Boutique auction house Phillips de Pury & Company hit the big time tonight at its new digs on Park Avenue, turning in an impressive $137 million sale of contemporary art. The lion's share of that tally, $117.05 million, was generated by the pretentiously, but fittingly, titled Carte Blanche sale that had been organized by private dealer and former auction house specialist Philippe Ségalot. That sum easily hurdled the special sale's $77.4-$104.8 million estimate, as 30 of the 33 lots offered sold, for a fine nine percent buy-in rate by lot and five percent by value. Sixteen of the 30 lots went for over a million dollars, setting seven artist records.

By almost any measure it was a smashing success, thanks largely to the rousing performance of Andy Warhol's 1962 "Men in Her Life," the almost-seven-foot-square black-and-white silkscreen on canvas depicting Liz Taylor, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher, and Debbie Reynolds at the Epsom Derby races (est. $40-50 million), which sold to a telephone bidder for a whopping $63,362,500. Consigned by mega-Warhol collector/dealer Jose Mugrabi, the work was backed by an otherwise undisclosed third-party guarantee from a secret financier. Bidding began at a sky-high $32 million and quickly raced at million-dollar increments before tapering back to $500,000 bids toward the end of the contest.

There are only four versions of the work, whose imagery Warhol sourced from a Life magazine feature article in 1962 about the sultry screen siren, who was still in her twenties at the time the painting was produced. A smaller version, at 13 by 80 inches, titled "Men in Her Life (Mike Todd & Eddie Fisher)," sold at Christie's New York in May 1989, just two years after Warhol's death, for $286,000.

You might call the Warhol a disaster painting, in that Taylor's then-husband (her third), movie producer Michael Todd, died in a plane crash in 1958, less than a year after the original photo was taken, in his private plane named "The Liz," which boasted a lilac-colored boudoir. Taylor was supposed to be on the flight but canceled at the last minute due to illness. Shortly after Todd's death, Taylor took up with the married Fisher, a crooner who dumped his wife Debbie Reynolds. Both women were pregnant at the time that they were photographed. The Muybridge-like image, consisting of the couples strolling against the backdrop of the famed British horse race and repeated 38 times in seven rows of flickering intensity, makes the painting look more like a soap opera-inspired moving image.

London dealer Harry Blain of the freshly launched Blain Southern gallery, and formerly part of the team that ran Christie's Haunch of Venison gallery in London, got in early and bid aggressively up to $42 million. Ultimately, though, Ségalot's telephone bidder won out, making it the second-most-expensive Warhol at auction, trailing the 1963 "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car)," which made the artist record $71.1 million, at Christie's New York in May 2007. "It was a great piece," said Blain shortly after the bidding war, "but it went higher than our client was willing to go." Though Blain declined to say anything about the client, citing a confidentiality pact, he noted the price and degree of bidding "is indicative of what you have right now for the great pieces."

Surprisingly, Ségalot sounded disturbed moments after his triumphant sale, saying, "I’m always disappointed for the consignors whose works didn't sell, that's the way I am. I'm never satisfied." Ségalot was referring in part to some of the world-class collectors he courted for his sale, including Chicago über collector Stefan Edlis, whose Paul McCarthy kinetic sculpture, "Mechanical Pig" (2005; est. $2.5-3.5 million) was bought in at $1.9 million. Another Segalot casualty was Jeff Koons's giant, almost-nine-by-12-foot cheesecake–posed collage painting, "Prison (Venus)" (2001; est. $2.5-3.5 million), which tanked at $2.4 million.

But those few disappointments seemed minor to the high-octane cast of artworks that largely made huge prices, including Takashi Murakami's "Miss ko2," a six-foot-high sculpture from 1997, part of an edition of three plus one artist proof (est. $4-6 million), which sold to Mugrabi, semi-disguised in a black baseball cap, for $6,802,500.(It would be fascinating to learn just how much Mugrabi made by parting with his under-known Warhol, once owned by the late and great Swiss dealer and art promoter Thomas Ammann.

Murakami himself was on hand, hard to miss with his top-knot hairdo, goatee, and stocky build, standing at the back of the newly constructed salesroom, which boasts the worst sight lines of any auction house around, with views that recall those provided by cheap seats at certain Broadway theaters. The Japanese Superflat master was relieved to see two of his major works sell. "My honest feeling is 'Phew,'" said Murakami later. "I'm relieved."

Sculpture excelled in the sale, as a Maurizio Cattelan crowd-pleaser, "Charlie," inspired by the scared boy in the classic Stanley Kubrick horror film "The Shining" sold to another telephone bidder for $2,994,500, just under its $2–3 million estimate. The shrunken, yet unmistakable self-portrait of the artist as Charlie, riding on a remote-controlled tricycle, garnered a few laughs in the packed duplex salesroom occupying the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street as the auctioneer/showman Simon de Pury said, "Thank you so much, Charlie. You can leave us now." Dutifully, Charlie exited in reverse.

Of the records set in the Carte Blanche portion, Felix Gonzalez-Torres's wrapped candy installation "Untitled (Portrait of Marcel Brient)," from 1992 and consisting of close to 200 pounds of candy (est. $4-6 million) sold to Ségalot’s telephone bidder for $4,480,000, crushing the previous artist record of $1.65 million, set back at Christie's New York in November 2000 when Ségalot was running the department.

It is understood that Ségalot controlled all of the consignments he gathered, shielding his private clients from the eyes of Phillips de Pury in a kind of curious arrangement in which they presumably bid against one another in what appeared to be a public forum. From the vantage point of the press, corralled to one side of the petite salesroom, there was no view of the telephone bidders, and one had to rely on auctioneer de Pury's play-by-play pronouncements about who was doing the bidding.

After the hard, accelerating ride of Carte Blanche, the various owners' portion of the sale was pretty much a snooze, with 22 of the 26 lots offered selling for $19,973,00, just shy of its $23-34.4 million presale estimate. That amounted to a buy-in rate of 15 percent by lot and 30 percent by value, thelatter statistic due to a pricey failure of a $5-7-million-estimated Koons sculpture, "Caterpillar Ladder" (2003), which tanked at animaginary $4.8 million.

Of the 22 works that sold, four made over a million dollars, including Roy Lichtenstein's large-scale composition "Two Figures, Indian" (1979; est. $3-5 million), which sold to pharmaceutical magnate Stewart Rahr for $3,890,500, with New York dealer Helly Nahmad as the underbidder. Wearing blue jeans, a muscle T-shirt, and a hip-hop-ready gold neck chain, Rahr cast a rather menacing figure as he exited the salesroom but sounded quite pleasant as he said of his purchase: "It was a good buy, I think. I pick and choose." He was accompanied by the Pop artist Peter Max who claimed the it was his first time visiting an auction room. Said Max, "It’s really amazing to see how much money was spent on art tonight."

Another first-timer, the 23-year-old reality-television sensation Abdi Farah, winner of Bravo's "Work of Art" series (which featured de Pury as a judge), appeared starstruck by the bidding action. "It’s my first auction," said the York, Pennsylvania, resident, whose work will be part of Phillips de Pury's day sale on Tuesday, when his large charcoal drawing "Baptism" goes on the block at an estimate of $6-8,000. Asked how much he believes it might fetch, Farah said, "Twenty-thousand would be cool."

The evening action resumes on Tuesday at Sotheby's, when another major Warhol will further test the bling-hungry market.