It's not the best time to sell art given the economy, which makes it a great time to be on the buying side. If by some act of God you have enough dispoable cash right now to buy, London auction house Phillips de Pury has two sales coming up -- Contemporary Art Evening and Contemporary Art Day -- that you won't want to miss.

On 02.12.09 is the Contemporary Art Evening Sale. As I don't frequent art auctions -- I just write about them and admire the work from afar -- I'm not sure if the projected price ranges are good deals or not, and I'm sure the auction houses have the estimates at or above where they were last year in hopes of getting what they want instead of what is real. The esimates, of course, are just that. Many, many pieces sell below the estimate and from what I've been reading lately -- layoffs at both Christie's and Sotheby's -- the time is right.

Included in this sale are works by: Banksy (with incredibly high estimates!), Dan Colen, Karen Kilimnik, Tracey Emin, Tal R, Wolfgang Tillmans, Banks Violette, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Terence Koh, Gilbert & George, Jenny Holzer, and Cindy Sherman. I'm really over all of the takes on takes of Warhol's work, but, I must admit, Brillo 2 by Gavin Turk is pretty hot.

The following afternoon at 2pm is the Contemporary Art Day Sale. Works included by: Jules de Balincourt, Julian Opie, Damien Hirst (shocking, I know!), Cai Guo Ciang, Warhol, Sam Taylor-Wood, MR, Robert Crumb, and Raymond Pettibon.

It'll be interesting to see how the art market fairs in the current economy. Over inflated prices are sure to stabilize...whatever that means. Maybe people will buy are for arts sake again and not merely as investments?? Probably not 100% likely, but all of the new money bankers surely don't have the bank accounts to drop the cash they were in the not so distant past. Only time will tell.