PHILLIPS’S CONTEMPORARY ART AUCTION BRINGS IN $28.6 MILLION

Phillips’s contemporary art evening auction in London last night brought in $28.6 million, according to Bloomberg’s Katya Kazakina. Ai Weiwei’s piece Circle of Animals Zodiac Heads, 2011, brought in $5.3 million, and set an auction record for the artist. Overall, the auction exceeded estimates of $27 million; there were eight unsold lots, with pieces by Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud, George Condo among them.

Meanwhile Ed Ruscha’s eleven-foot-long painting, Ship Talk, sold for around $1.4 million, above the high estimate of $945,000. And Bruce Nauman’s 1989 wax and wood sculpture, Hanging Heads #1 (Blue Andrew, Mouth Open/Red Julie with Cap), sold for nearly $3 million. Nauman’s piece was one of sixteen lots whose owners had been guaranteed undisclosed minimum prices by Phillips.