STEPHANI E

Great art is when you just walk round a corner and go: F hell! Whats
that?
Damien Hirst, artist
Art tells you things you dont know you need to know until you know them.
Peter Schjeldahl, art critic
N
EW YORK. On Monday, November 8, 2010, at 6:43 pm, at the brand
new auction headquarters of Phillips de Pury at 450 Park Avenue, auc-
tioneer Simon de Pury hammered down lot 12. This was a lifelike, nude
waxwork of former actress and supermodel Stephanie Seymour. Designed to
be mounted on the wall like a deers head, it is titled Stephanie but known in
the art world as Trophy Wife. The sculpture turns the representation of Sey-
mour into a literal trophy, her nude upper body arching from the wall, breasts
covered not very discreetly with her hands (illustrated in center section).
The sculpture, one of four identical versions conceived by Italian artist
Maurizio Cattelan, was expected to bring between $1.5 and $2.5 million.
De Pury predicted it might go as high as $4 million. After nine bids from six
bidderstwo of those bidding on the telephoneit sold in 40 seconds for
$2.4 million, including buyers premium (the additional amount charged by
the auction house, above the hammer price). The successful bidder was New
York ber collector and private dealer Jose Mugrabi.
T
he very highest levels of the contemporary art world are brand- and
event-driven. But over the history of marketing contemporary art, the
fall 2010 Phillips auction stands out for its mix of brand, event, celebrity,
back story, and astonishing prices. The presentation of Stephanie, and the
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2 THE SUPERMODEL AND THE BRI LLO BOX
logic behind the auction of which it was a part, is a wonderful example of
marketing high-end contemporary art.
Phillips de Pury is a medium-size art auctioneer operating primarily in
New York and London. In celebrity quotient and prestige, Phillips runs a
distant third to Christies and Sothebys, with about a tenth the annual dol-
lar turnover of either. Those two auction houses sell almost 90 percent of all
contemporary art over $2 million. Phillips wanted a greater share of this high
value, much more protable segment. The cost of gaining the consignment
and promoting a $2 million work may be twice that of a $200,000 work,
but the prot after expenses is ve to ten times as large. Those consigning
at an exalted price level generally prefer to do business with Christies and
Sothebys, the assumption being that these houses will produce higher bids.
After a mediocre 2010 New York spring sale in which only one work
sold at over $1 million, Phillipss strategic problem was how to create buzz
for their fall contemporary art auction. Their expensively renovated new
auction room on Park Avenue provided the setting.
Simon de Pury, as chairman and also chief auctioneer of Phillips, cre-
ated what he called a Carte Blanche auction. He asked Philippe Sgalot to
act as guest curator, just as a museum might invite an outsider to curate
an exhibition. Sgalot was at one time the international head of contempo-
rary art at Christies, where he pioneered theme partiesone called Bubble
Bash, another Think Pinkto attract younger buyers to the auction house.
Later he became co-owner of the art advisory Giraud Pissarro Sgalot. S-
galots major client is Franois Pinault, the French billionaire who controls
the luxury brands Gucci, Balenciaga, and Stella McCartneyand also owns
Christies auction house. Pinault has a $2 billion collection of art by Jeff
Koons, Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Serra, and older works
by Picasso, Braque, and Mondrian.
Sgalot was given freedom to choose the art for the Phillips auction and
stage the sale of his dreams, with no interference from de Pury; he described
it as a self-portrait of my own taste. He assembled 33 works, with a to-
tal value estimated between $80 and $110 million (all gures US dollars).
None of the 33 came from Phillipss regular auction consignors. Three came
directly from artists and some from Sgalots own collection. A few were
owned by his private clients, as reported in The Economist: two from Pinault,
one of which was Stephanie. The idea that the owner of Christies would
consign work to another auction house raised eyebrows.
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STEPHANI E 3
A half dozen of the works were chosen for their newsworthiness. This
usually means a branded artist or controversial subject. With Stephanie, it
meant both. Stephanie was not the most expensive work, but it was the one
featured in advertisements and on the cover of the auction catalog.
Phillips was founded in London by Harry Phillips in 1796. Bernard
Arnault and his luxury goods rm LVMH acquired the rm in 1999 for a
reported $120 million. A year later Arnault brought in art dealers Simon de
Pury and Daniella Luxembourg to run the company and to challenge the
dominant pairing of Christies and Sothebys. LVMHs strategy oundered
among overly generous guarantees (that a targeted auction price would be
achieved) given to consignors to attract auction lots. Arnault sold control to
de Pury and Luxembourg in two tranches in 2002 and 2004. Luxembourg
sold her share to de Pury in 2004. In 2008 de Pury sold a controlling share
to Russian luxury goods group Mercury for $80 million, half of which re-
portedly went to paying down Phillipss bank overdraft. Two weeks after the
Mercury purchase, the auction house bottomed-out, with a contemporary
evening sale in London in which just 25 percent of the lots sold.
Simon de Pury generated more media attention than the auction house.
For months before the auction he was familiar to television viewers as men-
tor and critic to aspiring artists in Bravos World of Art, a choose Americas
next great artist TV reality show in which one artist was bounced each
week until a winner (Abdi Farah) remained.
Under de Pury, Phillips contracted from a full-service auction house to
a boutique, selling only contemporary art, design, jewelry, and photography.
Sales went from $75 million to over $300 million in four years, reecting
the boom in contemporary art. Then came the 2008 crash. In 2009 Phil-
lipss sales declined to $85 million, and the company bled red ink. Its reli-
ance on contemporary art with its more volatile swings in sales volumes and
price levels had left Phillips highly exposed.
However, with Carte Blanche and with Sgalot curating the sale, de
Pury produced the most interesting innovation in art auctioneering in a de-
cade. His rst move was to time the sale to open the contemporary auction
week, preceding the Christies and Sothebys sales.
Carte Blanche was an opportunity but also a huge risk. The $80 million
minimum estimate for the 33 works represented almost as much as Phillips
had sold in total in the rst six months of 2010. To attract the works to Phil-
lips rather than see them go to Christies or Sothebys, Sgalot and de Pury
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