PHILLIPS CONTEMPORARY AUCTION TOTALS $7.7 MILLION
The New York Times’s Carol Vogel reports that Phillips de Pury & Company’s sale of contemporary art Thursday night brought in $7.7 million, well below its $12.1 million low estimate. Of the forty-three lots offered, twelve works—by artists like Donald Judd, Ed Ruscha, and Martin Kippenberger—failed to sell. It was a far cry from the $93.7 million fetched by Christie’s on Wednesday night, or the $47 million at Sotheby’s the evening before.
After the sale, Michael McGinnis, worldwide director of Phillips’s contemporary art department, discussed the challenges he was facing. “People are holding on to their art,” he said. “And in some cases, we had buyers who simply weren’t ready to meet the seller’s requirements.” While it was hard for all the auction houses to cobble together sales in this economy, it was especially tough for Phillips, a small operation that had to rely in part on its relationship with Charles Saatchi. The British collector, gallery owner, and advertising magnate had struck a deal with the auction house last year when he was opening his new gallery in London. Phillips agreed to help subsidize the gallery’s free admission, but in exchange, Saatchi agreed to conduct most of his buying and selling through Phillips.
An estimated ten of the works were from Saatchi’s collection, and the rest were a mixed bag of items, many of which had been for sale privately. Thursday’s buyers had a firm grip on their wallets, refusing to bid for almost anything approaching $1 million. The evening’s top seller, at $900,000, or $1 million with fees, was Philip Guston’s Anxiety, a 1975 canvas of a telephone and an egg sandwich; it was expected to sell for $1 million to $1.5 million. Another respectable price was made for Suddenly Last Summer, a 1999 painting by Cecily Brown. Two telephone bidders tried to buy the canvas, estimated to bring $600,000 to $800,000, which eventually sold for $550,000, or $662,500 with fees.
