Pop Art Leads the Way at Solid Phillips Sale

Despite the fact that the room had half emptied with about 15 of the 73 lots still left to go, Phillips de Pury & Co. had a solid sale last night, totaling a healthy $22.8 million, within its pre-sale estimate of $18.3-26.2 million.

That few seats were filled by the endand perhaps even the fact that there was a dearth of bidding in the room on many of the high profile itemscan be attributed to auction fatigue; Phillips is the last in a long string of contemporary sales this week, all of them packed to the gills with artworks.
 
While the top-selling works were by artists well known from the 1960s to the 1990s, Phillips has been making its name doing brisk business in art dating from the past few years, and records were set last night for Francesco Vezzoli, Paul Pfeiffer, Piotr Uklanski and Wilhelm Sasnal, among others. All of these are relatively young artists whose new work regularly appears in contemporary art galleries.
 
In the trend-watching department: Market observers weren't shocked that a Richard Prince cowboy photograph had been withdrawn from the sale. Prince's results have been uneven at auction this week, with two photographsincluding one of the Marlboro cowboysfailing to sell at Sotheby's the previous night.

There were a couple of Princes on the block at Phillips, and it seems safe to assume for the moment that the art world is still in on the joke paintingslast night one of them, from 1988, inspired a battle among bidders in the room, and finally went to collector and publishing magnate Peter Brant for $587,200, well beyond its high estimate of $350,000.

Top Five Prices
Lot 42Andy Warhol, Black on Black Retrospective, $2,088,000 ($2-3 million)
 
In a sale packed with work from the past 10 years or so, the top lots were works of Pop art. And the strong market for Warhol continues unabated. Two telephones battled it out for this 1979 work from his "Retrospective" series, in which he mined his previous imagery, including Marilyns, Maos and Campbells soup cans. The piece sold just within estimate.
 
Lot 47Roy Lichtenstein, Reflections on Crash, $1,248,000 ($1.2-1.8 million)
 
Paintings from the Pop artist's late 1980s "Reflections" series, in which he appropriated motifs from his earlier paintings, have a pretty solid recent auction history, with one selling at Christie's New York in May 2003 within estimate at $1,183,000, and another selling that same season at Sotheby's New York, also within estimate, for $1,352,000. This one, a vigorous composition combining lighting bolt and explosion shapes, words and a fighter pilot's face glancing up with furrowed brow, achieved similar results, though without generating much interest in the room. Several bidders on the telephone went for it, and one of them got it for a price just within the range Phillips had anticipated.

Lot 35Jeff Koons, Wishing Well, $1,024,000 ($1-1.5 million)
 
This mirror framed in gilded wood, a kitschy example of Koons' "Banality" series, failed to generate much excitement among bidders in the room and ended up selling on the phone, just sneaking by its pre-sale low estimate. But, like much of Koons' work at auction, it has gone up in price considerably since it was last on the block, at Sotheby's in 2002, when it brought in $405,400.
 
Lot 54Agnes Martin, Untitled #19, $912,000 ($800,000-1.2 million)
 
Martin's paintings from the 1990s that have come up at auction recently have performed solidly, and this one, a typically grid-based work with wide bands of color from 1995, sold to a telephone bidder above its low estimate. A similar painting from 1998 sold within estimate at $1.024 million last May at Christie's.
 
Lot 22Damien Hirst, Love Lost, $800,000 ($800,000-1.2 million)
 
Yet another high-profile work that brought a bid on the phonebut wasn't of interest to the room. The Young British Artist's fish tank filled with the instruments of a gynecologist's office just crept by at its low estimate. The massive piece, made in 1999, was shown at New York's Gagosian Gallery in 2000 and went on view in British mega-collector Charles Saatchi's then-new space at County Hall two years ago; Saatchi was presumably its seller.
 
Hottest Lot
Lot 2Tom Friedman, Untitled, $270,000 ($40-60,000)
 
This colorful, typically intricate 1995 Friedman work, made with ink and colored pencil and containing a somewhat elusive image of Mickey Mouse, sparked a bidding war in the room. After at least four people went for it, including dealer Jeffrey Deitch, it was hammered down to Larry Gagosian for a price well exceeding its estimate.

At a certain point, Gagosian was up against L&M Art's Dominique Levy, who was sitting directly in front of him, and it seemed like a replay of the two dealers' dramatic bidding war the previous evening at Sotheby's over a monumental David Smith sculpture, which also went to Gagosian in the end. Gagosian bought another work by Friedman later in the sale that dates from only a year ago and is made from drinking straws. The $216,000 he paid for it fell well within Phillips' estimate of $200-300,000.
 
Quotes From The Crowd
"There is a certain fatigue that has set in," acknowledged dealer Perry Rubenstein. "And a lot of people found what they were looking for earlier in the week."
 
Dealer Sean Kelly also noted the weariness in the room and remarked on the sheer number of artworks up for sale over the course of the week. Of Phillips' sale, he remarked, "I'm surprised at how high some of these prices are. But it's also an opportunity to get things at very good prices."