Energetic bidding sent Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Untitled (Boxer)" to $13.52 million.

The art market continued to defy the logic of economics on Wednesday as Christie's conducted its evening sale of contemporary art. Against the backdrop of a deepening crisis, with the Dow Jones losing 413 points in one day, the auction house posted sales totaling $113.62 million.

Raw figures do not convey the atmosphere of enthusiastic bidding that prevailed during the first hour.

Conducted by Christopher Burge, the sale at times gave the impression that the good old days were back. Buyers furiously fought over several pictures and drawings.

The first bidding contest unexpectedly broke out over the very first lot, Tom Wesselmann's 1961 "Study for Great American Nude," done in pastel and charcoal. The day before, Pop Art had not done all that well. Besides, a work on paper, however large its format, is never the most popular with contemporary art fans who like to make the most of their possessions by displaying them prominently and permanently - which should not be done when the support is paper, because colors fade when overexposed to light. This did not prevent the study from soaring to $986,500, roughly matching the high estimate set long before the current global financial tempest.

This, however, was nothing compared with the excitement that the appearance of the great star lots triggered shortly after. Gerhard Richter's "Abstract Picture," painted in 1989, loomed largest among them, and with good reason. The 74-year-old German artist is one of the few, if not the only one, among the contemporary artists consecrated by fame who can be hailed as a great master of the brush. The abstract composition seen at Christie's was as dazzling for its rhythmical movement and its color harmonics as for its mastery at applying paint in touches as subtle as they are vigorous.

Christie's had obviously succeeded in persuading several consigners to moderate their reserves at the 11th hour. As bidding reached $8.4 million, Burge made it clear to those who know how to "read" the auctioneer's conventional signals (the voice rises, the delivery becomes crisper) that the reserve was matched. But competition did not stop there and sent it to $13.2 million, making the full price with the sale charge a gigantic $14.86 million.

Ten lots down, a painting that could not have been further removed in style, mood or technique aroused nearly as much interest. Jean-Michel Basquiat's very large picture dating from 1982, "Untitled (Boxer)," is one of those parodies of a schoolboy's cartoon dashed off on the blackboard in the master's absence. An energetic bidding match sent the Basquiat climbing to $13.52 million. This was a feat that few would have dared predict, even if the official line at Christie's was that the Basquiat was expected to be knocked down "in the region of $12 million."

The diversity of the works that galvanized bidders on Wednesday knew no boundaries. Immediately before the Basquiat, a kind of hanging pharmaceutical cupboard filled with glass jars came on the block. Titled "Pharmacy," this had been devised in 1943 by Joseph Cornell. The American artist thus walked in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp and his Dada movement and, sure enough, Christie's mentioned that Duchamp's widow had once owned "Pharmacy." Stirred by such moving historic associations, bidders sent the pseudo-pharmaceutical cupboard climbing to $3.77 million - and set a world auction record for Cornell.

If the Cornell was light years removed from the Basquiat, so was the large painting by Yayoi Kusama which came immediately after. Tiny triangular touches of nondescript color varying from greenish to brownish applied with the tip of the brush on a white ground seem to simulate some leopard-like hide or perhaps a colored grainy leather. Fascinated, the room ran "No.2" to a staggering $5.79 million. That, too, is an auction record for the artist.

Many more paintings commanded large prices that seem modest only because of the enormous estimates that had been printed in the catalogue before the most recent financial turbulence.

"Mars Black and White," painted by Franz Kline in 1959, is an enormous canvas on which black strokes across the white surface conjure whatever images one may wish, from a battered wooden door in a demolished shack to some outsize parody of Chinese ideograms. That brought $5.12 million.

Toward the end of the sale, a horseman on his steed making a military salute that had been "executed" by Jeff Koons in 1988 as an artist's proof upheld the Dada tradition. This represented the kind of contemporary art that seems most at risk these days, because anything done in a prankish mood tends to be looked at askance in times of tension and fear. Yet that, too, found a taker, at $4.35 million.