Zhang Xiaogang’s "Bloodline: Big Family, No. 2" was the most expensive lot, selling for HK$26,420,000 ($3,408,180).

What a difference a deepening global economic meltdown can make.

Despite valiant and determined efforts by Christie’s to do well by sellers, the year’s last major international auctions of Asian contemporary art, held on November 30 in Hong Kong, delivered modest results at best. Spectators are already calling the disappointing sales, part of a five-day series of auctions running through Wednesday, the end of the Asian contemporary art bubble that had been driven by fast-rising prices for new Chinese works.

In sharp contrast to sales in the last five years, where nearly all lots sold after frantic, record-breaking bidding for “name brand” artists, most items that went under the hammer this weekend failed to reach the auction house’s high estimates.

Predictably, Christie’s put a positive spin on the results. “Against a continuing difficult financial backdrop, our sale of Asian Contemporary Art and Chinese 20th Century Art achieved HK$140,620,000 [$18,139,980], with active participation from collectors around the world, reconfirming Hong Kong as the center for contemporary and modern Asian art,” Eric Chang, Christie’s head of Asian contemporary art, said in a statement.

But during the first portion of the sale, billed as the highlight in the contemporary category, only 56 percent of the 32 works on offer sold, with many failing to meet the reserve price. The total sales amounted to HK$65,900,000.

As in previous seasons, the category was dominated by contemporary Chinese art, which experts say attracts 90 percent of American and European collectors. One painting in the session, South Korean artist Kang Hyung Koo’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln, stood out for exceeding its estimate. A bidder in the room bought it for HK$1,100,000, surpassing the high estimate of HK$700,000.

Zhang Xiaogang’s Bloodline: Big Family, No. 2, was the session’s most expensive lot; the 1995 oil on canvas went for HK$26,420,000 to an anonymous phone bidder. Still, it was a disappointing result. The work had been expected to sell for about HK$30 million and boasted considerable star power: The piece has been exhibited prominently by U.S. museums and was from the collection of Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone. The director, who has been quietly buying and selling for years, even made a rare personal appearance on the Christie’s floor the day before the auction to be seen with the five Chinese contemporary paintings he had put up for sale.

With many of the major items committed to the fall auctions before September’s Lehman Brothers crisis and the implosion of the global economy, Christie’s representatives had worked hard before the sale to rally potential buyers and to manage expectations. One contemporary collector reported that the auction house had contacted him and others before the sales to say that this season’s reserve prices had been cut by a fifth.

There was also a marked stylistic difference between this weekend’s sales and the ones in May. In an effort to create the kind of big social event that characterizes sales in New York, Christie’s had launched a posh Hong Kong evening sale in May. This time around, however, spring’s by-invitation-only, please-dress-nicely admission rule to the salesroom did not seem to be enforced (one small child was seen fidgeting among the seats, accompanying a woman in a track suit), and the sale took place in a room that held 400 people, as opposed to the spring sale’s 1,000-person hall.

Perrier-Jouët champagne was still served at the cocktail reception between sessions, but coffee seemed to be the drink of choice among the weary buyers and sellers. And while in May the buffet tables groaned with Peking duck, this weekend dim sum dumplings and small chicken sandwiches were more the order of the day.