After a long week of contemporary art auctions, the hearty trekked down to Phillips de Pury & Company in Chelsea — a renovated warehouse with concrete floors and sweeping vistas of a car wash, the Hudson River and the West Side Highway — where the struggling boutique firm held a disappointing sale of contemporary paintings, drawings and sculptures.
It brought in $7.7 million, well below its $12.1 million low estimate. Of the 43 lots offered, 12 works — by artists like Donald Judd, Ed Ruscha and Martin Kippenberger — failed to sell. It was a far cry from the $93.7 million fetched by Christie’s on Wednesday night, or the $47 million at Sotheby’s the evening before.
After the sale, Michael McGinnis, worldwide director of Phillips’s contemporary art department, discussed the challenges he was facing. “People are holding on to their art,” he said. “And in some cases we had buyers who simply weren’t ready to meet the seller’s requirements.”
While it was hard for all the auction houses to cobble together sales in this economy, it was especially tough for Phillips, a small operation that had to rely in part on its relationship with Charles Saatchi. This British collector, gallery owner and advertising magnate had struck a deal with the auction house last year when he was opening his new gallery in London. Phillips agreed to help subsidize the gallery’s free admission, but in exchange, Mr. Saatchi — who is known not only as one of Britain’s biggest buyers of contemporary art, but also as someone who disposes of works as fast as he collects them — agreed to conduct most of his buying and selling through Phillips.
An estimated 10 of the works were from Mr. Saatchi’s collection, and the rest were a mixed bag of items, many of which had been for sale privately. Thursday’s buyers had a firm grip on their wallets, refusing to bid for almost anything approaching $1 million.
The evening’s star became one of the auction’s first — and biggest — disappointments. Robert Gober’s “Untitled,” a 6-foot-8-inch-tall version of a Farina Hot Wheat Cereal box, from 1993-94, estimated at $2.5 million to $3.5 million, went unsold.
The salesroom did come alive occasionally, however. One of the more spirited moments was when “Fountain (Buddha),” a 1996 cast bronze urinal by Sherrie Levine, sold for $446,500, above its $200,000 high estimate. Four bidders went for Ms. Levine’s homage to Marcel Duchamp, one of an edition of six. Before the auction, dealers said it was being sold by E. Blake Byrne, a Los Angeles collector and board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art there.
(Final prices include the commission to Phillips: 25 percent of the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million, and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)
The evening’s top seller, at $900,000, or $1 million with fees, was Philip Guston’s “Anxiety,” a 1975 canvas of a telephone and an egg sandwich; it was expected to sell for $1 million to $1.5 million.
Another respectable price was made for “Suddenly Last Summer,” a 1999 painting by Cecily Brown. Two telephone bidders tried to buy the canvas, estimated to bring $600,000 to $800,000, which eventually sold for $550,000, or $662,500 with fees.
Contemporary Chinese art peaked two years ago, and Mr. Saatchi memorialized it last year with the show “The Revolution Continues: New Art From China,” in his new space. Since then, prices for these artists have tumbled. And on Thursday night Mr. Saatchi was selling some of the works that were featured in that exhibition. The results were mixed. “Backyard Garden,” a 2005 painting by Yue Minjun depicting the artist’s signature laughing characters tangled between the artificial rocks of a Chinese garden, failed to sell. But “Little Boy,” a three-year-old abstract landscape by Zeng Fanzhi, brought $446,500 from a telephone bidder, well above its $300,000 high estimate.
By CAROL VOGEL
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