Phillips Scores Big with Russian and Chinese Contemporary

LONDON—Cleverly taking advantage of intense market interest in Chinese and Russian contemporary art, Phillips de Pury & Company staged its most successful contemporary art sale to date with a rousing £23,324,440 ($46.5 million) result, topping its pre-sale high estimate of £20,344,000.

Phillips set 19 artist records and managed to sell 99 of the 114 lots offered.

The sale capped a frothy and exhausting week of both Impressionist/Modern and contemporary sales in London. Phillips's sale, held on Friday at its temporary Bloomsbury Square site, aptly demonstrated the boutique house's wiley approach, which seemingly attracts a younger audience. And Phillips also managed to snag an important, and huge, Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, which added further gloss to its recently announced London expansion, led by recent New York import Michael McGinnis.

Top Five Prices:

1. Lot 29, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grillo (1984), sold for £4,948,000 ($9,896,000, est. £3-5 million)

The electrifying, four-part cover lot from 1984, executed in oil, acrylic, oil stick, photocopy collage, and nails on wood is a massive piece, measuring in at 96 by 211 by 18 inches.

Dominated by two life-size skeletal figures, one of which sports a hovering gold crown, the tour-de-force painting has been in important museum exhibitions.

Bidding opened at £2 million and inched skyward, as several telephone bidders tried to outduel a blonde woman bidding in the front of the former ballroom. She turned out to be Catherine Keller of Daniella Luxembourg Art, a prominent private dealership based in New York and London. Luxembourg is a former partner of Simon de Pury and used to co-run Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg.

Keller declined to comment about the client she bid on behalf of, other than it was "private."

Grillo has come far, considering that at its last auction outing in May 1999 at Sotheby's New York, it sold for $1,102,500. But the new price fell short of the Basquiat record, set at Sotheby's New York in May when Untitled (1981) fetched $14,600,000.

Several observers at the Phillips's sale noted that the sheer size of Grillo made it a difficult prospect for most private collectors. "It's a museum painting," said New York art trader Alberto Mugrabi, an active player in the Basquiat market. "And it's simply too big for a private home."

Speculation ran high that Luxembourg was bidding on behalf of Ronald Lauder, chairman emeritus of MoMA's board of trustees. MOMA lacks a major Basquiat work and this one would easily fill that gap.

2. Lot 9, Ilya Kabakov, La Chambre de Luxe (1981), sold for £2,036,000 ($4,072,000, est. £400-600,000)

Another billboard sized entry at 84 1/2 by 116 1/2 inches, this two-part painting with chalk white Cyrillic text boldly painted across the left-hand panel would leave most Westerners at a loss. Luckily, the red-hot Russian market has no trouble translating Kabakov's ironic commentary about supposed luxury, not to mention his underappreciated painting ability.

Executed in 1981 while the artist was still living in the Soviet Union and when the Cold War was still rumbling, the painting depicts a rather ordinary hotel room that brings to mind the eerie and existential interiors of Edward Hopper.

Bidding opened at £280,000 and marched on until a telephone bidder clinched it at £1.8 million before the buyer's premium (20 percent on the first £250,000 and 12 percent thereafter) was tacked on. The price shattered the artist's previous high mark of £254.400 set at Sotheby's London Russian sale in May 2006 for Where are They?, a set of 31 drawings.

3. Lot 33, Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait (1966), sold for £1,812,000 ($3,624,000, est. £1-1.5 million)

Though Warhol's market had a rather shaky week with a small but surprising number of buy-ins for such a revered postwar figure, this grass-green and banana-yellow, 22 3/8 by 22 3/8 inch acrylic and silkscreen from 1966 had no trouble surpassing its high estimate.

It is one of the best known and youthful poses of the Prince of Pop, taken from a black-and-white photograph and further cropped to just head and shoulders, with the fingers of artist's left hand forming a victory sign and cupping his chin.