Basquiat & Ruscha Lead Phillips’ $41.8M Evening Sale Amid Market Cooldown and Fewer Top-Tier Consignments
Image © Phillips / Alvarado to Doheny © Ed Ruscha 1998
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Phillips followed second in the May New York sales lineup with its Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, bringing in $41.8 million at the hammer - a 41% drop from both last year’s hammer total and the average presale estimates. The result reflects not only continued signs of softness at the high end of the market but, more tellingly, the ongoing difficulty in consigning top-tier works.
Phillips' sale saw a sharp decline this year, though it’s important to note this comes off the back of a strong 2024, which posted a 28% increase over 2023. The key factor behind this year’s drop was the absence of any eight-figure lots - a point that aligns with the broader market trend: while seven-figure works remain active, it’s the true top-tier, eight-figure material that’s becoming increasingly scarce.
In 2024, the sale was anchored by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR) (1982), which achieved $46.4 million and heavily buoyed the overall total. This year, Phillips lacked a comparable anchor. Additionally, the sale was impacted by nine withdrawn or unsold lots, with just 30 works sold overall.
Phillips Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale © MyArtBroker 2025While over 50% of sold works came in under $1 million, reflecting a healthy appetite for lower-tiered works by evening sale standards - especially by newer entrants to the market - the highest value pieces still drove the overall performance. Thirteen lots (43%) sold above $1 million, with four exceeding the $3 million mark, but only a single work by Basquiat and Ed Ruscha met expectations whereas the others, Mann mit zwei Kindern (1966) by Gerhard Richter and an Untitled (1988) stacked sculpture by Donald Judd underperformed.
Image © Phillips / Untitled © Jean-Michel Basquiat 1984Basquiat Tops Phillips Sale with $6.6M Canvas from David Bowie Collection as Ed Ruscha’s Alvarado to Doheny Hits $4.9M
The highest-valued by presale estimates - and the catalogue cover - was Ruscha’s Alvarado to Doheny (1998), a sharply composed mountain scene overlaid with a vertical cascade of Los Angeles street names. The work metaphorically merges natural and urban geographies, with its cool blue palette and rotated typography onto monumental terrain. Making its public auction debut, it achieved $4 million at the hammer ($4.9 million with fees).
The standout headline, however, was Basquiat’s Untitled (1984), a canvas prominently featuring his iconic crown motif. The image - depicting a black figure aligned alongside four stylised crocodile heads - was drawn from the David Bowie collection, lending the work added celebrity provenance. Though smaller in scale than some of Basquiat’s blockbuster canvases, it exceeded expectations, selling for $5.4 million at the hammer ($6.6 million with fees).
Basquiat also performed strongly with Untitled (1985–86), a densely collaged work on paper filled with abstract and figurative motifs. It achieved $2.9 million with fees, well above its $2 million estimate - a testament to the growing appeal of original works on paper in the current market. Together, these results - Basquiat and Ruscha - were central to Phillips’ overall performance.
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Image © Phillips / The Twenty-Sixth V.N. Painting © David Hockney 1992David Hockney’s Fondation Louis Vuitton Painting Sells for $3.2M as Blue Chip Artists Deliver Mixed Results at Phillips
In a performance mirroring Christie’s sales, several blue chip works at Phillips delivered the highest prices by value, but showed mixed results when judged against their presale estimates. Many landed just at or slightly below expectations at the hammer, only exceeding estimates once buyer’s fees were factored in.
Richard Prince’s Killer Nurse (2010) - from his trending Nurse Paintings series - fell short of expectations with a $2.6 million hammer ($3.2 million with fees). David Hockney’s The Twenty-Sixth V.N. Painting (1992), from his Very New Paintings series, also underperformed at the hammer with $2.2 million and only pushing past estimate once fees brought the total to $2.7 million. A modest result for a work tied to his current exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton exhibition, David Hockney 25.
Meanwhile, the appetite for lower-priced works by emerging artists remains strong. Records were set in this sale for names including Ilana Savdie, Grace Hartigan, Olga de Amaral and Kiki Kogelnik confirming that Phillips continues to be a platform for rising market entrants with growing collector bases.
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Selective Bidding and Scarce Top-Tier Works Define the May Auction Landscape
Despite these high-value underperformances, the issue is not necessarily lack of demand, but lack of top-tier buyers. In today’s market, collectors are selective. If a seller doesn’t need to part with a Hockney original, they won’t. And if the work on offer isn’t the right fit, buyers hesitate. It’s less a question of pricing, and more a matter of precision and timing.
