Auctions: It’s a Whole New Ballgame : Rookies appear from nowhere with wads of money to compete in a market dominated by a few well-established names

They roll up to Christie’s and Sotheby’s in limos and taxis. Smartly uniformed doormen flash smiles and wave them into the auction houses where millions of dollars are batted around by people waving numbered paddles.

It’s a strange ritual, but thousands of art aficionados wouldn’t miss it. Twice a year, in May and November, this tribe of collectors and dealers gathers here to participate in a marathon of exhibitions, receptions and auctions.

This spring’s series of big-ticket auctions got off to a shaky start last week with contemporary art sales that sent about a third of the lots back to the sellers and indicated that a market correction is under way.

But no one seems to be predicting a crash, and a new group of collectors and dealers is expected this week for Impressionist and modern art sales that feature Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Au Moulin de la Galette,” which are valued at up to $50 million apiece.

New York auction watchers are a rather eclectic lot. Yuppie stockbrokers, film stars and Fortune 500 executives rub shoulders with rising entrepreneurs and such stellar dealers as New York’s Leo Castelli, Los Angeles’ Margo Leavin, Zurich’s Thomas Ammann and Karsten Greve of Cologne. In an increasingly international art market, Americans mingle with Japanese, French, British and occasional Germans.

You can’t recognize these people by their clothes. By day, they may wear Ferragamos or Reeboks, business attire or Levi’s. And author Tom Wolfe always shows up in his trademark white suit, no matter what the occasion. But by night, most of the men wear dark suits to the auctions. The women turn out in designer dresses suited to the restaurants where they will dine after the sale.

The most adventurous among them, Sheila Natasha Simrod Friedman, models sequined suits and hats that she has designed to go with the art that’s on sale. At Christie’s last week, she wore apparel a la Roy Lichtenstein in honor of the artist’s classic Pop painting “Kiss II,” which brought a record $6 million Monday night at auction.

The lithe and winsome Simrod Friedman turned up at a pre-auction reception in a white suit with a red and yellow comic-strip image on the back of the jacket. At the auction she made a fashionable last-minute entrance in a little blue number with Lichtenstein motifs in black and white sequins.

“We know Roy and we have a lot of his work,” explains Simrod Friedman, who lives in Miami with her conservatively dressed husband, dealer Marvin Ross Friedman. Her black-and-white business card reads “Creative Probabilities . . . Sheila Natasha.” His blue and gray one says “Marvin Ross Friedman & Co. Fine Art.”

The Friedmans join a host of less colorful contemporary art buffs in the auction season’s social whirl. At pre-auction exhibitions, collectors inspect the art on their own or with dealers whispering in their ears.

“This is better than any museum,” says one enthusiast at Sotheby’s show.

“Wow, I love it. I’ve never seen an early Lichtenstein up so close,” echoes an art student at Christie’s exhibition.

Kids get into the spirit, eyeing the art from their strollers or impressing their parents with their expertise. “Look, Mom, this painting was done by the same artist as that one. It has the same squiggly marks,” says an 8-year-old girl who is well on her way to becoming a connoisseur of Cy Twombly.

Those who are invited to receptions at the auction houses graze on little skewers of chicken satay with peanut sauce, scallops in jade sauce and smoked duck covered with black sesame seeds. They drink white wine, fruit juice and designer water.

But whatever their profiles, whatever their tastes, the auction crowd talks about two things: Art and Money.

“I could sell my house and buy a Kiefer,” says a woman at Sotheby’s exhibition.

“Oh, go ahead and sell the Rauschenberg, Fred. Your heirs are getting too much already,” an elderly man counsels his companion.

“This is disgusting. Here’s an Oldenburg that was auctioned last year, and it’s already up for sale again,” says a woman who yearns for the good old days when people didn’t buy art, they had it and hung on to it.

When auction night comes, ticket holders present themselves to guards, register and receive numbered paddles. Directions tend to be given in the language of art. A Sotheby’s hostess directs a woman to her reserved seat saying, “You’re just in front of the Morris Louis.”

Important clients--such as New York dealers Leo Castelli and Larry Gagosian, Japanese heavy hitters representing Fujii Gallery and Aska International, and collector Donald Marron, who is head of Paine Webber and board president at the Museum of Modern Art--sit up front. The rest fall into line according to their social standing and spending habits. Consignors of particularly costly pieces and entire collections are discreetly tucked away in windowed galleries where they can watch the auctions and weep or cheer in private.

What they see is a game for the wealthy and a market dominated by a few well-established names. A list of the top 10 auction prices for contemporary art includes only six artists: Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Francis Bacon. The top 25 adds four names: Cy Twombly, Frank Stella, Jean Dubuffet and Andy Warhol. The top 50 only adds four more to the roster: Marc Rothko, Jean Fautrier, Franz Kline and Alberto Burri.

The market remains a fairly exclusive men’s club despite the growing presence of women. Of the 142 contemporary works that have brought $1 million or more at auction, not one is the work of a woman.

One can keep busy 8 or 10 hours a day just going to auctions, and many people did exactly that last week. The morning after Christie’s disappointing auction of high-priced contemporary art, the sale room was packed for an auction of more affordable works that sold for five or six figures. Once again, about a third of the lots failed to sell, but interest was intense and pieces by Jean Dubuffet, Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis and Dan Flavin exceeded expectations.

Art-world life does go on outside the sale rooms, however. In their free time, out-of-towners visit artists’ studios and galleries. While shopping on Madison Avenue, they check out an exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s black enamel paintings at a gallery owned by Larry (Gogo) Gagosian, the former Los Angeles dealer who has become king of the secondary market and a highly visible bidder at auction.

It is said that what Gogo goes after, Gogo gets. Earlier this year, he bought the collection of Richard Weisman, son of Los Angeles collectors Frederick R. Weisman and Marcia Weisman, reportedly for around $40 million. Bidding at auction, Gagosian got a $17-million Jasper Johns in a 1988 auction for media mogul S.I. Newhouse. Last week his conquests included a $3.7-million De Kooning and a $1.87-million Sam Francis.

Operating in an ad hoc fashion and organizing exhibitions that are the envy of some museums, Gagosian is a phenomenon, but so is the auction scene. Old-timers say it’s a whole new ballgame, largely played by rookies who appear from nowhere with great wads of money.

Dealers who buy works for tens of thousands of dollars have had to forfeit their auction seats to better clients. Now these dealers stand in the back of the sale rooms or watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television.

Some of the dealers say that there are now two kinds of clients: auction buyers and gallery buyers. Galleries offer privacy, but that isn’t necessarily what people want these days. Some collectors love to be seen spending vast amounts of money. There’s also the thrill of winning and the satisfaction of hearing Christie’s auctioneer Christopher Burge purr, “For you, madame,” or Sotheby’s John Marion thunder, “Sold for $620,000 to paddle No. 91.”

Some dealers and collectors watch the scene with horrified fascination. “I wish that it would end, and we could go back to what’s important--the art,” confides a Los Angeles dealer. But despite last week’s indications that the auction houses will begin to lower estimates or at least stem the price rise, it appears that there is no going back.

Wishful talk about cooling the auction heat is often mixed with terror about what would happen if there were a big chill. Some dealers who once wanted auctions to do badly because they steal business now wish Sotheby’s and Christie’s well because of the perception that highly publicized public sales are the art market.