subject: Art Market Watch A Good $71.2 Million At Phillips De Pury By Rachel Corbett [print this page] Has Phillips de Pury & Company finally arrived as a real force in the New York auction world? A year ago, the firm's evening sale of contemporary art totaled $137 million, thanks to the controversial ministrations of dealer Philippe Sgalot and a $63.4 million Andy Warhol painting of Liz Taylor and the Men in Her Life (1962). Six months ago, in the May contemporary sales, Phillips did a much more modest $38 million.
Last night, Nov. 7, 2011, the Phillips total was a tempered $71,292,500, just surpassing its $66,560,000 presale low estimate, with 37 of 44 lots selling, or 84 percent. The healthy total clearly makes Phillips a real player, but many observers remain suspicious. A good number of the lots seemed to draw only a single bid, placed for unseen clients by auction-house specialists, possibly the result of presale guarantees.
The problem is that it looks curious to a knowledgeable onlooker, said Levin Art Group director Todd Levin. You dont know if it really sold to an objective third party or if the house just bought it in, so we have to view it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
The top lot of the night, Cy Twomblys Untitled painting of red loop-de-loops from 2006, was bought by Phillips worldwide director of contemporary art Michael McGinniss, apparently on the phone to a client, for $9,042,500, just within the presale estimate. McGinniss also bought the second most expensive lot, Andy Warhols Nine Gold Marilyns (1980), which hung on the wall behind de Pury, for $7,922,500, just above the presale low estimate of $7 million.
Later on, Phillips Moscow specialist Svetlana Marich snagged man-of-the-moment Maurizio Cattelans upside-down cops sculpture, Frank and Jamie (2002) for $2,322,500. Done in an edition of three, the work has appeared at auction five times, most recently selling a year ago for $1.6 million. That's an increase of more than 40 percent in one year -- a pretty good (if theoretical) return?
Other top lots going to phone bidders included Roy Lichtensteins stripe-and-Benday-dot flag, Forms in Space (1985), which sold for $1,538,500, and Damien Hirsts painting 20 Pills (2004-05), which sold for $1,202,500, comfortably within its presale estimate.
Some buyers were in the room, of course. Uber-collector David Nahmad took home Alexander Calder's late-career three-legged Trepied (1972), for $5,682,500. And fashionista Tommy Hilfiger bought Damien Hirst's Disintegration The Crown of Life (2006), a nine-foot-tall butterfly painting shaped like a gothic church window, for $1,426,500.
Megadealer Larry Gagosian bought the two-plate steel sculpture from Richard Serra for $2,322,500 (est. $2.5 million-$3.5 million), on the condition that the buyer and artist agree on the site, manner and position in which it is to be displayed, de Pury said. The sale isn't the first time an outdoor sculpture by Serra has been sold at auction, but it is viewed as a significant development all the same.
The overall mood stayed steady but unenthusiastic throughout the night, with buyers only rarely willing to meet or surpass the low estimates, which were about 20 percent too aggressive, according to Levin, who thought the best buys of the night were Ellsworth Kellys 1968 cube painting for $2,210,500 and a porch painting for $182,500 by Richard Artschwager, who has a major traveling retrospective coming up next fall at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
