Artsy Vanguard 2023–24 artist Li Hei Di’s Unfolding a flood (2022) sold for $127,000 at Phillips’s modern and contemporary art auction in New York yesterday, setting a new record at auction for the Chinese artist. The vibrant landscape painting kicked off the Phillips evening sale, which realized $54.1 million. That total was short of its anticipated $60 million low estimate and 23 percent below last year’s November sale that realized $70 million. (All prices include fees.) With 30 lots presented, the auction boasted an 83.3% sell-through rate by lot and 74% by value.
Unfolding a flood was acquired by the seller from the Public Gallery and marked Li Hei Di’s evening sale debut. In September, Pace Gallery announced its co-representation of the 27-year-old artist with Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, making them the youngest artist in the mega-gallery’s roster. The artist’s previous auction record, CNY 667,000 ($92,341), was set this past weekend at Cuppar Auction House in Beijing.
The top-performing lot of the Phillips sale was Jackson Pollock’s Untitled (ca. 1948), fetching $15.33 million. The work is part of the artist’s coveted white-on-black “drip” paintings. This was the first time the work had been on public view since its inclusion in the 1998–99 Pollock retrospective, which traveled to the Museum of Modern Art and Tate Britain. The piece last appeared at auction in 1987, when it sold for $1.2 million at Sotheby’s.
Another high-profile lot, a double self-portrait by Jean-Michel Basquiat from 1983, previously owned by Johnny Depp, was expected to fetch between $10 million to $15 million, however, it was not sold.
The auction also saw several other blue-chip artists’ works sell for below their low estimates, including lots by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and Alighiero Boetti. For instance, Koons’s Two Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series) (1985) sold for $3.56, below its $4 million low estimate, while Warhol’s Self Portrait (1981) sold for $3.44 million, under its $4 million estimate. These were the third and fourth most expensive lots of the sale, respectively.
Despite these results, the auction achieved significant sales for several artists alongside Li. Jean-Paul Engelen and Robert Manley, Phillips’s worldwide co-heads of modern and contemporary art, emphasized “great demand for classic contemporary works.” American artist Derek Fordjour’s Twelve Tribes (2021) sold for $1.14 million, achieving double its estimate. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Peyton’s Kurt (sunglasses) (1995), a portrait of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, sold for $2.35 million, smashing its high estimate of $800,000.
