Kicking off the autumn contemporary art season next week, the auctions and fairs in London act as a kind of barometer of the market, an early gauge of the pressure that may be building later in the year in New York, Paris, and beyond. To wager a few predictions, ARTINFO flipped through the catalogues of the three major auction houses with art advisors, collectors, and dealers from both sides of the pond. Here’s what they had to say.

1. Is Martin Kippenberger the Next German Market Star?

Sure, there are plenty of Gerhard Richters in the London sales — we’ll get to those later — but Christie’s is offering a rare opportunity to pick up a coveted self-portrait by a very different German star: Martin Kippenberger.

“The problem with Kippenberger's market in general is that his most powerful works rarely come to market, either privately or to auctions,” says Nyehaus gallery owner Tim Nye. Christie’s collection of Kippenberger works, including a foam-and-plastic bust, an oil self-portrait, and 12 works on paper, one of which is a study drawn on hotel stationery for the famous “Martin, Stand In the Corner and Be Ashamed of Yourself,” could propel the artist to new market heights.

Kippenberger’s current auction record is $4.1 million for a five-panel collage purchased in 2010. Now, a withering self-portrait of the artist striking a boxer’s stance could top that with its $4 million to $5.6 million estimate. “His self-portraits, more than in the case of other artists, are by far his most sought-after works,” Nye added, “so it seems like a perfect storm to set a record for both paintings and works on paper.”

2. Will Investors See Returns on Untested Artists?

One of Jonathan Wateridge’s large-scale, hyper-realist paintings is hitting the block at Christie’s next week for an estimated $160,000 to $240,000. But this little-known artist has said in the past that he wouldn’t have a career at all if it weren’t for the London-based art fund All Visual Artists, launched in 2010 by hedge funder Mike Platt and dealer Joe La Placa. In place of the gallery sales model, Wateridge gets a salary from the fund’s investors over the course of a couple years.

In the short term, it’s proven wildly successful: His paintings have found their way into the hands of collectors like Christie’s owner François Pinault at prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it remains to be seen how well younger artists like Wateridge are able to turn a profit for their investors on the secondary market. “Wateridge is an example of an artist who has never had shows of any real significance and his prices have solely been driven by a few private collectors with an interest in his market,” says London art advisor Michael Frahm. “I cannot see why this work will do well at these price levels.”

The only other All Visual Arts artist to have had a work come up at one of the major auction houses is Reece Jones, whose 2007 charcoal drawing failed to find a buyer at Phillips de Pury last year.

Collectors interested in emerging or mid-career artists might look instead to Wade Guyton, who has an inkjet print on linen at Phillips for roughly the same price as Wateridge's painting. The artist’s hotly anticipated survey opens at the Whitney tomorrow and, though it may not be his most exciting work, New York art advisor Wendy Cromwell thinks it's one to watch. “If the show proves to be as exciting as people anticipate, auction prices will likely jump,” she says.

3. Which Chinese Artists Have Global Appeal?

China’s contemporary art scene only got off the ground in the early 1990s. But the market is changing, says collector Larry Warsh. “The global appeal of certain Chinese artists is being reinforced,” he says, pointing to Ai Weiwei and Zhang Xiaogang as examples of artists included in the upcoming London sales that are likely to tempt international collectors. Certainly both are familiar to auction regulars.

Advisor Michael Frahm would add performance artist-cum-sculptor Zhang Huan, “one of the most important Chinese artists working today,” to that watch list. The artist has an accumulated-ash bust at Sotheby’s day sale for $31,000-$47,000.

Sotheby’s offers a sober Zhang portrait of a young girl for $550,000-$900,000, while Ai Weiwei, who has a show opening at the Hirshhorn Museum on October 7, has a ton of sunflower seeds on sale at Christie’s for $560,000-$725,000.

A key to the rise of the Chinese art market in London is that both Sotheby’s and Christie’s also recognize that Chinese collectors often want to shop outside of the country. Incorporating Chinese artists into their London and New York sales gives such collectors an opportunity to buy and store artworks abroad, where the government can’t show much “interest” in the assets.

4. Can You Still Get a Bargain on a Richter?

Apart from the Yves Klein auction bait on the cover of the Sotheby’s catalogue, the marquee work of the week is Gerhard Richter’s 1994 “Abstraktes Bild,” priced at $14 million to $19 million. The painting comes from the collection of Eric Clapton, who paid $3.4 million for it in 2001, setting a record for the artist at the time. It’s a big, blazing work that could very well go higher than its estimate given the bidding frenzy surrounding Richter of late.

But if you don’t have tens of millions to throw around, there are a handful of other quality Richters on offer, including Christie’s 1967 life-sized painting of five doors, each on its own panel. It’s one for the history books and worth more than its $2.4 million to $3.2 million estimate, according to Cromwell.  

Still, for her money, Cromwell says she would skip both of these in favor of a 6-by-10-foot Richter painting from 1977 at Phillips, estimated at $4 million to $5.6 million. “As we get farther away from the ‘70s, we realize they weren't so bad after all,” she says. “The estimate is reasonable and the painting is worth at least double its low estimate, if not more. Richter is 80 and there will soon be a finite number of paintings to own of this scale.”

To see some of the works mentioned in this article, click on the slide show.