Fears that the contemporary art market would collapse were allayed last weekend at the main London auctions timed to coincide with the Frieze Art Fair. With more sales today, the auctions are on target to reach an anticipated £180 million.

Scores of record prices tumbled, but the market is changing. Asian art is red-hot, while other sectors are cooling down. Numerous works by the market's most heavily traded Western artists – Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat – either struggled to sell or did not sell at all.

These were the signs that pundits predicting a collapse in the wake of the credit crunch were looking for. But the negative results were more directly attributable to over-ambitious estimates set between sellers and salerooms, and to the weakness of the dollar, which has deterred American buyers.

At Sotheby's, only 19 per cent of buyers were Americans. Among the unsold works were a spot painting by Hirst with an absurdly high £1.8 million minimum estimate; a weak Basquiat painting hoping for at least £1 million; and two early paintings by the sought-after young British artist Glenn Brown. At upwards of £250,000, the estimates were just too high for the discriminating collector.

Just as telling were a group of seven works by Warhol that sold only at or below their lowest estimated prices. Sotheby's had clearly anticipated trouble here and persuaded the owners to reduce the reserves, or minimum prices at which they could be sold.

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