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  3. The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beauti

The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beauti

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问题     The longest bull run in a century of art-market history ended on a dramatic note with a sale of 56 works by Damien Hirst, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, at Sotheby’s in London on September 15th 2008. All but two pieces sold, fetching more than ￡70m, a record for a sale by a single artist. It was a last victory. As the auctioneer called out bids, in New York one of the oldest banks on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy.
    The world art market had already been losing momentum for a while after rising vertiginously since 2003. At its peak in 2007 it was worth some $65 billion, reckons Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics, a research firm—double the figure five years earlier. Since then it may have come down to $50 billion. But the market generates interest far beyond its size because it brings together great wealth, enormous egos, greed, passion and controversy in a way matched by few other industries.
    In the weeks and months that followed Mr. Hirst’s sale, spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable. In the art world that meant collectors stayed away from galleries and salerooms.
    Sales of contemporary art fell by two-thirds, and in the most overheated sector — for Chinese contemporary art—they were down by nearly 90% in the year to November 2008. Within weeks the world’s two biggest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, had to pay out nearly $200m in guarantees to clients who had placed works for sale with them.
    The current downturn in the art market is the worst since the Japanese stopped buying Impressionists at the end of 1989. This time experts reckon that prices are about 40% down on their peak on average, though some have been far more volatile. But Edward Dolman, Christie’s chief executive, says: "I’m pretty confident we’re at the bottom."
    What makes this slump different from the last, he says, is that there are still buyers in the market. Almost everyone who was interviewed for this special report said that the biggest problem at the moment is not a lack of demand but a lack of good work to sell. The three Ds—death, debt and divorce — still deliver works of art to the market. But anyone who does not have to sell is keeping away, waiting for confidence to return.
By saying "spending of any sort became deeply unfashionable"(Para.3), the author suggests that______.
选项 A、collectors were no longer actively involved in art-market auctions
B、people stopped every kind of spending and stayed away from galleries
C、art collection as a fashion had lost its appeal to a great extent
D、works of art in general had gone out of fashion so they were not worth buying
答案A
解析 句意推断题如词义推断题一样，要借助上下文呈现的信息解答，该语句出现在文章第三段第一句话。幸运的是下一句话中In the art world that meant…中的meant后面显然就是对该句话内容的解释。本句大意为：在艺术界这就意味着收藏家们已经远离画廊和艺术品门市部。研读本题选项我们发现A项符合文章内容，为本题答案。
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