Phillips’s evening sale of modern and contemporary art in New York on May 13 achieved a total hammer price of $44.2 million ($52 million with fees), falling just below the low pre-sale estimate of $45.3 million. Four works were withdrawn before the sale, and five lots failed to sell. Despite the subdued overall results, the auction set new auction records for four women artists: Kiki Kogelnik, Ilana Savdie, James Turrell (Light and Space artist), and Grace Hartigan. Other strong performers included works by Yu Nishimura, Olga de Amaral, Barbara Hepworth, and Danielle McKinney. The top lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s *Untitled* (1984), formerly owned by David Bowie.
The sale matters because it reflects a continuing cooling of the high-end art market, with total proceeds dropping sharply from the equivalent sale a year ago ($72.3 million hammer). Yet the strong performance of works by female artists—many of whom are underrepresented in auction history—signals a growing collector appetite for historically overlooked women artists. The results also underscore the uneven nature of the current market, where blue-chip names like George Condo, Frank Stella, and Jeff Koons failed to sell, while emerging and mid-career women artists exceeded expectations.