Boutique auction house Phillips de Pury closed out the week of contemporary evening sales in London at its loft-like Howick Place salesroom in Victoria with a peppy mini-auction of 29 lots that made £5,409,200 ($8,720,870).

Though dwarfed by the results from titans Christie's and Sotheby's and shy of its £5.72-8.4 million presale estimate, Phillips injected some fresh breath in the market. All but five of the 29 lots found buyers, making for a decent buy-in rate of 16 percent by lot and 17 percent by value. One work, Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Overrun" (1985) hit the million pound mark, selling to a telephone bidder for £1,127,650 ($1,818,030). (The presale estimate was £1-1.5 million.)

Auctioneer and Phillips chairman Simon de Pury took his time fielding bids with typical de Pury showmanship, frequently accepting the tiniest of bid increments to goose the final price for his consignors. This was instantly evident as Wade Guyton's "Untitled" inkjet-on-linen abstraction from 2007 (estimated at £50-70,000) finally sold to New York dealer Stellan Holm for £213,650 ($344,453) — but only after the gallerist played a cat-and-mouse game, bidding up in skimpy £2,000 increments (Montreal collector Francois Odermatt was one of the underbidders). The price for "Untitled" set a new auction record for Guyton, topping the level set by "Yellow U," which made £187,250 ($301,890) at Christie's Wednesday evening with the same presale estimate.

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"It's the best one I've ever seen," said Holm, moments afterward, "and you pay for quality."

Still another artist record was set by Jim Lamby's "Night Divides the Day," a 2003 piece on wood, enamel
paint, and mirrored perspex. Estimated at £40-60,000, it sold to a telephone bidder for £91,250 ($147,116). 

There was also decent competition for six works being sold by the Spain-based Valencia Contemporary Art Collection, an art investment fund specializing in painting from the past 20 years. It is liquidating its entire holdings with another 94 lots tomorrow at Phillips at a single-owner day sale. The evening's second lot, Mary Heilmann's 1998 abstraction "Rude Boy," hailed from Valencia and sold to a telephone bidder for £103,250 ($166,463) against a £70-90,000 presale estimate. Amsterdam-based art consultant Siebe Tettero was the underbidder for the Heilmann.

Another art fund offering, Georg Herold's "Untitled" (1990) — a painting made from "caviar and resin on canvas," the catalogue notes — sold to London-based art advisor Andreas Siefried, who works with Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach VIP relations, for £121,250 ($195,483). "It was over the high estimate, but we're happy," said Siegfried after the sale (the high estimate had been £60,000). The price set a new record for the artist.

The Valencia lots provided further gusto to the 40-minute auction as Rudolf Stingel's "Untitled" (2002) sold to London art adviser Hailey Ritcheson for £361,250, while Albert Oehlen's "Untitled" (1998) sold to a telephone bidder for £193,250 ($311,563), over an estimate of £100-150,000. Finally, a small-scaled and decidedly edgy oil by Marlene Dumas, "Equality" (1993), proved to be only a modest winner, selling for £121,250 ($195,483), just over its high estimate of £120,000.

But the sale was not totally dominated by the art fund. Noteworthy artworks that hailed from other owners included the witty Martin Kippenberger "Mirror for Hang-Over Bud" (1990), which sold on the telephone on a single bid against the reserve for £145,250 ($234,176).

There wasn't much classic postwar material in evidence at Phillips, but 1960s-era Zero Group artist Gunther Uecker's nails-on-painted-wood "Mutation" (2006) sold to a telephone bidder for £223,250 ($359,930), and Karel Appel's oil-on-canvas "Birds Over the Red Sea" (1957) sold to architect Siebe Tettero for £205,250 ($330,910).

"I like the freshness of it all," said Tettero shortly after the sale, in reference to Phillips's more adventurous tack and the art fund material from Valenica, "especially compared to what we've seen for the past two days at Christie's and Sotheby's, a lot of re-runs and mid-quality things."

The wildly decorative Raqib Shaw "Absence of God III... And His Tears of Blood Will Drown the Cities of Men II" (2008), flamboyantly executed in acrylic, glitter, enamel, and rhinestones on linen, made £553,250 ($891,966) — though this fell short of its low-end estimate of £600,000.

But Robert Rauschenberg's multi-layered "Address Unknown" (1998) — estimated at £250-350,000 — failed to sell at all. "Return to vendor," quipped one bystander, using the British phrase for consignor.

So, what was the verdict, at the end of the sale? Michael McGinnis, Phillips's worldwide head of contemporary art, said, "The market in general is healthy, even-keeled, and somewhat rational." Adding to that overview, Auctioneer de Pury weighed in. "There was brisk bidding and it felt good in the room," he said. "The market is solid at all levels, from the emerging market to the blue-chip."

And finally, speaking of blue-chip art and the power of the auction houses, a bit of food for thought about the bigger market picture: At the close of this rather remarkable winter season, it is interesting to observe that the Francis Bacon "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" (1964) that sold last week at Sotheby's in the single-owner "Looking Closely" sale for $37 million (£23 million) had previously been offered privately and unsuccessfully by both Christie's and Sotheby's. A source at Christie's said the biggest offer it received back in 2009 for the astounding triptych "was $18 million all in." The seller rejected the offer and cleverly waited out the market dip to put it up at auction, which appears to have been a good move, given its spectacular performance last week.

For the moment, the auction rooms seem to be the profit venue of choice.