Phillips made a strong play for the 200-work art collection of Frederic Brandt with a $15m third-party guarantee. The top 19 lots will be in Phillips’s Frieze sale in London this October, including “including a Damien Hirst spot painting. Dr. Brandt liked Mr. Hirst’s mix of science and beauty, Mr. McCabe said, and owned four Hirst paintings, as well as works by Rudolf Stingel, Yoshimoto Nara and Christopher Wool.”
Dr. Brandt died in April at age 65, from suicide, leaving a hoard of contemporary art by painters he had discovered before their values took off, according to Paul McCabe, an art adviser in London and New York who worked with him for 15 years helping him construct his collection.
“When you look at it now, it seems full of obvious things hedge funders would love to have, but he didn’t pay hedge fund prices,” Mr. McCabe said.
Tom Wesselmann Nudes, and the Collection of the ‘Baron of Botox’ (The New York Times)
