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Christie’s International plans to cut estimates on the artworks it auctions by at least 10 percent because of the economic slowdown, Chief Executive Edward Dolman said in an interview.

French billionaire Francois Pinault’s auction house is among those whose sale totals have missed forecasts as nervous collectors balk at high estimates.

“We would be taking our prices down, I would have thought, at least 10 percent,” Dolman said during a visit to Hong Kong. “It could be more for certain works.”

Dolman said records are set for exceptional items even in this market, so “you can’t just go and say ‘Right, we are going to take 20 percent off everything.’ It doesn’t work like that.”

He cited as an example Yayoi Kusama’s 1959 “No. 2,” a 71 3/4 inch-by-108 inch oil on canvas that had a presale high estimate of $3.5 million and sold for $5.8 million at Christie’s contemporary-art sale on Nov. 12.

This painting fetched an artist record at an auction where the tally met only half the company’s presale low estimate and nearly a third of the lots didn’t sell.

“It’s difficult to sit here and say the market is 15 percent down, 20 percent down. It’s definitely down. There’s no question about that,” said Dolman, dressed in a blue blazer and yellow-striped tie. “It would be crazy for us to even make the case that we were somehow immune to what’s happening elsewhere in the world.”

Guarantee Losses

Christie’s, along with its rivals Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury, has said it will stop giving so-called guarantees to sellers so it won’t incur losses or be stuck with pieces that don’t find buyers. A guarantee is what an auction house agrees to pay a consignor regardless of whether his property sells.

The London-based auction house has given $800 million in guarantees this year, or about 15 percent more than in 2007, Dolman said. In November, New-York based Sotheby’s said it incurred $47 million in losses on guaranteed items at its London, Hong Kong and New York sales. Dolman wouldn’t comment on Christie’s losses.

“It’s not our intention to offer any guarantees until we have a better idea of where the markets are,” said Dolman. “We are not in the same market that we were in six months ago.”

Still, the company may break its no-guarantees rule when something “truly exceptional” comes along.

Dolman, 48, who began his career in Christie’s furniture department two decades ago, said the art-market slump now pales in comparison with that triggered in the 1980s by the collapse of Japan’s asset prices.

Survival Pledge

“We have been through worse, so there’s no cause for despair,” Dolman said. “We will survive this.”

Based on Artprice.com’s online survey of its members, about 49 percent polled say sentiment on the economic climate in the next three months is “unfavorable” and 56 percent expect art prices to fall in the coming quarter.

“We take a deep breath over the next year or two,” Dolman said. “And hope to see the markets start growing again.”

Christie’s five-day Hong Kong auction which ended on Dec. 3 tallied HK$1.13 billion ($146 million), a third less than its presale estimate and against the HK$2.4 billion totals at its May sale in the city. A third of the contemporary artworks it auctioned in New York in November and nearly half the lots it offered in London in October didn’t sell.

“No one wants to take unnecessary risks,” said Hong Kong- based Robert Chang, one of the world’s top collectors of imperial Chinese ceramics, in an interview earlier this month.

Dolman said Christie’s will report “negative growth” in sales this year, its first such report in about seven years, after tallying $6.3 billion in 2007, a 36 percent increase in dollar terms.