ANOTHER disappointing week for Dick Fuld, the former boss of Lehman Brothers. It’s been a pretty bad year for him already.

In September, Fuld steered the 150-year old investment bank on to the rocks, helping to trigger a new low in the glo-bal financial crisis.

The Feds are now reportedly crawling all over him and he’s about to be “terminated” without severance or bonus. Now even art offers him no comfort.

Last week Fuld and his art-loving wife Kathy put a collection of postwar drawings up for sale at Christie’s, including works by Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman and an appropriately titled piece by Arshile Gorky: Study for Agony I.

Estimated to be worth between $15m and $20m (€12m and €16m), the 16 works went for $13.5m. But it was not such a bad night for the Fulds. Christie’s reportedly guaranteed them $20m for the sale. Kathy picked up the Gorky in 1996 for $370,000 and it fetched $2.2m. If only some of her business skills would rub off on her husband.

Don’t worry, the Fulds always have Dick’s money to fall back on. Last year he earned $34.4m. But if things get really bad, there are always the houses. The Greenwich, Connecticut mansion, the $21m Park Avenue, Man-hattan apartment, the places in Vermont and Sun Valley in Idaho, or the one on Jupiter Island, Florida, near golfer Tiger Woods’ $38m pad.

Nor were the Fulds the headline losers from last week’s art sale. That honour belonged to Francis Bacon, until recently the biggest star on the art market. Bacon, dead 16 years, broke his own auction record last May when Roman Abramovich, Russian tycoon and Chelsea Football Club owner, paid $86.3m for Triptych (1976).

That sale was seen as a robust rebuttal to doom mongers predicting that the art market was about to fall along with the rest of the financial markets. Last week the merchants of doom finally had their day.

Bacon’s Study for Self-Portrait, had been the highlight of Christie’s sale with an estimate of $40m. There were gasps when the sale was stopped after bidding dried up at $27.4m. Almost a third of works in the 75-lot sale failed to find buyers.

The art market is a pretty accurate guide to how the truly wealthy are feeling. Next month, the moguls have to decide whether or not to fire up the jets and head down to Art Basel Miami, probably the glitziest art fair on the planet. Miami has become the most party-intensive stop on the annual art fair tour. It’s like Spring Break for zillionaires - a richer and older version of Girls Gone Wild.

London’s annual Frieze art fair, held last month, was not as bad as some had feared. If it was not as good as it has been, it was an English disappointment, understated as well as undersold. Nothing about Miami will ever be understated. Miami will be the next big test for the art market in a world where even the really rich are worried about bringing home the Bacon.

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