“I definitely had higher expectations,” said a somber Michael McGinnis, head of contemporary art at Phillips and a senior partner in the firm, moments after the spirit-dampening sale. “I think it’s just a matter of mood, and the mood couldn’t be worse. I’ve been in this market for 15 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It looks like we need more focus and fewer lots,” he added.

At the start of Christie’s “evening” sale of post-war and contemporary art on Sunday, which began at 4 in the afternoon, the mood was eerily funereal. There was a palpable absence of anticipatory buzz as the players entered, with everyone seeming to know that the auction would be a rough ride.

Christie’s also managed to push down some vendors’ expectations prior to the sale, and the house beat its competitors pound-wise, earning ₤31,978,500 ($55,514,676) against brawny pre-sale expectations of ₤57–75 million. But 21 of the 47 lots offered failed to sell, for a buy-in rate of 45 percent by lot and 38 percent by value.

A darkly beautiful, egg-shaped Lucio Fontana painting, almost phosphorescent with applied glitter, Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio from 1963, sold on a single commission bid by auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen for ₤9,001,250/$15,626,170, against an unpublished estimate in the region of ₤12 million. The painting carried a guarantee and apparently sold to that faithful party, who had taken the risk off Christie’s bet it would make a higher price.

Even top-tier works struggled. Richard Prince’s Dude Ranch Nurse #2 from 2002–03 scraped by, selling to a telephone bidder at ₤3,177,250/$5,515,706 (est. ₤2.8-3.2 million), and Lucian Freud’s rare and riveting unfinished portrait of Francis Bacon from 1956–57 sold to London dealer Stephen Ongpin for a relatively modest ₤5,417,250 (est. ₤5–7 million).

Remarkably, given his astonishing track record at auction, Bacon’s profile portrait of Henrietta Morae, failed to sell at ₤4 million, drawing only a single under-reserve bid from London private dealer Ivor Braka.

“We obviously need to adjust our pricing,” said Christie’s London contemporary head Pilar Ordovas at the post-sale press conference.

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.