
This recap of Phillips's London Contemporary evening sale is available to AMMpro subscribers. Monthly subscriptions begin with the first month free. Feel free to subscribe and cancel before you are billed.
Phillips did a lot of things right in last night's sale of 20th Century and Contemporary art that made £97.8m. The most significant was getting (and guaranteeing, in one case) three diverse lots that accounted for two-thirds of the night's total. One was a long-lost Matisse bronze that sold for a remarkable £14.8m; another was John McEnroe's massive Mark Bradford painting, Helter Skelter I, which made £8.6m; but the single most important factor in the success of the sale which finally put Phillips in touch with its peer group was the decision to sell a 1932 Picasso timed to perfection with a London show of similar work (that the consignors had rebuffed when asked to include their example.) That painting sold for £37m or more than a third of the evening's total.
With Phillips closing out the two-week sales cycle combining both Modern and Contemporary art, various market observers are trying to make sense of the sales. Anny Shaw at The Art Newspaper had this from Nazy Vessegh:
“The market is solidifying rather than moving, and that’s not a bad thing. The bubble is not bursting, it remains intact,” Vessegh said. “Buyers are becoming more discerning and, despite the stability in the market, sellers want the assurance of a guarantee.”
This is an excellent point worth dwelling upon. The 2018 art market is not recovering from a fallow period or a market dip as is so often presented to us even from the art market press.
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