NEW YORK— The day after Sotheby’s sold eight contemporary works for more than $10 million each, 14 for over $5 million, and 55 for more than a million, no one expected last night's contemporary art sale at Phillips de Pury & Co. to produce the same sort of envelope-stretching numbers. But the boutique firm’s impressive results were very much in keeping with what senior partner Michael McGinnis called "an explosive week of sales" and provided further evidence of a healthy, growing art market, despite widespread fears of a correction. 

Of the evening’s 64 lots, only nine failed to sell. The sale earned a total of $59,000,100, well within its pre-sale estimates of $50,520,000 to $72,110,000, and saw 14 lots make it into seven digits. That amounts to 91.9 percent sold by value, and 85.93 percent sold by lot.

The auction proceeded pretty much according to plan (and estimates). The top five lots were the Jean Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Fallen Angel), which fetched $11,241,000 (est. $8–12 million); Jeff Koons's Self Portrait, which went for $7,545,000 (est. $6–8 million); Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild 610-1, which earned $4,521,000 (est. $5–7 million); Robert Gober's Untitled, which sold for $3,625,000 (est. $1.2–1.8 million); and Damien Hirst's Amphotericin B, which earned $3,177,000 (est. $3–4 million). As at this week's Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales, several new records were set, including for Mark Grotjahn, George Condo, Hernan Bas, Martin Kobe, and Gober. Phillips is also claiming a record for Mark Bradford, though as this was his first time at auction, that’s not saying much. The Gober price, on the other hand, not only essentially doubled its estimate, but more than tripled his previous record, $912,000, set at Sotheby’s three years ago.

The evening was not without its disappointments, though — the nine lots that were bought in included a David Hammons, an Anish Kapoor, a suite of 36 photographs by this spring’s Mr. Ubiquitous, Olafur Eliasson, a tiny Wayne Thiebaud cityscape, a Hirst medicine cabinet, and a particularly ghastly Frank Stella sculpture.

The evening was in fact something of a two-for-one, with a benefit auction for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art preceding the main event. Though fewer than a quarter of the seats were taken when auctioneer Simon de Pury started things rolling at 6 p.m., and the MOCA sale was conducted against the loud hubbub of bystanders who knew that the real business hadn’t really begun yet, the house still managed to turn an impressive result. Phillips had waived premiums for the event, but de Pury still managed to squeeze a total of $1,909,000 (against an estimated $1.27–1.75 million) out of the 29 lots offered. The top lot was Sterling Ruby’s SP 28, which fetched $260,000 (several times its estimate of $35,000–$45,000).