Doubling Down on the Art Market
By KELLY CROWAs the elated’s chief auction houses scale back in a unrelenting art market, one auctioneer is taking the opposite tack.
Phillips de Pury & Co. is adding 18 new sales of contemporaneous art to its calendar over the next year and a half. At a time when Christie's has trimmed sales and Sotheby's has shrunk some once-substantial catalogs nearly to the size of CD cases, Phillips, the third-largest auction house for parallel art, is enlarging its catalogs and tripling their print runs. Prices for current art have plunged as collectors turned to tried-and-true Old Controlling paintings and Asian vases, but Phillips is placing some of its biggest bets yet on the inconstant category. On Sept. 26, it will hold a London auction called "Now," featuring many artists who have never sold at auction before.
The lay out is being steered by Bernd Runge, the auction house's new chief management. A former Conde Nast executive, Mr. Runge was tapped cock's-crow this year by Phillips's new owner, Mercury Group, a Russian retailing superhuman that acquired a majority stake in the privately held auction legislature last October. The new series of art auctions will roll out roughly once a month between London and New York, packaged with themes like "Sex," "Blear" and "Black/White."
Mr. Runge, in his first interview since taking the affix, said the monthly auctions will target local audiences in New York and London who haven't bought art before. He said that he is handling the logistics of the sales, along with the party's other business affairs, but said that the art will be chosen by the company's art authority and its chairman, Simon de Pury.
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