Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Christie's International has assembled $350 million of art in Abu Dhabi, combining highlights from its Oct. 30 auction in nearby Dubai with a Rothko, a Bacon and two Monet works as it seeks to woo emerging-market buyers.

Christie's is betting that cash from emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia and Russia will stop the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression from triggering a similar slump in the art market.

The size of the Abu Dhabi exhibition ``gives you some idea of the growth and our belief that it will be consistently maintained over the next period,'' said Jussi Pylkkanen, chairman of Christie's Europe, in a telephone interview. `` There's no other way we'd be bringing $350 million worth of art to the Middle East.''

Contemporary-art auctions in London by Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury & Co. between Oct. 17 and 19 made a combined 59 million pounds ($91 million), against minimum estimates of 106.2 million pounds, according to Bloomberg calculations.

``There's certainly an adjustment, but in the early 1990s, we didn't have the breadth of buying that we have today,'' said Pylkkanen. ``Then the top of the market was very much driven by Japanese and there was nobody else around them and the truth is that today's art market is a very global one.''

Japanese Buyers

In 1991, Christie's reported worldwide sales of $1.03 billion, down from $1.96 billion in 1990, while Sotheby's sold $1.1 billion, down 55 percent from a year earlier. Dealers said there was an almost wholesale retreat from the market of Japanese buyers who had driven up the price of Impressionist works.

The crash of 1991 was preceded by a 74 percent decline in Sotheby's share price in less than a month at the end of 1990. Sotheby's shares have fallen 78 percent so far this year.

``Without question'' the dip in the art market will be less severe than the early nineties, said Pylkkanen. ``We already know that because the immediate impact of what has been a very dramatic downturn in the financial markets has only had a certain impact on the art market,'' he said, pointing out that as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for the world's largest bankruptcy, Sotheby's sold 111.5 million pounds of Damien Hirst's art.

``I do believe that the globalization of the art market offers some protection,'' said Pylkkanen. ``In the 1970s, the 1980s and even the 1990s, collecting art was the pastime of the rich. It's no longer the case.''

Price Surge

Prices for artists including Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince have more than quadrupled in a five-year boom in contemporary art. Worldwide auction sales for contemporary art more than tripled during the period 2005-2007, according to a report published this month by the French-based art-market database Artprice.

Buying from the Middle East at Christie's auctions globally has risen by 400 percent in the last four years, said Pylkkanen, declining to cite market share. Buyers from the Middle East represent a similar proportion of Christie's total as Russian buyers, he said.

Christie's has held similar exhibitions in Hong Kong and Moscow to engage with buyers least affected by the global credit crisis.

The Asian art market showed signs of weakness at Sotheby's five-day auction in Hong Kong Oct. 4 to 8, which made HK$1.1 billion ($141.2 million), about half of the presale estimate.

Sotheby's said Oct. 23 that it lost $15 million on guarantees it provided to sellers at auctions in Hong Kong and London this month.

Fifth Sale

Christie's auction of international modern and contemporary art in Dubai Oct. 30, its fifth in the emirate, will be its first sale in the Middle East since the worst of the financial crisis hit.

The last Dubai auction set a record for a Middle Eastern artist when ``The Wall (Oh Persepolis),'' a nearly 2-meter tall bronze sculpture covered in hieroglyphics by Iranian Parviz Tanavoli, fetched $2.84 million.

``I'm very confident that the sale in Dubai, particularly the picture sale, will be very robust,'' said Pylkkanen.

Christie's last auction of Islamic and Indian art in London in Oct. 7 ended with 47 percent of lots sold. The auction brought in 77 percent by value, according to Christie's.

Pylkkanen says he would be ``very disappointed'' if November's New York auctions achieved the 40-50 percent that some of the recent London sales earned.

``When I started to work in the Impressionist department in 1991, the very first sale I was involved with sold only 17 percent,'' he said. ``It was a traumatic adjustment. This is a much more measured adjustment.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Brown in Dubai at mbrown42@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 27, 2008 04:44 EDT