Andy Warhol "Mao portfolio" sold for $938,500 at Phillips de Pury & Co.

A new evening print sale held yesterday at Phillips de Pury’s swank uptown branch totaled $3.6 million, focusing on modern and contemporary works by blue chip names. Seventy-six percent of lots found buyers.

The sale’s top lot was a 1972 portfolio of ten screenprints of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, co-published by Leo Castelli and Multiples. The set was estimated to sell for over $600,000 and made $938, 500. The seller was an unnamed Denver based collector.

Other strong sellers included Bruce Nauman’s 1985 neon Double Poke in the Eye II, from an edition of 40, initially produced as a benefit for the New Museum. Estimated to sell for over $200,000, the Nauman brought $290,500. Ellen Gallagher’s 2002 Bouffant Pride, estimated to sell for above $20,000, sold for $32,500.

An abstract, Japanese inspired black and white 1971 Willem de Kooning lithograph, Untitled (Bather I) given by the artist to a favorite waitress at an East Hampton luncheonette, sold for $17,500, topping the $15,000 estimate. The piece was signed “To Concetta with Love.”

Willem de Kooning's 1958 "Composition III, " oil on paper on masonite, (Est. $600-800K) Sold for $986,000 at Sotheby's. © Photo: Sotheby's

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

The week’s trio of contemporary art day sales totaled $128 million.

Tuesday’s sale at Phillips de Pury & Co. was no Carte Blanche Philippe Segalot affair, instead totaling $6.1 million, under the $7.1 million to $10.1 million estimate.

More revealing: just 64 percent of the 354 lots were sold. The sale was larger than a year ago, when 263 lots which fetched $4.8 million.

Phillips set auction records for seven artists – though for some artists, like the charismatic Work of Art champ Abdi Farah, the record marks their first time at auction.

Sotheby’s came next, tallying $48.9 million, with eighty percent of 344 lots finding buyers, within the pre-sale $40 million to $57 million projected total. This was in line with 2009 results which made $44.1 million.

The top lot belonged to AbEx standby, Willem de Kooning: his 1958 Composition III fetched $986,500, above the $600,000 to $800,000 estimate.

Christie’s consignments were led by a spattering of estates offerings, including works from the collections of Max Palevsky and Dennis Hopper. A combined 391 lots sold in the morning and afternoon…

Andy Warhol's 1962 "Men in Her Life" sold at Phillips de Pury for $63M. Photo: Courtesy Phillips

Link to Bloomberg story here.

Andy Warhol’s blotchy 1962 black-and- white painting of serially married movie star Elizabeth Taylor sold for $63.4 million last night at Phillips de Pury & Co. in New York, the second-highest price for the artist at auction.

Warhol’s Men in Her Life helped the Russian-backed auction house record its highest total, $137 million, as 52 of the 59 lots offered found buyers. Nine artists achieved auction records including Cindy Sherman, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Rudolf Stingel.

The seven-foot-tall Warhol, based on a photo from Life magazine depicting a demure Taylor with third husband Mike Todd and future husband Eddie Fisher, had been estimated to sell for around $40 million, a tag some dealers said before the sale was ambitious. The price soared past the estimate in a battle between two telephone bidders.

“Two people wanted it — as simple as that,” said New York dealer Christophe Van de Weghe. “What a great way to kick off the week.”

Phillips’s sale begins a trio of contemporary art auctions that are a benchmark for the industry’s recovery from last year’s slump. Sotheby’s…

Photo: via Bloomberg News

Link to Bloomberg News here.

By Katya Kazakina and Lindsay Pollock

May 14 (Bloomberg) — A painting of a blue-eyed nurse by Richard Prince and an aluminum couch by Marc Newson were among the artworks sold by Halsey Minor that helped the CNET Networks Inc. founder raise $21.1 million to pay his creditors.

His collection accounted for just 22 of the 74 lots offered at a contemporary art-and-design auction last night held by Phillips de Pury & Co. in New York, yet they took in more than half of the $37.9 million total, and were the highlight of the evening.

“He’s got a good eye,” said John Good, a director at Gagosian gallery in New York. “Between Prince, Newson and Ruscha, these are A pieces.”

Proceeds from the sale of Minor’s artworks will go toward a $21.6 million judgment obtained in October by ML Private Finance, a Bank of America affiliate, on a delinquent loan to Minor.

The Minor collection is too young for provenance to contribute to artworks’ value, said Todd Levin, director of New York-based advisers, Levin Art Group.

“It matters when…

Pablo Picasso "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" 1932, est. upon request. Image: via Bloomberg News

Link to Bloomberg story here.

By Lindsay Pollock

May 3 (Bloomberg) — There are signs of renewed confidence in the art market, to judge from the girth of the latest round of auction catalogs.
The two weeks of spring sales by Christie’s International, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury combine for an estimated tally of as much as $1.2 billion. Sellers opting to cash out include Michael Ovitz, fashion designer Tom Ford and Seattle real-estate developer Richard Hedreen. The auction series starts tomorrow night at Christie’s, which could dominate the season because of two art-stocked estates.

The late best-selling author Michael Crichton has a collection estimated at $74.3 million, while paintings and sculptures owned by the late Los Angeles collector Frances Brody — including a knockout Picasso expected to fetch $90 million — are estimated at as much as $194 million.

Phillips de Pury, the Chelsea-based purveyor of contemporary art and design, has the dubious distinction of selling a portion of CNET Networks Inc. founder Halsey Minor’s collection. Proceeds, projected to tally as much as $29.7 million, will go toward a $21.6…

Former Phillips East 57th Street headquarter during Arnault era

Phillips de Pury & Co. might want to avoid carving their name in stone on the facade of their new midtown offices, slated to open on Park Avenue and 57th Street this fall.

Walking along 57th street this week, I passed their former salesroom, located near Bergdorf’s, where they staged a series of ill-fated sales –the nadir being the 2001 Smooke and Berggruen sales–  after LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault made a short lived foray into the art auction business. That building, which Phillips vacated in 2003, is currently empty, like so much midtown Manhattan commercial real estate. Yet the Phillips name still appears on the building, a ghostly reminder of plans gone wrong.

In 2008, the Russian Mercury Group, yet another luxury firm trying to bring the lessons of retail to the art biz, acquired a majority stake in the house. Mercury have decided to open yet another Phillip’s outpost further East on 57th Street. One wonders if this new attempt will be more successful than the last time around?

Link to Bloomberg News story here.

By Lindsay Pollock
March 26 (Bloomberg) — An unpaid loan and a coveted art collection have stirred up a $17 million donnybrook between two auction houses.

ML Private Finance, an affiliate of Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch, has petitioned a New York federal court to allow the liquidation of a collection of contemporary art and design pieces through auctions in May and June by Christie’s International, which valued the trove at more than $17 million.

The proposed sales would resolve a delinquent loan to CNET Networks Inc. founder Halsey Minor, who borrowed $25 million from ML Private Finance beginning in 2007, with art as collateral. The bank sued Minor and his trust in December 2008 for failure to repay the loan. Last October, ML Private Finance obtained a court judgment for $21.6 million, and this year petitioned the court to allow Christie’s to auction 103 works.

Minor himself had originally contacted Christie’s about handling the sale, but then turned to auction house Phillips de Pury.

“We at Christie’s were not happy about this development,’’…

Phillips de Pury’s London March 19 SEX sale, the house’s newest art auction category, totaled $2.1 million, with just 69% of 217 lots selling.

The top lot was Brit Allen Jones Pop-inspired Soft Tread, a 1966  profile of a woman’s stiletto, leg and tush in an acid green stocking, inspired by a Fredericks of Hollywood mail order catalog, according to Phillips.

The work sold for $542,417, an auction record for the artist, and had been estimated £60,000 to £80,000. Jones’ previous record was $256,488, achieved at Sotheby’s in London in 2007 for Zips, featuring a female cleavage.

Other artists whose work ranked the  in the top ten most expensive lots include Sigmar Polke, Jenny Saville and Glen Luchford and Helmut Newton.

Read Bloomberg News coverage here, from London correspondent Scott Reyburn.

Phillips de Pury will offer 325 lots from the estate of Nina Abrams, widow of art publisher Harry N. Abrams, on April 7 in New York. Mrs. Abrams died in 2008 at the age of 97. Her husband died in 1979.

The sale spans American social realism, 20th century modernism and the Postwar era. Works include a 1940s Raphael Soyer portrait of Nina Abrams, estimated $1,800 to $2,500, and Andy Warhol’s 1962 portrait, Mike and Bob Abrams, of the Abrams’ sons, pegged $200,000 to $300,000.

Some of the works are inscribed “To Harry and Nina,” including Tom Wesselmann’s 1970 oval Nude, estimated $8,000 to $12,000.

Following Harry Abrams’ death, his wife sold and donated artworks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, according to Phillips. Those sale proceeds, plus proceeds from the forthcoming sale, will be donated to various charities.

Harry Abrams founded his art book publishing company in 1949, after 14 years with the Book-of-the-Month-Club.

Since the opening of the wildly popular High Line park last month, Phillips‘ exhibition galleries now face one of the most appealing sections of the park creating an instant art billboard.

Phillips wasted no time commissioning sculptor Nils Folke Anderson who created an installation catering to the estimated 40,000 visitors who traverse the walkway on weekends.

Anderson’s geometric interlocking square frames, “After Before and After,” are on view from August 10 to Sept. 6.