Logging one of the poorest results for a contemporary art evening sale in recent memory, Phillips de Pury & Company earned only £3,963,450 ($5.97 million) in a brief, casualty–filled auction, which failed to make its modest £6,075,000-8,575,000 ($9.16–12.93 million) presale estimate. Only 24 of the 45 contemporary lots offered found buyers, equaling a 47percent unsold rate by lot and a 39 percent unsold rate by value.

That performance compares unfavorably to the £5.1 million tally that the boutique firm earned last year when it registered a buy-in rate of 33 percent and fell far short of the £6,098,000 it earned with a 14 percent buy-in rate back in February. No work came close to the million-pound mark, though 13 of the 24 lots that sold went for more than £100,000 ($150,800). Of those, four cracked £300,000 ($452,400).

One certainly couldn’t cite the result as evidence of any kind of market recovery, even accounting for some understandable fatigue that may have set in after the May auctions in New York, the Basel art fairs earlier this month, and the Impressionist and Modern sales in London last week. The auction looked more like a sign of a market collapse.

On the positive side, two artist records were set, including one for Ugo Rondinone, whose 2006 cast aluminum and white enamel tree, air/get/into/everything/even/nothing, one from an edition of three plus two artist’s proofs, sold to a telephone bidder for £361,250 (est. £200-300,000, or $301,600–452,400). New York art advisor Kim Hierston, bidding in person, was the underbidder. It broke the artist record set at Sotheby’s London in February 2009 when Rondinone's 2003 No. 299 made £253,250. The widely exhibited sculpture stood just off center in the sparsely populated salesroom, and, given the evening’s performance, it looked forlorn in front of the indifferent audience, even more ghostly than usual.

Hierston had better luck with Anselm Reyles untitled 2006 work, made of acrylic, silver, PVC, foil, and canvas, which she grabbed for £99,650 ($150,300) on an estimate of £70-90,000 ($105,600–135,700).

However, early in the 30-minute-long sale it became crystal clear that bidders were few and far between, as Untitled (Nurnberg) (2006), a large-scaled Urs Fischer relief, constructed of wood, ACM panels, and Epson Ultrachrome inkjet print on paper, died at £130,000 ($196,000), failing to make its £150-200,000 estimate ($226–301,000).

Matthew Day Jackson, another much-talked-about-artist, also crashed and burned. Recently recruited to the Hauser & Wirth stable, his Gimme Shelter II, a laser-cut Formica and wood piece from 2009, attracted zero interest, expiring at an imaginary £65,000 ($98,000) bid off the chandelier, far short of its £100-150,000 estimate ($150,800–226,000). The work was based on a 1962 Life magazine article about fallout shelters, American paranoia over the then-raging Cold War, and the pervasive fear of a nuclear holocaust. In any case, no one wanted to touch it tonight.

Another Cold War relic was Gavin Turks impressively grim Death of Che (2000), a Madame Tussaud-quality wax and mixed media work that that sold to a telephone bidder for £67,250 ($101,400), barely making its £60-80,000 estimate ($90,500–120,600).

A trio of telephone bidders chased Thomas Schüttes Brutalist cover lot, the 1994 Doppelkopf (Double Head) — a glazed ceramic head set on a plywood pedestal — to the top-lot price of £481,250 ($725,700) on an estimate of £400-600,000 ($603–905,000).

Coming in close behind the Schütte was Bridget Rileys mural-sized Out There, which sold for £445,250 ($671,400) to a telephone bidder, who appeared to place the only bid against the work’s reserve. The patterned abstraction, an oil on linen measuring roughly four feet by thirteen feet and dated 2004, had been estimated to sell for £400-500,000 ($603–754,000).

Among the modest string of successful lots, Gerhard Richters small-scaled 1971 oil-on-paper abstraction, Graues Bild I, estimated at £80-120,000 ($121,000–181,000), sold to London collector Amir Shariat for £91,250 ($137,600).

Two telephone bidders chased Salvatore Scarpittas brilliantly conceived 1958 Trapped Canvas, comprised of interwoven and trussed bandages and mixed media on board. One snapped it up for £409,250 ($617,000) on an estimate of £250-350,000 ($377–528,000). That figure was good enough for an artist record, beating the £366,400 earned by his untitled 1958 work at Sotheby’s London in October 2006. According to the auction catalogue entry, the bandages where sourced from army-surplus stores by the Italian-American artist and “speak to man’s potential for spiritual renewal.”

The auction tonight needed more renewal than Scarpitta’s remarkable work of art could offer, despite being arguably the most convincing, world-class piece included among the sale’s meager offerings. The evening offered only a thin stream of first-rate works, and some lots had been aggressively estimated beyond current art-market logic. In short, between the work on offer and the activity in the auction room, the evening lacked the ability to convince anyone that the market was blooming.

Among the few veteran buyers attending the sale, New York art trader Jose Mugrabi bought Tom Wesselmanns 1972 Study for Pat Nude, a 22-by-30-inch oil on canvas, estimated at £150-200,000 ($226,000–301,600), for a spare £159,650 ($240,800). Buttonholed moments before the dreary sale began, Mugrabi philosophized about the current state of the market and mentioned several purchases he made at Sotheby’s Monday evening sale, which netted £41 million ($61.82 million), a haul that now seems gigantic. “I paid $1.3 million for a little bit of a Basquiat,” he said. “It was nothing special. It’s impossible to do a better sale with all this kind of mediocre material.”

Keeping that remark and Phillips de Pury’s off-putting performance in mind, one begins to see emerging signs of a contemporary art market in which collectors are loathe to put first-rank property at risk with digestible estimates.

Speaking to a sprinkling of journalists after the sale, Phillips de Pury’s contemporary-art head Michael McGinnis conceded, “I expected the results to be a bit better, frankly.” McGinnis also observed, “It’s always a difficult task to find fresh property. It’s a very particular market today and when you have the right object, there’s competition.” Unfortunately, Phillips seemed unable to compete tonight. Sinking stock indices aside, the house tanked on its own lack of steam.

Christie’s post-war and contemporary evening sale, the season closer, will provide a final test of the state of the art market on Wednesday in London.