Relatively Lackluster Phillips Sale Ends Auction Fortnight

Relatively Lackluster Phillips Sale Ends Auction Fortnight

Photo courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

Richard Prince, "Tender Nurse" (2002)

Photo courtesy Phillips de Pury & Co.

Christopher Wool, "Hole in Your Fuckin Head (W31)" (1992)

Christopher Wool Charles Ray Paul McCarthy Agnes Martin Andreas Gursky Mike Kelley Contemporary Market Bruised but Resilient After London Sales On the Mark: Art on the Sidelines

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Despite fighting high winds and intermittent downpours to get there, the soggy crowd was energetic—spurred on, no doubt, by the head-spinning prices realized at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s earlier in the week, where many records were set for both individual artists and auction totals.

But the figures were far less dizzying at Phillips: Eight of 68 works went unsold, and some of the most expensive lots puttered out at underwhelming prices when Simon de Pury’s hammer dropped—failing to meet their low estimates (and, perhaps, their pre-sale guarantees).

Typical auction favorites sold for lackluster prices: A Richard Prince cowboy photo from an edition of two came in at $744,000, under its low estimate of $800,000, while work by Paul McCarthy and Matthew Barney also missed the mark.

That news will surely lead to speculation about the art market cooling, but the sale was not a complete disappointment. Compared to the uptown houses, Phillips offered work by a relatively young group of artists, and many of the thirty-somethings performed very well.

At $396,800, a typically sensual oil painting by Cecily Brown, Untitled, 1998, sold for more than triple its high estimate of $120,000. So did Mark Handforth’s arrangement of fluorescent lights, Starman, 2004, which kicked off the evening and quickly shot up to $114,000 from a high estimate of only $30,000.

With dumbfounding prices becoming the worldwide norm (and with records set less than 24 hours earlier), the figures at Phillips may not be the product of marketplace fatigue, so much as a sign of overly high expectations (and estimates) for some big-name artists. Or, even more simply, the buyers simply could have judged some of the individual work on sale to not be worthy of aggressive bidding.

Whatever the reasons, the prices at the top end of the sale were a let down. Still, 18 artist records were set at the lower end, including for George Condo ($228,000), Hernan Bas ($168,000) and Banks Violette ($117,000).

The total sale amount was $29,694,800.

TOP FIVE PRICES:

1. Lot # 13—Mike Kelley, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, 1991-1999; Sold for $2,704,000

Mike Kelley’s installation, a room-sized solar system made from found stuffed animals shaped into spheres and then sewn together, had the highest estimate of the night and was the auction’s chief disappointment. Bidding faltered almost $300,000 below the low end of the estimate (est. $3-4 million)—making it a deal, perhaps, for the buyer, mega-collector Peter Brant.

2. Lot # 38—Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent II Diptychon, 2001; Sold for $2,480,000

Hung above the phone bank on the right side of Phillips auction space, even good product placement could not help Andreas Gursky’s pair of large color prints—showing the gleaming interior of a 99-cent store—hit the low estimate. From an edition of six, the diptych was expected to fetch at least $2.5 million, but came up just shy, selling to a telephone bidder at $2,480,000.

3. Lot # 30—Richard Prince, Tender Nurse, 2002; Sold for $2,256,000.

No fewer than 10 works by Richard Prince went on the block at the three major auction houses this week. While one of his cowboy photos failed to meet its low estimate earlier tonight, one of his inkjet-and-acrylic nurse paintings crept past its high estimate of $2 million to $2,256,000, demonstrating that buyers’ taste can be fickle when it comes to Prince’s shifting styles and techniques.

4. Lot # 51—Agnes Martin, Untitled #4, 1992; Sold for $1,808,000

Proving that the market for Agnes Martin’s work remains relatively consistent, a strong example of her sensitive geometry hit its high estimate. One of her later works, it features horizontal lines drawn in graphite across a very pale blue canvas.

5. Lot # 16—Christopher Wool, Hole in Your Fuckin Head (W31), 1992; Sold for $1,696,000

Simon de Pury amused himself by adding a little extra emphasis while reading the title of Christopher Wool’s work. One of the artist’s large-scale word paintings, bidders brought it up to a solid $1,696,000, above the low estimate of $1.5 million. Another of Wool’s paintings, Untitled (P346), 2000, a composition of crudely rolled enamel over spattered marking, had done very well earlier in the evening, more than doubling its high estimate of $150,000 to sell for $307,200.