Since the market peaked in January, (the Dow is since down about 7 percent), “we’ve been selling more,” he says. “The art market has been very bullish.”

The art that Van de Weghe is bringing to Tefaf reflects that optimism: His booth will have a 1961 painting by Cy Twombly that he expects to fetch from $4 million to $5 million; a 60-inch by 60-inch painting by Keith Haring for $3.5 million; and, among other works, two paintings by Pablo Picasso, estimated, respectively, at $4.5 million and $2.85 million.

Short-Term Liquidity
Other observers have a less positive take.

“I would have given you a different answer three years ago,” says ArtAssure’s Edelman, “and that answer would have been, from observation, that roughly six months from when the stock market gives up its bull run, the art market gives up its bull run, too.”

Not because people lack the money to buy art, he adds. “Anyone who had $100 million in May 2008 still probably had $80 million that November,” he says. “These markets are driven much more by psychology than they are by economic factors.”

Edelman’s no longer so sure about a direct correlation. Despite record gains in the stock market, he says, “the last three years have been a substantially down art market in everything but the night sales at auction.” While this sentiment is debatable—some insist that the middle of the market is doing fine—his point is that night sales are a market unto themselves.

This dim view of the current art market darkens even further if U.S. equities falter, he says. “I do not believe that when money comes out of the stock market, it goes into the art market. … [Investors] tend to run for safety and short-term liquidity.”

Art could be considered a liquid investment only if sellers were willing to get 60 percent to 70 percent of what they had paid retail, Edelman says.

“I know people like to think that [they can sell art whenever they want], because they try to make a case that the art market is safe and hard,” he says. “But I can tell you, sitting here, that it ain’t easy to sell a piece of art if you’re not putting it at auction at a reduced price.”

A Middle Ground
Other dealers such as Marc Payot, a partner and vice president of Hauser and Wirth, occupy something of a comfortable middle ground in which one man’s credit crunch is another’s opportunity.