Generally, the art market trails the Dow Jones industrial average and other market indexes by about six to eight months, Peck said. And stocks have been volatile, with big swings up and down, since the summer.

But he was optimistic that the art market would ride out the crisis, and noted that his firm, which is essentially a private banker for art buyers, has seen a spike in loan applications to buy art. And people at auction houses aren't really seeing much of a downturn because of problems on Wall Street.

"If you look around, particularly in New York, it seems like everyone's a billionaire and they don't seem to be affected terribly by this credit crunch," said David Nash, of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, a private New York art consultancy and gallery specializing in impressionist, modern and contemporary masters.

While art from all eras is selling well, works by modern masters like Warhol and Mark Rothko and living artists like Richard Prince and Damien Hirst are especially hot. In oil producing countries like the United Arab Emirates, the appetite is for modern American works by such artists as Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat and Warhol, Peck said.

"The most money is chasing these modern and contemporary names, and that's just what's in fashion really," Peck said, adding that buyers with new money from Russia and China have a "limitless appetite for Western art and objects. Prices in some cases have doubled or tripled in the past year."

Michael Moses, co-founder of the Mei Moses All Art Index, which looks at the historical performance of art as an investment and asset class, said it is noteworthy that the art buying public has become so global.

"This is the first time in a long time where we've had truly universal world wealth expand. ... It's a relatively new precedent that there is so much wealth being created all over the world," he said.

Overall, Peck estimates that the art market gained about 18 percent in 2006 — not a bad return at a time of turmoil in the stock market.

"My experience over the last month or so is that there is a lot of money around, a lot of people looking to buy things," said Nash. "There are not very many people who've said I'm not going to buy this NOW because I'm worried about the state of the economy."