Soaring prices and persistent bidding at Christie's sale of contemporary art last night proved how few good works are on the market these days and how much money people have to spend.
''The prices were scary,'' said Douglas Cramer, the television producer and collector, after the sale. ''It was such a young audience I thought for a moment I'd wandered into 'Gladiator.' It must be Internet money.''
The sale totaled $14.4 million, just above its high estimate of $14.1 million. Of the 55 works offered, only 5 failed to sell.
Christie's defines contemporary art as works from 1970 to the present. As a result, last night's sale featured works by many of today's fashionable artists, from Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst to Matthew Barney and John Currin. Record prices were set for 15 artists, including Sigmar Polke, Thomas Struth and Charles Ray.
''There were a lot of new, younger buyers,'' said Philippe Segalot, head of contemporary art for Christie's worldwide. ''One first-time buyer bought one of the top 10 works tonight, a Warhol painting.''
The sale included a group of five works by Mr. Koons. And while not all brought optimistically high prices, some did. The most expensive work in the sale was his ''Woman in Tub,'' a 1988 sculpture of a woman sitting in a bubble bath, grabbing her breasts, as someone with a snorkel attacks her from the bottom of the tub in a scene reminiscent of the shower sequence in ''Psycho.'' Four bidders tried hard to buy the work, estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million, and it finally sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $1.7 million.
Another top seller was ''Two Women,'' a 1968 dot painting by Sigmar Polke. The painting, which depicts a pair of model-like figures clad in short, fur-trimmed coats and knee-high boots, comes from an unnamed German collection and was been exhibited only once, in Frankfurt in 1983. German Pop paintings like this are hard to find, but ''Two Women'' came with a hefty estimate: $1 million to $1.5 million.
That didn't stop two bidders from wanting it badly. It sold to Thomas H. Lee, founder of the Snapple beverage company and a seasoned collector, for $1.6 million. It was almost twice the previous record for the artist: $882,500, set in 1988 when Christie's sold his ''Loesungen I-IV.'' Last night, Christie's had given the sellers a guarantee -- a undisclosed minimum price that an auction house promises the seller, regardless of the sale's outcome -- of a reported $1.2 million. The gamble paid off.
(Final prices include Christie's commission, 17.5 percent of the first $80,000 plus 10 percent of any amount above that. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
Six bidders went for Gerhard Richter's ''Skull (545-3)'' a 1983 painting that is one of the artist's haunting series of a human skull. It sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $1.4 million, more than twice its high estimate of $600,000.
Mr. Ray, an artist who has performed well at auction at Christie's recently, made another record price, for ''Boy'' (1992), a painted fiberglass, steel and fabric sculpture of a boy in short blue pants, reaching out as if to shake someone's hand. Estimated at $600,000 to $800,000, it sold for $886,000 to Larry Gagosian, the dealer with galleries in New York, Los Angeles and London.
Paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat brought such strong prices last spring that Christie's included three last night. All sold, but none above its high estimate. ''Glenn'' (1985), one of the artist's classic graffiti paintings, dominated by a black head with an angry open mouth, was expected to bring $600,000 to $800,000; it sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $732,000. Two other Basquiats, ''All Colored at I'' and ''All Colored Cast II,'' both from 1982, sold for $457,000 and $446,000, both to unidentified buyers.
Photographs by the German artist Thomas Struth have been sought after recently. A 1992 photograph of the Pantheon in Rome, estimated at $70,000 to $90,000, set a record for a contemporary photograph, selling to an unidentified buyer for $270,000.
Janine Antoni, the feminist Conceptual artist and sculptor, also broke a record last night with ''Gnaw.'' This 1992 works consists of two 600-pound cubes, one of chocolate and the other of lard, both decorated with bite marks, along with two dozen heart-shaped chocolate candy boxes and 300 lipsticks displayed in a mirrored room on a glass shelf. Estimated at $80,000 to $100,000, it was bought by Lucy Mitchell-Innes, the Manhattan dealer, for $204,000.
Although Christie's catalog did not divulge the seller's name, art-world experts say the seller was the British collector Charles Saatchi. Part of Mr. Saatchi's vast collection of contemporary art was shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art last fall in ''Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection.'' Mr. Saatchi helped to finance the show, as did Christie's, which contributed $50,000. Both were said to be purposely using a museum show to inflate the value of the artists on view. While Ms. Antoni is an American artist and was not in ''Sensation,'' she has been a trendy figure in the art world.
For the first time, Christie's included 20th-century furniture in its contemporary art sale because executives there thought it would bring higher prices in the context of art. In some cases this was probably true, but bidding was less competitive for these works and tended to slow down the rest of the sale. ''Golden Eye Table,'' a polychromed wood and marble table by the 1980's Italian furniture designer Ettore Sottsass, was expected to bring $20,000 to $30,000; it sold for $30,550 to an unidentified telephone bidder. A giant lamp, estimated at $30,000 to $40,000, sold to another telephone bidder for $64,625.
Four Warhols were on offer last night, all abstract images and all with estimates that experts said were too high. The market knew better; none performed as well as expected. But a 1984 ''Untitled (Rorschach Series),'' sold to an unidentified first-time auction buyer who was bidding by telephone for $424,000. While just above the low estimate of $400,000, the price was still considered a strong price even in today's market.
The high prices amazed many of the more knowledgeable buyers in the audience. Leaving Christie's last night, Eli Broad, the chairman of the Sun America financial services company and a Los Angeles collector, called the sale ''heady.''
''But,'' he asked. ''What happens when the economy softens?''