Phillips London Sale Led by David Hockney as Kusama and Husain Draw Strong Bids
A sweltering Friday in London brought a measured but telling result at Phillips London’s modern and contemporary art sale: David Hockney’s The Only One with Waves (1991) topped the evening at £2.4 million ($3.2 million), edging past its low estimate and setting the tone for a sale that showed resilience across several collecting categories.
The four-foot-wide canvas, painted in Malibu, California, depicts breaking waves in Hockney’s flattened pictorial space. It was the first major work by the British artist to come to auction since his death at his London home on June 11, a month before he would have turned 89. The result placed Hockney at the center of a sale that, while not explosive, still delivered a broad spread of demand.
Phillips had estimated the auction at £9.34 million to £13.4 million ($12.4 million to $17.7 million). The hammer total came in at £9.3 million ($12.3 million), just below the low estimate, while the total including fees reached £12 million ($15.8 million). Of the 90 lots offered, 76 sold, for an 84 percent sell-through rate.
The only other work to cross the £1 million mark was Yayoi Kusama’s 2013 acrylic painting INFINITY-NETS (MAE), which sold for £1.5 million ($2 million) after exceeding its £1.2 million high estimate. Kusama also placed two works in the night’s top 10, alongside artists including Jean Dubuffet, Donald Judd, Hsiao Chin, and Jadé Fadojutimi.
The sale also produced a record for Andrew Cranston, whose painting and collage on canvas Meditation in a Tenement (2023) hammered at £65,000 ($85,980), just above its low estimate. Another notable result came from Maqbool Fida Husain’s untitled oil painting from the 1970s, a bright red composition centered on a stylized female figure, which sold for £412,800 ($545,864), nearly triple its low estimate of £150,000.
Olivia Thornton, deputy chairwoman for modern and contemporary art, Europe, said in press materials that the sale demonstrated “the depth and breadth of demand across modern, post-war and contemporary art.” She added that the response to Hockney and Kusama, along with “exceptional momentum” in the South Asian category, reflected a global collecting audience still willing to compete for quality and historical significance.
For Phillips, the evening suggested a market that remains selective, but far from narrow: one in which blue-chip names, record-setting newcomers, and South Asian modernism can still meet in the same room.
