Phillips Falls Short Despite David Hockney

A signature painting by David Hockney of waves crashing along the rugged Pacific coast was a highlight of Phillips’ London sales last week.

The first major auction to feature a significant work by the artist since his death, The Only One with Waves (1991) sold above its high estimate, fetching $3.19m including fees on the evening of June 26.

Despite Hockney and other notable lots, Phillips’ afternoon and evening sales disappointed, earning a D on the HENI Auction Index—their third straight decline.

The two sales totaled $15.7m, about 62% below the average for comparable sales, while the 96 lots offered were down 44%.

The HENI Auction Index benchmarks performance using more than 10 metrics, including the percentages of works that sell above their high estimates or below their low estimates. At Phillips, both figures were 9 percentage points below the norm.

The average hammer-to-mid-estimate ratio of 1.1 was also below the average for comparable sales.

Two works were backed by guarantees, most notably Yayoi Kusama’s INFINITY-NETS (MAE) (2013), which sold for $2.04m including fees, nearly double its $1.07m low estimate. The percentage of works backed by a strong guarantee was in line with the norm.

Sixteen works went unsold, including a star lot: Bridget Riley’s Measure for Measure 40 (2019), which carried a low estimate of nearly $700,000. The buy-in rate was 1 percentage point above the norm.

Meanwhile, six works were withdrawn from the evening sale, nearly 3 percentage points above the average.

Among the bright spots, besides the Hockney seascape, was Andrew Cranston's, Meditation in a Tenement (2023). It sold for $110,500 including fees, 36% above his previous auction record.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here.