Against a backdrop of Brexit and the pound slumping to a 31-year low, Phillips mustered a decent contemporary art sale last night (5 October). The auction total came to £15m or £17.9m with fees (est £14.2m-£20.5m), with 94% sold by value.
Nevertheless, the result represents an almost 50% drop in value from last year’s sale. “The froth that was in the market that was driving optimistic estimates has gone,” Ed Dolman, the chief executive of Phillips, said after the auction.
The sale was bolstered by US and Asian bidders, according to Dolman, who used the opportunity to announce Phillips’ first contemporary art and design sale in Hong Kong on 27 November. In March, the auction house appointed Jonathan Crockett as its head of 20th-century and contemporary art and deputy chairman, Asia.
Crockett says the Hong Kong sale will consist of a mixture of 20th-century and contemporary art, design and editions. “Right now Asians are buying contemporary Western art, and most of the sale is Western, although we expect more Asian lots to be consigned,” Crockett says.
In a fitting fusion of East and West, the top lot in London was Warhol’s 20 Pink Mao’s (1979), which sold for £4.1m or £4.7m with fees (est £4m-£6m). The work was one of four in the sale to be backed by anonymous third party financial guarantees.
Other highlights included a painting by Mark Bradford, for whom Phillips achieved a record price last year. Rat Catcher of Hamelin III (2011) flew over estimate to sell to the London dealer Inigo Philbrick for £3.2m or £3.7m with fees (est £2m-£3.2m). Meanwhile, in a further sign that the market for less established artists is cooling, a spray painting by Sterling Ruby from 2008 failed to sell at £340,000 (est £400,000-£600,000).
