In the middle of a crowded New York spring art market seasonPhillips managed to rake in $69.5 million in just under an hour and a half at the auction house’s 20th Century and Contemporary Art Night Sale on Wednesday (May 17), as dealers warn that collectors are more selective with the art they buy.
The most exciting lot of the auction was the very first: Noah Davis’s Untitled (2010) was the subject of a 12-minute bidding war that pushed the hammer price to $780,000 ($990,600 with fees) from an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 to become the second most valuable work by the late Los Angeles artist to be auctioned. (Painting by Davis 2014 Congo #7 sold at Christie’s New York in 2022 for $1.5 million).
“This is crazy,” exclaimed one attendee after a phone bidder crossed the $700,000 threshold, sending the auction room into applause.
Untitled (2010) by Noah Davis sold for nearly $1 million after a 12-minute bidding war. Courtesy of Philips
Davis’ work is “hard to find, and he’s a cult figure,” says Alex Glauber, a New York-based art consultant. Davis died in 2015 at 32 from a rare form of cancer. Glauber suggests that Phillips’ estimate was likely intentionally set low to allow him to “set the tone for the sell-off and build momentum.” But after Davis’ sale, the rest of the auction largely continued at a brisk pace, which likely saw attendees make it in time for a Christie’s auction that started two hours later. later.
“What we’ve seen in sales is a greater degree of selectivity,” Glauber said ahead of the sale. Collectors are “not content to be swept away in an instant without first assessing whether the object itself is of a quality or standard that they would like to live with”, he added.
The evening sale at Phillips was anchored by Banksy’s large-scale painting Banksquiat. Boy and dog stopping and searching (2018), which hammered in $8.1 million ($9.7 million with fees). In response to a Basquiat exhibition in 2017 at the Barbican Center in London, the pseudonymous British artist spray painted a figure inspired by the painting of Jean-Michel Basquiat Boy and dog in a Johnnypump (1982) searched by two London policemen. This canvas version was published by Banksy the following year and was estimated by Phillips to sell for between $8 million and $12 million.
Two early soft sculptures by Yayoi Kusama, owned for decades by Dutch collectors Agnes and Frits Becht, who purchased them directly from the artist, collectively sold for nearly $6 million. red stripes (1965) and blue spots (1965) grossed $2.2 million and $2.6 million respectively ($2.7 and $3.2 million with fees) against estimates of $2.5–3.5 million. They were bought by the same bidder, and Phillips’ global president, Cheyenne Westphal, said after the sale the auction house was “pleased” the pieces remained together.
Kusama’s early work is “extremely rare” at auction, Robert Manley, Phillips vice president and global co-head of contemporary and 20th century art, said ahead of the sale. The Kusama market is also strong at the moment, thanks in part to a collaboration with Louis Vuitton And a show in progress at David Zwirner in New York. Phillips set Kusama’s auction record last year, when his painting Untitled (Nets) (1959) sold for $10.5 million including fees.
About 80% of the works on sale Wednesday night were coming to auction for the first time, according to Phillips. Ahead of the sale, Glauber said it was impressive that the auction house was able to secure such fresh works from collections for sale.
“Sellers either have very high expectations and are therefore reluctant to accept lower estimates or are worried about the state of the world and people’s appetite for spending large sums of money,” Glauber said.
Head of a woman with a bun (1952) by Pablo Picasso Courtesy of Philips
Some of the other top lots from the sale included Head of a woman with a bun (1952) by Pablo Picasso, which reached $6 million ($7.3 million with fees), that of Roy Lichtenstein girl in the mirror (1964), sold for $4.5 million ($5.5 million with fees) and Untitled (Standard Lotus XVI Face 44.15) (2013) by Mark Grotjahn, which raked in $3.5 million ($4.3 million with fees).
At Anna Weyant’s Unconditional love (2021) sold for $480,000 ($609,600 with fees) against a pre-dam estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. Figure (Cobalt) (2021) by Simone Leigh fetched $650,000 ($825,500 with fees), just short of the auction house’s estimate of $700,000 to $1 million. by Maria Berrio No one can hear you, only the wind (2012) hammered at $500,000 ($635,000 with fees), half of its low estimate of $1M (estimates do not include auction house fees). Several lots were withdrawn from sale, including works by Robert Ryman and Lisa Yuskavage. Works by Joan Miró, Issy Wood, Robert Colescott and Ed Ruscha remained unsold.
The evening sale brought in a total hammer price of $56.3 million ($69.5 with fees), with 89% sold by lot and 95% sold by value. Including Phillips’ two-day auction, the company brought in $108.3 million (including fees), falling on the lower end of its $92.5-133 million estimate for sales.
“We were really pleased with it because it shows that the average art market is really strong,” Phillips chief executive Stephen Brooks said after the sale.
Sales continue at Sotheby’s and Christie’s until Friday. Together, the three auction houses expect to bring up to $2.2 billion in May, despite the generalization, the market could cool down amid various fiscal headwinds, including fears of a recession and banking crisis, and the looming possibility that the United States could default on its national debt .
