Phillips £45.5m London sales; Sotheby's Chatsworth Synergy

This commentary by Marion Maneker is available to AMMpro subscribers. (The first month of AMMpro is free and subscribers are welcome to sign up for the first month and cancel before they are billed.)

Phillips Closes Out a Quiet Auction WeekJean-Michel Basquiat’s Fire Engine and Pink Elephant as seen in Rio de JaineroJust catching up on the last of last week’s sales at Phillips which exemplified themes seen all week. Estimates are aspirational; sellers who wanted their money were prepared to compromise. A few works, mostly by women artists, dropped into a pool of collectors primed to bid and buy.Phillips’ Cheyenne Westphal put it succinctly to The New York Times’s Scott Reyburn:

“There’s been a correction. Buyers are looking to discover something new,” Cheyenne Westphal, the chairwoman of Phillips, said, referring to how price growth for some established male artists, particularly abstract painters, has stalled. “There’s a return to figuration, and the artists are very diverse,” she added. “A global audience responds to that.”

Artsy rather accurately summed up the evening’s winners: