Phillips $54.1 M. Evening Sale Drops 23 Percent from Last Year

On Tuesday night, Phillips began a week of sales in New York with its modern and contemporary evening sale of roughly 30 lots generating $54.1 million with fees. That result marks a 23 percent drop from the $70 million total that last year’s equivalent November sale generated. That sale’s low estimate was $60 million, on par with this year’s expectation.

During the sale, 26 works sold for a collective hammer price of $54.1 million after two were withdrawn. That figure is 15 percent below the initial expected low estimate of $62 million that specialists designated before the night began. (The cumulative low estimate dropped to $50.4 million after some lots were withdrawn.)

(All figures reported here include buyer’s premium, unless noted otherwise.)

Just five works hammered at prices above their estimates and roughly a third of the lots sold for prices below. Unlike in years past, when younger artists were creating a lot of bidding momentum early in the sale, this evening’s bidding in the room was very tame, often with only two bidders competing against one another for each lot. Four lots, including one by Jean-Michel Basquiat, failed to sell.

At the start of the sale, a glitch in the auction house’s live stream, which brings in remote viewers, stalled sight of activity on the first several lots. Opening the sale was a painting by Chinese-born London-based artist Li Hei Di titled Unfolding a Flood (2021). At 27 years old, Li was the only artist included in the sale whose work had not been sold at auction before. The piece outperformed expectations, selling for $127,000—over double its high estimate of $60,000.

Half of the sale’s lots were works made before 1980. For the works that are decades old and meant to carry the financial weight of the sale, there was less success. Jackson Pollock’s Untitled, a black and white drip painting from 1948, sold for $15.3 million, within the high level of Phillips estimate range. A triptych collage by Jean-Michel Basquiat, who has generated a big bulk of evening sale revenues over the last several years, didn’t perform as expected. The work, titled Self-Portrait failed to sell at an estimate of $10 million after bids were registered with Phillips co-chairman Robert Manley.

That result meant a large piece of the sale’s overall sum was no longer achievable, despite other lots performing well after it.

Similarly, a Claes Oldenburg sculpture from 1964, a glass case filled with 24 faux open-faced sandwiches, only generated $625,000 in its final bid. That figure was below the $700,000 estimate negotiated by its seller, the foundation of Miami collector and real estate developer Martin Margulies.

Other outcomes for younger painters showed a return to normalcy after pandemic hype jumped their prices to new heights. Jadé Fadojutimi’s Even an awkward smile can sprout beyond the sun (2021) went for $571,500 with fees, falling within the estimate. after Fadojutimi, the subject of a Gagosian show in New York, saw 90 works sold at Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s over the last four years. Meanwhile, an untitled painting from 2017 by Matthew Wong, also an artist whose prices started to skyrocket during the pandemic, sold for $1.8 million, against a $1 million estimate.

The night’s brighter spots were on paintings by mid-career artists Elizabeth Peyton and Derek Fordjour. Peyton’s Kurt (Sunglasses) went for $2.4 million, nearly three times its high estimate, while Fordjour’s ranch-inspired painting Twelve Tribes went for $1.1 million, more than double its high expectations.

The result for the Fordjour, according to one adviser, shows some signs about what contemporary art collectors are facing in their negotiations with galleries.

“Primary market access is difficult for Fordjour,” said David Shapiro, a New York-based appraiser, told ARTnews following the sale. “I’m not surprised. It’s very competitive for those pieces.”