For the Love of Art, and Money

LONDON — A record 413 million pounds of Impressionist and modern art sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in one week. Nearly £200,000 went for a canvas painted by a 24 year-old with a fire extinguisher a week later. Auctions of high-end artworks were booming in London in February, to be sure. But in the 21st century’s increasingly financialized market — where art is treated as an investment and where paintings are tracked and traded instantaneously — one has to ask, what does the word “collector” mean nowadays?

The latest auctions here demonstrated how buyers have now split into two main groups: Longer-term investors who hold to more traditional notions of collecting and who tend to focus on Impressionist, modern and classic contemporary works; and short-term speculators, known as “flippers,” who busy themselves with cut-and-run deals in the red-hot market for emerging artists.

In the traditional realm, at least four big-name trophy hunters slugged it out on telephones at Christie’s on Thursday over Francis Bacon’s 1966 “Portrait of George Dyer Talking.” Estimated at £30 million, this powerful depiction of the artist’s lover seated like a Michelangelo nude on a bar stool was included in the Bacon retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1971, an exhibition that opened two days after Dyer committed suicide.

‘‘Portrait of George Dyer Talking’’ by Francis Bacon. Christie’s

The painting eventually sold to an undisclosed American buyer represented by Brett Gorvy, Christie’s international head of postwar and contemporary art, for £42.2 million, or $70 million. The price was an auction record for a single canvas by the artist. Back in November, Bacon’s 1969 triptych, “Three Studies of Lucian Freud,” sold at Christie’s New York for $142.4 million, a record for any artwork at auction.

“These are collectors who are here for the long term,” Mr. Gorvy said in the aftermath of his £124.2 million night. His statement was meant to reassure collectors that new bidders, especially from Asia, who had pushed up the prices on several lots, including the Bacon, were serious buyers who would keep works over decades.

But these long-term collectors can also be sellers. The Mexican financier David Martinez was identified by dealers as the seller of the Dyer portrait, having bought the Bacon privately for $12 million more than five years ago.

The Taiwanese entrepreneur Pierre Chen had entered Gerhard Richter’s 1994 abstract, “Wand (Wall),” into Sotheby’s auction the previous evening after an even shorter holding period. The canvas had been acquired privately by Mr. Chen for an undisclosed price within the past three years. It attracted less intense competition, selling to a telephone bidder for £17.4 million.

Mr. Martinez and Mr. Chen are among a new breed of collectors, known as “super-flippers,” who buy high privately and then sell even higher at auction. With consignors of valuable lots not having to pay any seller’s commission, and guarantees available to remove any risk of failure, wealthy speculators can play the art market with confidence, certain of making a profit.

“These collectors have changed things,” said Morgan Long, a director at the London-based Fine Art Fund. “They’re testing the market at a different level. Long gone are the days of buyers not following trends and an investment perspective.”

Sotheby’s and Christie’s globally marketed sales are also attracting a whole new crowd of international buyers, enticed by the idea of art as an alternative investment. Sotheby’s said they had bidders from an unprecedented 44 countries at their Feb. 5 Impressionist and modern auction. Asian clients, comprising buyers from locations such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, spent twice as much at this year’s Impressionist and Contemporary Sales than they did last year, said Mitzi Mina, a London-based Sotheby’s press official.

Asian clients were also conspicuous telephone bidders at Christie’s contemporary sale the following week.

Directors of Christie’s in the post-auction press conference cited a newly discovered passion for collecting Western art as the main reason for this surge in Asian bidding.

“If you’re sitting in China at the moment, it’s difficult to find domestic investment opportunities to feel confident about,” said John Haddon, the Hong Kong-based CEO of Tang Art Advisory.

‘‘Wand (Wall),’’ by Gerhard Richter. Sotheby’s

Mr. Haddon said that wealthy people throughout the world have become nervous about how central banks’ easing of monetary stimulus programs will affect the financial markets, and, by extension, their own net worth.

“There’s a weight of money that wants to find a home other than numbers on a computer screen,” Mr. Haddon said.

Advisers like Mr. Haddon also point out that investors from the financial sector are aware that art is a volatile market prone to crashes. Wealthy individuals, mindful of risk, rarely devoted more than 5 percent of their portfolio to art.

Paradoxically, for all the talk of art gaining credibility as an asset class, buyers still place an almost nostalgic premium on works that emerge from “connoisseurial” collections. Sotheby’s Feb. 5-6 auction of 119 drawings from the private collection of the Swiss dealer Jan Krugier, who died in 2008, was a complete sell-out, raising 74.8 million pounds.

Picasso’s 1936 hallucinatory “Composition (Composition au Minotaure),” was among the many 19th- and 20th-century drawings that attracted at least half a dozen bidders.

Sourced directly from Marina Picasso, the artist’s granddaughter, it topped the sale with a price of £10.4 million, an auction record for a Picasso work on paper. The telephone buyer was identified by dealers as the New York collector Leon Black.

Key to the success of the sale were perceptions that Krugier had acquired the drawings for his own personal pleasure, rather than profit, over the course of 40 years.

This connoisseurial approach to collecting seems an age away from what goes on in a salesroom when a work by a hot young artist like Lucien Smith comes under the hammer. Mr. Smith, 24, is the latest wunderkind to be flipped and re-flipped by market insiders before fetching an even higher price at auction.

An Yves Klein for the Instagram generation, the New York-based Mr. Smith uses a fire extinguisher to spray canvases with thousands of droplets of paint. He has produced as many as 300 of his “rain” paintings over the last couple of years, dealers estimate.

Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips all included 2012 rain paintings to give cutting-edge credibility to their evening contemporary art sales in London. “Feet in the Water” sold for £194,500 at Phillips on Feb. 10 after six telephone bidders pushed the price far beyond the high estimate of £60,000.

The financial heat generated by rising stars like Mr. Smith, as well as by museum-proven names like Bacon and Richter, is attracting wealthy new “collectors” from across the world.

Like it or not, everyone who now buys art wants to make money out of it.

‘‘Composition (Composition au Minotaure)’’ by Picasso. Sotheby’s