Gently does it at Phillips evening sale

It was a mixed bag for Phillips’ contemporary evening sale last night (8 May). On the face of it, the results were solid—the auction hammer total of $39.3m fell just shy of the lower estimate of $40.1m (with premium that total rises to $46.6m), and the sale achieved a 92% sell-through rate. Of the 37 lots on the block, only three failed to sell. But more than half of them, 20 to be precise, were guaranteed either by the house or by a third party.
 
Apart from a few lots, there