The Elephant in the Room
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Last night the Pope beat out a baby elephant at Phillips, de Pury & Co., setting the second world record of the week for a work by Maurizio Cattelan sold at auction. The 1999 “La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour),” an installation depicting a meteorite crashing down on the Pope, which sold for $886,000 at Christie’s in 2001, sold for $3 million. The artist’s first record of the week was set just the night before at Christie’s, when a baby elephant made from resin and covered with a sheet spurred bidders to shoot past the $700,000-$900,000 estimate to $2.7 million.
Phillips’s Contemporary Art sale reached $25.6 million, well within it’s $20.9-29.3 million presale estimate, set six records, and sold 90% of the works on offer. It was a sale that focused on art from the last two decades – a much narrower field than was seen at the Sotheby’s and Christie’s contemporary art sales. The niche served them well. Two sculptures by Jeff Koons went for more than $2 million apiece. And strong results were pulled in for artists Tom Friedman, Martin Kippenberger, Ugo Rondinone, and Rosemarie Trockel – hardly household names. The Phillips sale was for the die-hard contemporary collector.
Top lot was Francis Bacon’s “Oedipus” (est. $4-6 million), which sold to Madison Avenue diamond retailer Laurence Graff. Mr. Graff snagged the 1979 orange and purple canvas for $3.6 million. He paid $5.4 million for a late Picasso at Sotheby’s last week. This is a man who likes bold colored canvases as well as diamonds. After the sale Graff went outside for a smoke and chatted with dealer Tony Shafrazi, who had exhibited the very same Bacon at his gallery in 1998.
Other big bidders included dealer Larry Gagosian, who bought Andy Warhol’s 1986 “Self-Portrait” for $3.1 million, between the $2.8-3.5 million estimate. Dealers from Acquavella Galleries and C & M Arts were both after a 1998 Jeff Koons “Wild Boy and Puppy,” but the price got too rich. It sold for $1.5 million to another determined bidder in the room.
One of the few pictures that failed to ignite any bidding was a large late canvas by Willem De Kooning. The swooping 1986 “Untitled XVIII,” made when De Kooning was well into his 80s, was estimated at $1.5-2 million. There was not a single bid for the work. It was a momentary reality check, before the sale rolled on.