Sotheby's “The Artist’s Two-and-a-Half-Year-Old Daughter With a Boat,” painted in 1938 by Pablo Picasso.

Picasso and Giacometti were magical names a year ago, but at Sotheby’s on Tuesday night, works by these artists went unsold. That included a 1938 Picasso portrait that decorated the cover of the sale’s catalog and was being sold by a victim of Bernard L. Madoff, hoping to raise cash.What did tempt the packed salesroom were well-priced, pretty Impressionist images from a celebrated New York collection that had been lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for years.
The sale kicked off a spring auction season that was far diminished from years past both in number of works and value. On Tuesday, Sotheby’s cobbled together a sale with just 36 works, estimated to bring at least $81.5 million. They actually brought far less: $61.3 million.And that sum was modest compared with six months ago, when 45 lots totaled $223.8 million.(Final prices include the commission paid to Sotheby’s: 25 percent of the first $50,000; 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)This spring had been Picasso’s season. Besides an exhibition of his late works at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, which has drawn thousands of visitors since it opened in March, Sotheby’s and Christie’s each put a painting by Picasso on the cover of their Impressionist and modern art sale catalogs, and both sellers were said to be Madoff victims.

 At Sotheby’s, William Achenbaum, who runs the Gansevoort Hotel Group and who lost money with Mr. Madoff, was said to be the seller of “The Artist’s Two-and-a-Half-Year-Old Daughter With a Boat,” a 1938 Picasso canvas depicting his daughter Maya holding a toy boat. (The Madoff effect will be felt at Christie’s on Wednesday night, when another Picasso, also on the cover of the sale catalog, is offered by another Madoff victim, Jerome Fisher, a founder of the footwear company Nine West.)The Sotheby’s painting was expected to bring $16 million to $24 million. One bidder tried to get it cheap but couldn’t get it cheap enough, and the work went unsold. That it was one of the biggest flops of the night was not a surprise. The painting had been offered around privately before the auction, and afterward dealers said it was overpriced.

 Vincent van Gogh's fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist's bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin. 

 According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed. 

 But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists' letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth. 

 In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin's accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.