The Philips Contemporary sale was organized in London where a host of paintings were up for grabs. This was also the 20th-century and contemporary auction by Philips where 36 works from different artists were included from baseball star Alex Rodriguez who has just announced that he will start a new collection with his wife Jennifer Lopez.
As far as the collections at this auction are concerned, there were a couple of Picasso’s as well as work by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. She is slated to receive her first major survey at Tate Britain in London next summer as well.
Talking about the auction, i brought a total of $45.5 million which is an healthy performance against the estimated $31.1 million to $45 million. The house or third-parties guaranteed a total of eleven lots. Four works also found buyers at a sell-through rate of 89% which is good as well.
The biggest price was received by the sale of Roy Lichtenstein’s The Conductor which made $6.3 million while it was estimated to be sold at $5 million to $6 million. On the second place was A Basquiat and a Picasso was in the third position. A Basquiat made $4.87 million whereas it was estimated to get sold for anywhere between $3.8 million to $6.33 million. Pablo Picasso’s Homme assis got sold for $3.89 million which was also above its estimate.
However, Alex Rodriguez’s Basquiat turned out to be a disappointment at this auction. Alex’s Pink Elephant with Fire Engine got sold for $3.36 million which was also below its estimated price of $3.8 million to $5.07 million. But Rodriguez still says that he will continue to buy art and build a connection with Jennifer Lopez, his new wife.
It is also known that the high-end auction market is subdued and goes largely quiet in the summer months but we will see it swing back into action during the fall. One of the works which tripled its estimate of $506,800 was Marlene Dumas’s Losing which eventually got sold for $1.54 million.
