auction veteran Stephanie Seymour (a marigold ribbon tied in her hair) to fledgling art collector Tobey Maguire (turned out in jeans and a baseball cap).

Collectors were hungry for Impressionist & Modern art, but they were "ravenous" for postwar and contemporary works, according to Christie's auctioneer Christopher Burge. Sotheby's set a new $254.8 million record for a contemporary sale on May 15 only to have Christie's break it less than 24 hours later with its stupendous $384.6 million contemporary sale--the second highest total for an auction ever. (Last November's $491 million sale of Impressionist & Modern art at Christie's holds the record.) Artist's records were set for Francis Bacon ($54.7 million), Jean-Michel Basquiat ($14.6 million), Damien Hirst ($7.4 million), and Gerhard Richter ($6.2 million), among others. Rothko's 1950 White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), sold by David Rockefeller at Sotheby's, held its position as the top price paid for a postwar artwork at auction, but nipping very closely at its sherbet-hued edges was Warhol's Green Car Crash (1963), which fetched $71.7 million at Christie's. Before Burge opened bidding on the Warhol at $17 million, market-maker Larry Gagosian traded his cell phone for a Christie's-provided landline. He waited until $61.5 million to raise his hand, just as Burge was about to hammer it down to a telephone bidder, eliciting laughter in the audience and prompting Burge to scold playfully, "Talk about waiting until the last minute." The telephone bidder, speaking to Ken Yeh, deputy chairman of Christie's in Asia, was persistent, however, and Gagosian let it go at $64 million.

Gagosian also tried to snag Warhol's Lemon Marilyn (right) for $24.5 million, then went a step too far when he bid $25.5 million on behalf of a client and called out to rescind the bid. The painting sold to a telephone bidder for $28 million. Gagosian went on to win Jasper Johns's Figure 4 (1959) for an artist's-record $17.4 million and Warhol's Miriam Davidson for $6.3 million. During the sale, even Gagosian could be seen shaking his head incredulously and craning to catch a glimpse of who was in the skyboxes.

Figuring out who bought what isn't voyeurism--it's business. Artworks appear fetchingly at auction only to quickly disappear into anonymous private collections. Dealers and auction specialists at the top of their game spend their careers trying to glean where the most wanted artworks are at any given moment and what price might wrest a coveted object from its owner. Knowing where the bodies are buried is an essential part of the game.

--KELLY DEVINE THOMAS

PWhat better way to spend a weirdly cold May weekend than at Wright, the Chicago auction house that has become the hunting ground for hot design?

For the latest in Wright's popular continuing series, "Important 20th Century Design," the inventory was so massive that the sale took place over two days. We were there, however, primarily as longtime fans of the great Gio Ponti (1891-1979, at left), and in particular to ogle the pieces from via Dezza 49, Ponti's famous residence in Milan. A major player in Italy's post-war industrial design renaissance, Ponti trained as an architect. (The Denver Art Museum, designed in 1971, is one example of his architecture in the United States.)

He was also an artist, writer, and designer of all manner of home goods.

The pieces from Via Dezza promised something special. Ponti had definite ideas about modern living and how houses should function--light and space with moveable walls. Attached to his home was his studio, a garage-size space where workers could pull up to their drafting tables on their Vespas. (The influential domus magazine, which Ponti founded in 1928, also had an office here.) While there were certainly other wonders besides Ponti's wares on the block--chairs by Hans Wegner and Jean Prouve, some very desirable steel sculptures by Isamu Noguchi--as the Ponti pieces came up, there was a palpable shift in energy: the people working the phones began really earning their pay as four out-of-town buyers quickly outbid everyone in the room.

The white 1953 Diamond sofa ($30,000-40,000 estimate, at right) went for $95,000 while the matching pair of chairs (same estimate) sold for $110,000. A small round coffee table of enameled steel (1954, see below) appraised at $25,000-30,000 went for $112,000, worn paint and all. A nearly 6-foot long customized shelf of white lacquered wood (1957) estimated at $12,000-16,000 fetched $32,000. Other pieces not from via Dezza fetched solid prices, too; for instance, a blue 1953 Distex lounge chair with its signature long arms suggesting a body in mid-stretch ($9,000-12,000 estimate) sold for $13,000. A 1947 pair of beds designed for Ambrosini Mobili ($25,000-30,000) sold for $46,000. The only non-via Dezza piece to make a huge jump was a rug made by Parentesi Quadra ($5,000-7,000) which went for $36,000.

It was puzzling that a 1950 Ponti oil on an octagon canvas (below) had no takers. With the current kooky state of the art market, and a $40,000-60,000 estimate, it seemed the steal of the bunch.

(See the Men's Vogue article on the Wright auction house and its 42-year-old founder, Richard Wright.)

--RUTH LOPEZ

Pittura da tavolo from Via Dezza 49, Italy, 1950

Pair of beds from Via Dezza 49

Custom coffee table from Via Dezza 49, enameled steel and glass

A loud, unambiguous message emerged from the recent spate of high-profile auctions in New York: There's a lot of money out there, and it's looking to buy art.

Cezanne's watercolor, Nature Morte au Melon Vert, went for $25.5 million.

Halfway into the annual two-week auction marathon, bidders have already plunked down more than $500 million -- with nary a masterpiece in sight. The potential blockbusters arrive with next week's Postwar & Contemporary sales, which promise to be explosive if bidder interest maintains its current level.

Considering that only one lot sold for more than $25 million this week, the results at the Sotheby's and Christie's evening sales of Impressionist & Modern art were astounding. Sotheby's May 8 sale came to $278.5 million, its highest tally since May 1990 when it sold Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Au Moulin de la Galette for $78 million. This time around the highest priced artwork was Nature Morte au Melon Vert by Cezanne (above) -- a watercolor, no less -- that fetched $25.5 million. Sotheby's had the smaller, tighter, and more successful sale of the two houses, selling all but six of the 61 lots on offer. "There's a thirst for great work whatever the medium, whatever the period," said David Norman, Sotheby's co-chairman of Impressionist & Modern art, after the sale. New price levels were achieved for non-household-name artists like Lyonel Feininger, whose Jesuiten III sold for $23.3 million; De Stijl artist Theo van Doesburg, whose Contra-Composition VII fetched $4.1 million; and Marino Marini, whose L'Idea del Cavaliere drew $7 million.

Christie's auctioneer Christopher Burge, who presided over a long and laborious 78-lot sale on May 9, described an "extraordinary hunger in the market at all levels." Christie's sold all but ten lots, pulling in a total of $236.5 million with three works by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Juan Gris each tying for preeminence at $18.5 million. Two years ago Christie's sold the Picasso, Tete et main de femme, for $13.5 million. The Gris, Le pot de geranium, fetched $8.5 million at Sotheby's five years ago. Dealer Larry Gagosian determinedly pursued Giacometti's falling-man sculpture, L'homme qui chavire (right), up to $16 million, before letting it go with a shake of his head to a competitor for $16.5 million at the hammer. Fifty-two lots sold for more than $1 million at Christie's; just five exceeded $10 million. Europeans outbid Americans and all others, taking home 48 percent of the works.

Both houses saw disappointing results for works by Amedeo Modigliani, whose paintings have fetched as much as $30 million-plus in the last three years. All three works by the artist on offer this season failed to sell. Burge attributed the flops to the fact that given the quick rise of the Modigliani market and sellers' inflated expectations, it was tricky for specialists to estimate less-than-top-rank material by the artist. Portrait de Jeanne Hebuterne failed to fetch the $8 million to $10 million that Sotheby's had expected; the house had no better success with Jeune fille assise, les cheveux denoues, which failed to sell against its $12 million to $15 million estimate. At Christie's, the matronly La femme au collier vert (Madame Menier), estimated to fetch between $12 million and $16 million, likewise failed to attract a wealthy suitor.

--KELLY DEVINE THOMAS

Now comes a strange and decadent season. For two weeks beginning May 8, the art world will gather in sumptuous rooms in New York to play the swift backhand game that is the art auction market.

Evening sales at Christie's (right) and Sotheby's are expected to rival or surpass last November's record-setting billion-dollar tally as masterpieces change hands during the four Impressionist & Modern and Post-War & Contemporary auctions. Over the course of two hours, Christie's and Sotheby's are expected to sell some $200 million or more worth of art each night. Christie's auctioneer Christopher Burge will be a devilish flirt; Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer will be immaculately standoffish; and when Phillips de Pury & Company closes out the evening sales with its youth-filled Meatpacking District contemporary auction on May 17, auctioneer Simon de Pury will be a maestro at keeping the room hot and loose.

Ever since Sotheby's hammered down a record-breaking $104 million Picasso in 2004, collectors, dealers, and specialists appear to be in a grand race to claim the-most-expensive-artwork-ever-traded title. Ronald Lauder privately paid $135 million for Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I last summer. Steve Wynn reportedly had sold Picasso's Le Reve for $139 million before he put his elbow through it last fall. And David Geffen has recently been on a selling spree, unloading Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948 for $140 million and De Kooning's Woman III for $137.5 million.

Art and money are basking in the sunshine (and offering perks). Given their biannual trend-forecasting influence, the major evening sales are similar to the fashion shows at Bryant Park. But here the objects are spun out on pedestals and pursued by men and women (and the occasional precocious kid) with paddles and cell phones. Every season the auction stars change. Last season, on the heels of Lauder's record purchase, it was an $87.9 million Klimt at Christie's (left). This season David Rockefeller is selling a $40 million Rothko at Sotheby's, and Christie's believes it has a Warhol "Death and Disaster" painting that may fetch $35 million.

Stephanie Seymour and her husband, newsprint magnate and avid Koons and Warhol collector Peter Brant, are regular attendees at the evening sales (you can spot them seated near the front). Über-dealer Larry Gagosian, his silver surfer hair beaming through the room like a homing device, is ever-present, seated on the center aisle, perpetually on his cell phone and bidding on most, if not all, of the biggest-ticket items. Artworks worth $1 million, $3 million, even $5 million provide filler between top-tier works expected to exceed $20 million and blockbuster items expected to soar beyond $40 million.

The art market has a phrase for this phenomenon: wall power.

--KELLY DEVINE THOMAS

True to the alternative gallery White Columns' egalitarian roots, the artist list for its 2007 Benefit Auction reads like a Who's Who, Who's Still Who, and a Who Will be Who in the contemporary art world.

"I think it's a really good mixture of young, unknown artists, very strong emerging artists, and more established figures," says the gallery's director, Matthew Higgs, of the donated works, including pieces by Peter Doig, John Currin, Jasper Johns, Jeremy Deller, James Rosenquist, Aaron Young, John Baldessari, Richard Prince, and Paulina Olowska.

"It reveals the strength of support from the artistic community for the continued existence of these kinds of spaces," says Higgs.

And for some, like Currin and Jack Pierson, both of whom enjoyed their first exhibits at White Columns, it's a chance to give back in the most direct sense.

While the silent auction--which runs from May 4 through May 19th--culminates in a swanky benefit on the evening of the 19th, this one's not about the cocktails, or the hors d'oeuvres. From Kelley Walker's latest work (above), which Higgs enthusiastically describes as an "expressionistic Jackson Pollack, de Kooning-esque abstraction," to Anne Collier's serene and personal seascape photograph (left), the focus here remains where it belongs: on the art.

All of the artwork up for bid can be viewed beginning May 4 at whitecolumns.org.

--LIZ McDANIEL

Anyone who's been to an opera at the Met knows that the sets -- enormous, inspired works of art in their own right -- are often as impressive (and, let's face it, sometimes more impressive) than the singing that goes on amid the pyramids, the galleons, the crowded Spanish streets, and the perfectly lit French artists' garrets.

Apropos, then, that the Met will host an auction of works by some of the world's biggest art names -- David Salle (Fresh Atom (2007), pictured), Cindy Sherman, William Wegman, Robert Wilson, William Kentridge, and others -- presented onstage at the company's Lincoln Center home, to raise funds for new Met productions. It's all happening this Sunday, May 6, with Jamie Niven, Vice-Chairman of Sotheby's, acting as guest auctioneer.

See images of the artwork and find out more about the "Art for Opera" event right here.