A Marathon Evening at Phillips

LONDON—In a marathon three-and-a-half-hour double-session sale featuring contemporary Russian art and a boatload of cutting-edge general contemporary works, boutique firm Phillips de Pury & Company turned in a mixed but respectable £28,412,300 ($56,540,500) result and set 15 artist records. The cumulative tally fell midway between the pre-sale estimates of £23.4 million and £34 million.

The first half of the sale, which offered important contemporary Russian works from a private foundation and was organized to benefit children with AIDS, garnered £6,503,500 ($12,942,000). Only five of the 39 lots failed to find buyers, for a svelte 13 percent buy-in rate by lot and 2 percent unsold by value.

And while many of the nine artists to set records in this portion of the sale would not ring bells even to most aficionados, Ilya Kabakov’s stunning cover lot, Zhuk (Beetle) from 1982, emblazoned with a children’s poem written in Cyrillic, exceeded its hefty estimate and sold to Pilar Ordovas, head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie's London, apparently bidding on behalf of a private client, for a record £2,932,500 (est. £1.5–2.5 million). The entire Russian sale was guaranteed for an undisclosed price, but the sale of this single Kabakov exceeded the entire Russian auction’s low estimate of £2.8 million itself. Phillips’ risk-taking on the Russian front apparently paid off well.

Another notable record breaker was Glory to the CPSU (1975), Erik Bulatov’s bravura landscape branded in red with a Communist Party slogan, which fetched £1,084,500 (est. £500–700,000). The painting was first shown at New York's Phyllis Kind Gallery in the exhibition “Direct from Moscow” in May 1987, with a price tag of $30,000.

At the conclusion of the first sale, there was a short break, and then auctioneer and company chairman Simon de Pury resumed the action with 111 contemporary lots drawn from various owners.

Eighty-nine lots found new homes, realizing a total of £21,909,200 ($43,599,300), for a 20 percent unsold rate by lot and 18 percent unsold by value. That compared to a pre-sale estimate of £20,638,000–30,055,000.

Isolated moments of the evening’s second act were red hot, as evidenced by the sales of John Armleder’s reflective abstraction Untitled (Mirror Glass) from 1992, which made a record £94,100 (est. £15–20,000), and Terence Koh’s cast-bronze re-creation of his own body, The Camel Was God, The Camel Was Shot (2007), which earned a record £72,500 (est. £30–50,000).

Rudolf Stingel, who was badly burned at Christie’s London earlier this month when all three of his entries hit the buy-in bin, saw his reputation bounce back. At Phillips, another trio of Stingels were on offer, and here they all sold, including his graffiti-scratched untitled abstraction in Celotex insulation board, wood, and aluminum from 2002, which went to a telephone bidder for £490,400 (est. £400–600,000).

Of the blue-chip entries, Richard Prince’s Surfing Nurse (2002), a guaranteed lot, sold to Stefan Ratibor of Gagosian Gallery's London branch for £2,148,500 (est. £1.5–2 million). The work was consigned by Norwegian explorer and art collector Erling Kagge, who was in the salesroom taking snapshots of the action.

“I’m very pleased,” said Kagge, who acquired the painting in 2003 from Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York when the primary market price for Prince’s new series of nurse paintings ranged from $40,000 to $80,000. “I had it in my sitting room in Oslo.”

That small-scaled nurse outperformed another guaranteed lot, Damien Hirst’s mural-size dot painting 3-(5-Chloro-2-Hydroxphenylazo)-4, 5-Dihydroxy-2, 7-Napthalenedisulfonic Acid (1998), which sold to New York dealer Philippe Segalot for a bargain-basement £1,756,500 (est. £1.5–2.5 million). It was rumored that Phillips had guaranteed the picture for a price above its published high estimate, but that couldn’t be confirmed by anyone in the firm.

“It was sort of like ‘even-steven,’” said Phillips partner and contemporary head Michael McGinnis, describing the guaranteed lots. “We lost some and we won some, but that’s just the nature of the beast.”