NEW YORK—As the big fall auction week approached, the de rigueur sentiment among the art punditocracy was that the day of reckoning was finally at hand. With the Dow dropping and the real estate market reeling, it seemed like a fitting time for the end of a party that surely couldn’t go on forever. Eight days and $1.3 billion worth of auction sales later, no one was talking crash anymore. However, the results were definitely mixed, a far cry from the across-the-board bullish behavior of the past several seasons. And while buy-ins and below-expectation prices caused chagrin to the auction houses, paradoxically they may bode well for the art market.

Christie’s led off with its Impressionist and Modern sale on the evening of November 6, and while the house trumpeted its total take of $394.9 million as the second highest in the history of art auctioneering, the mood during the sale was not quite so celebratory. The crowd seemed subdued as lot after lot sold solidly within estimates—and often at the low end of the range—rather than leaving them in the dust as auction-goers have grown accustomed to seeing.

Cézanne’s "Portrait de Vallier" (1904–06) sold for $17,401,000, certainly an impressive price, but it was estimated at $15 million to $25 million. Likewise, Camille Pissarro’s "Quatre Saisons" (1872) set an artist record of $14,601,000, but Christie’s had expected it to make between $12 million and $18 million. The sale’s top lot, however, did soar well beyond its high estimate: Matisse’s summery, joyful "L’Odalisque, Harmonie Bleue" (1937) (est. $15–20 million), ended up at a record $33,641,000. The work, a beautiful elaboration of one of the artist’s characteristic themes, is a portrait of his model and muse, Lydia Delectorskaya.

The next night at Sotheby’s, there were some decidedly awkward moments, none more so than when not a single bidder raised a paddle for "Fields (Wheat Fields)," painted by van Gogh in Auvers in 1890, shortly before his death. By setting the low estimate at $28 million, the auction house was asking too much for a painting that had been recently shopped around.

More than a quarter of the works, including some by very desirable artists such as Picasso, failed to sell, and even the top lot, a Tahitian-period Gauguin titled "Te Poipoi (Le Matin)" (est. $40–60 million) went for a price below the low estimate, selling for $39,241,000. In that case, only one person was bidding, Joseph Lau, the Hong Kong collector known for his recent pricey Warhol purchases. When the sale was over, Sotheby’s was clearly hurting, and in response, the public company’s stock fell by 28 percent the next day.

In a rare departure from press-release happy talk, Sotheby’s executive vice president David Norman, worldwide head of Impressionist and Modern art, conceded in a statement that the sale "saw a market which very clearly responded to attractive, historically important property that was estimated in line with its expectations and resisted property that didn’t fit that criteria." The problem for both auction houses is that high estimates attract consignors, and the consignors then demand guarantees, which the auctioneers have to grant lest the consignors take their property to a rival institution. The van Gogh "Fields" had been guaranteed, so Sotheby’s huge loss on that picture has to be subtracted from the sale total, which was nominally the third highest in the company’s history.

The less-than-stellar results of the Impressionist and Modern sales don’t necessarily mean that the market is in trouble or that tastes have shifted seismically. "Believe it or not, it’s actually a healthy sign," says New York dealer Jane Kallir, of Galerie St. Etienne, a specialist in German Expressionism. "Spiraling prices are unhealthy. Anything that causes the market to wind down and taper off in an organic way without triggering a collapse is good, and in the best-case scenario, this is the beginning of a return to sanity."