London Sales Preview: Phillips Contemporary

Phillips de Pury & Company

Paul McCarthy, "Bunkhouse" (1996)

London Sales Preview

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Paul McCarthy
Bunkhouse, 1996
Estimate £1.5–2 million ($3–4 million)
Phillips contemporary

Paul McCarthy’s Bunkhouse was modeled on the artist’s pointed imaginings of what might have happened on the back lot during the filming of a Hollywood Western. Bunkhouse, a mechanized sculptural installation, was one element of McCarthy’s 1996 exhibition "Yaa-Hoo Town," which was an explicit reflection on the predatory violence of the American West that turned the ideal of the frontier into something grotesque. Writing in the New York Times when "Yaa-Hoo Town" was first shown, at the Luhring Augustine gallery, in SoHo, critic Roberta Smith described the piece as “a Disneyesque walk on the wild side. [McCarthy’s] larger-than-life mannequins [committing] unspeakable acts … offer the grim prospect of going on forever.”

Another part of "Yaa-Hoo Town" sold after its gallery debut to the Canadian collector Ydessa Hendeles for $100,000—a big price at the time. Bunkhouse eventually entered the holdings of the controversial Swiss collector Friedrich Christian “Mick” Flick. In 2002 it was acquired by the London dealer David Gill, who was still the owner last October, when he showed it at his gallery during the Frieze art fair. According to trade sources, Gill was offering the massive installation—which consists of bunkhouse beds, outsize painted fiberglass figures, an electrical track and other costly accessories—for $3.5 million.

Now it is one of the star lots at Phillips. It could beat the current auction record for McCarthy: $1.5 million paid for his Bear and Rabbit on a Rock, 1992, from the Pierre Huber collection, which sold at Christie’s New York in February 2007.

"London Sales Preview" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.