Auction Season Going, Going, Gone? : Art: The year’s first big event failed to sell half of the modern works offered.

The art world was in recession-induced shock Wednesday as a result of the season’s first big auction, which failed to sell half the contemporary works offered.

Only 34 of 77 paintings and sculptures that went on the block Monday night at Sotheby’s found buyers, although there were bidders on all lots. Bidding on the 43 unsold pieces failed to reach the reserve price--the lowest price that a seller will accept--and the artworks were returned to the consignors.

These included works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Clyfford Still, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Diebenkorn, Frank Stella, and Hans Hofmann, all postwar artists. The sale total was $19.8 million instead of the $39.6 million to $52 million expected.

Dealers attending the sale voiced the opinion that reserve prices were too high to be realistic in an era of deepening economic gloom and the threat of war in the Middle East. Dealers sat on their hands and left the bidding to private collectors. Some said they came only to assess the strength or weakness of the market.

The top lot in the sale, the first of two weeks of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, was Robert Rauschenberg’s 1961 “Third Time Painting,” which sold for $3 million to an unidentified European collector. The painting was valued at $4 million to $5 million in the auction catalogue, but Sotheby’s reduced the low estimate to $3 million last week.

“The market we were dealing with was a moving target when we put this sale together in July and August, said Lucy Mitchell-Innes, director of contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s. “International events had taken their toll on the art market by October.

“The market has now returned to the 1988 level before the so-called ‘boom’ began,” Innes-Mitchell said. “The paintings that failed to sell were by artists whose work appreciated the most in the boom.”