The Phillips New York auction managed to fetch only $52 million, although a few female artists got their spotlight.
The evening sale saw five lots being unsold while four others were withdrawn before the auction. This brought the evening’s total to $52 million – barely matching the pre-sale estimate. However, it was a significant 40 percent drop from 2024, when a similar May auction fetched $86 million. For many hoping for the market to pick up, the Phillips auction came as a grim reminder that the market has still not recovered from last year’s slump. The auction house generated $721 million from auctions in 2024, a drop of 14 percent from the previous year.
The only highlight of the evening was that many female artists found their moment to shine; five of them set their personal records. A figurative painting by Kiki Kogelnik went with an estimate of $150,000 and ended up getting sold for nearly double the figure at $280,000. Imagen perdida 27 (1996) by Olga de Amaral sold for $1.2 million – almost 4 times more than its presale estimate of $300,000. The Fourth (1959) by Grace Hartigan was sold for $1.6 million.
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The top bills of the night, however, were still men. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1984) was the top seller of the evening with a price of $6.6 million. Another Basquiat sold for $3 million; the two works combined accounted for 18 percent of the revenues. An Ed Ruscha work was sold for $4.9 million while a painting by Donald Judd fetched $4.3 million. James Turrell was the only male artist to set a personal record; his Ariel (2022) was sold for $660,400 (interestingly, only $400 more than the previous record).
