Kees Van Dongen's "Woman with Two Necklaces" doubled the high estimate at £1.32 million at Christie's.

A new art market clearly emerged this week as Sotheby's and Christie's conducted successful sales of Impressionist and Modern art which between them netted nearly £126 million, or about $184 million.

While it is as vigorous as ever when the occasion warrants it, a welcome lucidity prevails. The amateurs of yore, willing to throw their money at art at prices suggested to them by "experts" are gone. When overestimated mediocrities appear, they drop dead. But the most modest goods still find takers at the right price, which is a sound indication of a bullish market.

Sotheby's was the first to test the waters on Tuesday with a sale that looked very thin. Yet it quickly became clear that the yearning for art has not been dampened by the ever deepening financial crisis.

The session opened with a none too enticing 1915 sketch by Egon Schiele of the woman he married that year, "Edith in Hat and Veil." Unfazed by her ghoulish stare, bidders ran up the black crayon drawing to a hefty £241,250. A cartoon-like self-portrait in charcoal and wash by the same Schiele followed at £481,250. It was let go at 20 percent below the low estimate, which underlines the wild prices that came to be seen as acceptable in the last few years of art market madness.

Two lots down, an auction miracle could be observed. Oskar Kokoschka's picture of Istanbul painted in June 1929 fetched £1.49 million. The landscape which attempts to be detailed is confused, and the romantic sky with golden sunlight clashes with the nervous brushwork that this heir to German Expressionism could not repress.

Soon after came the turn of the star lot that would be the first major test of the week. The bronze cast of "[La] Petite danseuse de quatorze ans" credited to Degas is one of 27 bronze casts made between 1922 and 1937, after the artist's death in 1917. Legally authentic because they were executed by permission of the copyright holders, the bronzes are about as genuine in artistic terms as 27 posthumous copies of any of his paintings might be.

Convention however is a powerful tool. Since several major world institutions (the Musée d'Orsay, the Met in New York) each proudly own one of these, they are accepted without a murmur as the real thing. "La Petite danseuse" danced her way up to a staggering £13.25 million, far above the £5.04 million it made five years ago.

The second significant test was also easily passed. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's "Street Scene" of 1913, the archetypal Kirchner image for admirers of the German Expressionist, climbed to £5.41 million. Measured in buying power, the figure roughly matches the £1.98 million realized in 1997, which at the time was deemed phenomenal.

The success of the two star lots proves that the feverish search for works considered to be supremely important continues unabated.

On Wednesday evening, Christie's sale fully verified the new trends and established the new state of the market for quite some time to come. The session included 47 works, against 29 at Sotheby's, and several of them were of a vastly superior caliber.

The first lot, a 1919 sculpture by Henri Laurens, "Woman with a Guitar," revealed that the search for substitutes to the most famous sculptors of the early 20th century goes on. Laurens was one of its great beneficiaries before the autumn financial turmoil. He still is, judging from the £713,250 paid for this Cubist stone carving that borders on abstraction.

A different indication of the fundamental soundness of the market was provided as four portraits of prostitutes painted by Kees Van Dongen at the tail end of his Fauve period came up in a row. None ranks among his greatest works.

The strongest of all, "Woman with Two Necklaces," possibly painted in 1910, doubled Christie's high estimate at £1.32 million. Next, "Golden Cuirass," a more facile likeness of a young lady of the night reclining in a sexually explicit posture, made a hefty £2.89 million. A third portrait dating from 1918, "The Gypsy," which depicts a Spanish woman arms akimbo and could pass for a tourism bureau poster advertising Seville and its flamenco dancers, managed a generous £1.1 million. An unusually gauche portrait, "The Woman in Green Tights," brought up the rear at the same price.

When second to third division works sell so well, this means that the market extends far beyond the circle of connoisseurs.

The same remark applies to "The Two Seamstresses," an interior scene by Edouard Vuillard apparently left unfinished, judging from the omission of any detail in the characters and the setting. A commission bid rescued from failure the picture wildly estimated to be worth £5.5 million to £7.5 million, plus the sale charge.