Art Market Monitor

The Evening sale at Phillips de Pury brought in $9,608,700 with just under 54% of the lots selling. The big lot of the evening was Donald Judd stack (left) selling for $3.2 million. Nothing else came close in price. The next highest lot (right) was Anish Kapoor’s Untitled (Mirror), a blue concave egg-shaped piece of stainless steel, that sold for $782,500. Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana and Mark Grotjahn rounded out the top lots.

Bloomberg has the details:

“We have seen a moderation of interest,” said Michael McGinnis, senior partner at Phillips. “The demand is a lot different than it was six months ago.” [ . . . ]

In recent days, Phillips’s staff had tried — with little success — to convince the auction’s consigners to cut their reserves, or the minimum level at which pieces could be sold, up to 50 percent below the low estimates.

“Sellers had a luxury of eight years of the climbing prices,” McGinnis said. “They were not receptive.” [ . . . ]

Buyers passed both on brand names like Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and on emerging artists like Mark Grotjahn and Anselm Reyle.

Hirst Painting Flops at `Brutal’ New York Art Auction (Bloomberg)

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• Phillips de Pury Hits the Wall
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• Don’t Worry About Phillips Sale
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