Katya Kazakina spoke to a few of the top art advisors to get their take on the market on the eve of next week’s sales:

• “Last year at this time, you had competition coming from nearly every part of the world,” said Sandy Heller, a New York art consultant. “You don’t really have that right now. So I consider now a great time to be a buyer. You can likely come away with some pretty good deals.”

• “It’s a contraction in every sense,” said Todd Levin, director of Levin Art Group, who advises collectors. “There’s a wait and see approach. No one wants to catch a falling knife.”

• “There’s less risk and therefore fewer masterpieces,” said Wendy Cromwell, an art adviser in New York. “You are seeing the fallout from the course of business that was unsustainable. It was extraordinarily expensive for the auction houses to maintain the facade of those big sales and watch the profit erode.”

Ganek’s Mini Hitler, Basquiat’s Devil Star in Trimmer Auctions (Bloomberg)