Auction Season Opens With a Modest Bang : * Art: Christie’s sale of contemporary works offers a bit of hope to dealers struggling with a sagging market.

New York’s spring art auction season opened on a note of wary optimism with a sale of contemporary works at Christie’s Tuesday night. During an evening that lacked both the hysteria of the late ‘80s boom and the deepest gloom of the bust that hit more than a year ago, the Park Avenue auction house pulled off a modest success.

“We’ve definitely come away with an up feeling,” said Christopher Burge, president of Christie’s in America.

Results were mixed, but the season’s opener offered a bit of hope to dealers who are struggling to overcome the recession and boost confidence in the sagging art market. On the down side, 19 of the 70 works offered did not sell and the auction rang up a total of only $11.26 million--less than Christie’s low estimate of $14.69 million. But many of the most highly valued items found eager buyers and records were set for five artists.

The auction’s top price of $2.09 million was paid by Swiss dealer Thomas Ammann for Andy Warhol’s celebrated Pop painting “210 Coca-Cola Bottles.” Christie’s pre-sale estimate for the 7-by-9-foot painting was $2.2 million to $2.8 million. The seller was Martin S. Blinder, owner of Martin Lawrence Ltd. of Van Nuys, who bought the Warhol for $1.43 million at auction four years ago.

Cy Twombly’s 1969 blackboard-like abstraction “Untitled (New York City)” brought the second-highest price of $660,000. An unidentified European collector snagged the oil-and-crayon-on-canvas work for well below the auction house’s estimated price of $700,000 to $900,000.

“Saulen,” a 1983 mixed-media work by German painter Anselm Kiefer, came in third at $638,000, soaring past the pre-sale estimate of $300,000 to $400,000 and setting a record for the artist. Another Kiefer, “Markische Heide,” also sold well above estimate. The 1973 painting was valued at $120,000 to $180,000, but an unidentified American private collection paid $242,000 for it.

The four other record-setters were by two Americans, Mark Tansey’s painting “The Myth of Depth” ($242,000) and Robert Gober’s untitled sculpture of a hospital bed ($198,000), and two British sculptors: Tony Cragg’s cast-iron “Three Cast Bottles” ($104,500) and Barry Flanagan’s bronze “Acrobats” ($93,500).

All of the record-setting pieces except the Tansey painting were from the collection of the late Swedish financier Fredrik Roos. Burge credited the “universally high quality” of the Roos material with its success at auction.

Other sales from the Roos collection included German artist Georg Baselitz’s 1982 painting “Franz im Bett” ($440,000), American artist Eric Fischl’s 1990 painting “Cattle Auction” ($286,000) and Italian artist Francesco Clemente’s 1982 painting “The Midnight Sun IX” ($264,000).

The only work from the Roos collection that failed to sell was Julian Schnabel’s 1980 painting, “Death on Holiday,” valued at $180,000 to $220,000.

Among other casualties Tuesday night was Roy Lichtenstein’s “Laughing Cat,” which did not sell. The painting was sold for $319,000 in 1988 at an auction of Andy Warhol’s estate. Christie’s predicted that the Pop work would bring between $350,000 and $450,000 this time around, but the final bid was $190,000.