More than $250 million of art by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol go under the hammer in New York in May this year, as the two titans of the art market vie for supremacy in the auction room.
It is estimated that 46 works by Picasso will bring more than $115 million - more than 25 per cent of the total value of the 667 Impressionist and modern art works offered by Sotheby's and Christie's.
The most expensive, at $25 million to $35 million, is a 1932 painting of Picasso's teenage lover, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and her sister reading. It comes from the artist's most sought after series, which includes the $106 million Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (currently on loan to Tate Modern) but perhaps lacks the sexual frisson that the best examples have.

Close behind Picasso is Monet, whose highest valued work is a painting of poplar trees from a famous series, estimated at $20 million to $30 million, though this too lacks something - in this case, a signature.
Tipped to break records are a rare Tahitian sculpture by Gauguin, estimated to fetch at least $10 million, and a stunningly colourful suburban landscape by Maurice de Vlaminck, which is being sold by hedge-fund manager Steven A Cohen. If, as hoped, it fetches between $18 million and $25 million, it will double the artist's previous record. It was painted in 1905 at the height of the Fauve movement in Paris, when a small group of artists were employing such vivid colours that a critic named them les fauves, or wild beasts.

Last year, a Fauve painting by André Derain sold for $16.3 million ($24 million), so, the reasoning goes, why should a first-rate Fauve Vlaminck not make as much?
Cohen is selling contemporary art, too, and has given Phillips a major Warhol portrait of Elizabeth Taylor for next week's sales, which has been guaranteed to sell at $20 million to $30 million.
Also guaranteed at Phillips is a Warhol 4ft square flower painting, bought in 2007 for $5.2 million by investor Jose Mugrabi, which is now pegged at $8 million to $12 million. Mugrabi is getting a better return for a small Warhol self-portrait of 1963, which he bought in 1998 for $376,500 and is now selling for $6 million to $8 million at Christie's. Altogether, 65 works by Warhol are expected to bring more than $135 million, or 25 per cent of the contemporary art sales.

Another notable Warhol lot is a set of 10 silkscreen paintings of athletes, commissioned in 1977 by collector Richard Weisman, who unsuccessfully attempted to sell them through the dealer Martin Summers in London in 2007, with a reported $28 million price tag. Now the set is offered at a more down-to-earth $4 million to $6 million.
However, the most expensive Warhol is expected to be a $30 million to $40 million, 9ft square, so-called "fright wig" self-portrait, the largest from his last series of self-portraits, at Christie's.
Joining the list of sellers is another US hedge-fund manager, David Ganek, who paid a record $688,000 for a set of eight photographs by Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley in 2006, just as the artist was being tipped for a price rise having joined the Gagosian gallery's stable of artists. Although Kelley's market is strong, it has not reached the stratosphere, and Ganek is clearly ready to take a loss with an estimate of $400,000 on this work.

Also selling are publisher Benedikt Taschen, whose gaudy Pink Panther by Jeff Koons has been guaranteed to sell at Sotheby's for $10 million to $20 million, and, it is believed, the Georgian oligarch Boris Ivanishvili, whose massive spending spree in 2007 included a painting by Robert Ryman bought for a double-estimate £1.36 million, which is now estimated at $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
Never out of the action, Charles Saatchi is selling about 30 works, mostly from his recent exhibitions of American art. Christie's and Phillips estimate they will fetch in the region of $2 million.
Looking at the figures, the Impressionist sales are of lesser value ($380 million-plus) than the contemporary art sales ($538 million-plus), a gap that was characteristic of the market peak in 2007 and 2008. Another characteristic of that peak was the high level of guaranteed sales, a risk which is now being taken on by third party investors rather than the auctioneers themselves.

More than 25 per cent of the value of forthcoming contemporary art sales has been guaranteed. But in the Impressionist sales, nothing has been guaranteed. While the former smacks of a certain bullish confidence, the latter, to some, is a more natural and healthier way of doing business.

Telegraph