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"LONDON \u2014 In a packed salesroom filled with attention-deficit challenged Contemporary Art followers, Sotheby\u2019s realized a \u00A321,459,00 ($34,317,233) evening sale.Nine of the 38 lots offered failed to sell for a relatively decent buy-in rate of 19 percent by lot and 24 percent by value. The tally, including the added on buyers\u2019 premium, came close to low end of the \u00A321.6-30.8 ($34.5-49.3) million pre-sale expectations, which do not reflect those commissions. Five works sold for over a million pounds and ten surpassed $1 million.The evening seriously paled to last October\u2019s huge result of \u00A344.1 ($70.7) million, with its trimmer buy-in rate. Then again, this time around, the house didn\u2019t have a Gerhard Richter painting bringing in $34 million. In fact, there were no big-time, blue chip lots \u2014 which isn\u2019t unusual for these mid-season sales, which take place during Frieze Art Fair week.Auctioneer and contemporary art specialist Oliver Barker ran the early lots at a breakneck, machine gun-like pace that evoked the pace of famed television series \u201CBreaking Bad.\u201D Younger artists, relatively new to the big-time salesrooms, performed extremely well, as evidenced by Alex Hubbard\u2019s jumbo-scaled and decidedly abstract \u201CDead in Pompeii\u201D (2011) acrylic, enamel paint, resin and fiberglass on canvas, which sold to a telephone bidder for a record \u00A398,500 ($157,521). (est. \u00A340-60,000). This crushed the previous mark set by the artist at Sotheby\u2019s London in June 2012, when his \u201CNight of the Pavers\u201D made \u00A337,250 ($57,922).Newly minted Conceptual superstar Wade Guyton also had a strong showing, with \u201CUntitled\u201D (2008), an Epson ultrachrome inkjet-on-linen painting, selling to another telephone bidder for \u00A3626,500 ($1,001,899) (est. \u00A3300-400,000). Another young star, Oscar Murillo, also drew serial bids for \u201CChampagne,\u201D a scribbly abstract work in oilstick, spray paint, dirt and collage on canvas, which sold to the telephone for \u00A3212,500 ($339,830) (est. \u00A340-60,000). New York dealer Jose Mugrabi was part of the posse of eight underbidders. Auction floor initiate Lynette Yiadom-Boakye fared well with a tough figurative composition of two women (reminding some of Marlene Dumas) \u201CPolitics\u201D (2005), which sold to another telephone for \u00A352,500 ($83,958) (est. \u00A315-20,000).In its post-sale spin, Sotheby\u2019s pointed out that close to 50 percent of the evening\u2019s participants were under 50 years old, a rather striking statistic if one readily evidenced by glancing around the unusual demographics of its room, more usually dominated by balding or gray-haired men.There were scattered episodes of full-on bidding from determined contenders as Christopher Wool\u2019s dynamic abstraction on paper, \u201CUntitled\u201D (2010), in silkscreen ink-and-enamel on paper sold to Roland Augustine of New York\u2019s Luhring Augustine \u2014 the artist\u2019s longtime primary market dealer \u2014&amp;nbsp;for \u00A3812,500 ($1,299,350) (est. \u00A3200-300,000). Wool\u2019s Guggenheim Museum retrospective opens in New York in less than two weeks, and there\u2019s an obvious surge in demand for his work. Another work by the artist, \u201CRip Rig Panic\u201D (2001), sold to New York dealer Orem Tiroche for \u00A3938,500 ($1,500,849) (est. \u00A3700-900,000).\u201CThe evening sale was good overall,\u201D said Tiroche as he departed from the salesroom. \u201CThere were a few disappointments, but the market is very strong. There wasn\u2019t a big, seminal piece in the sale,\u201D he added.The evening\u2019s cover lot, photo medium pioneer Andreas Gursky\u2019s seminal \u201CParis, Montparnasse\u201D (1993), a large-scale C-print in the artist\u2019s frame, sold to another telephone bidder for \u00A31,482,500 ($2,370,814). It last sold at auction at Phillips de Pury &amp;amp; Company New York in November 2005 for $352,000. Deutsche Telekom, the corporate seller, will use the proceeds to fund further acquisitions for its collection, according to Sotheby\u2019s.Also snagged by Tiroche was Jean-Michel Basquiat\u2019s \u201CRed Joy\u201D (1984), in acrylic, oilstick and Xerox collage on canvas, fully scaled at 86 by 68 inches, when the dealer beat out two telephone bidders for \u00A31,426,500 ($2,281,259) (est. \u00A31.5-2.5 million). The work last sold at Artcurial | Briest-Le Fur-Poulain-F. Tajan in Paris in December 2005 for \u20AC799,873 ($1,093,906). Again, it was nothing to write home about, as those rarer types of first-rate pictures are bound for the mega-contemporary sales in New York next month.A London favorite, Glenn Brown\u2019s mega-scaled \u201COrnamental Despair (Painting for Ian Curtis)\u201D from 1994, resembling an outtake from Star Trek, sold after a marathon battle on the telephone for the top lot price of \u00A33,554,500 ($5,684,356) (est. \u00A32-3 million). It last sold at Christie\u2019s London in February 2002 for \u00A3332,900, an appreciation of some 100-fold in a tad over a decade.Overall, the evening had a kind of glazed effect, including the largely distracted salesroom, which continued to chat loudly even as the auctioneer was in the process of taking bids. \u201CI think there\u2019s so much going on,\u201D said Philip Hoffman of London\u2019s Fine Art Fund, referring to the dual Frieze fairs in Regent\u2019s Park and PAD in Berkeley Square. \u201CIt\u2019s so difficult to focus on this week and the money is dissipated. New York will be the place where the big money hits.\u201DEarlier in the evening, Sotheby\u2019s staged its 20th Century Italian Art auction, which realized \u00A315,079,500 ($24,115,136), as 39 of the 46 lots offered sold for buy-in rate of 15 percent by lot, and 12 percent by value. The top and cover lot was Lucio Fontana\u2019s punctured canvas, \u201CConcetto Spaziale\u201D (1960), which sold for \u00A31,594,500 ($2,549,924) (est. \u00A31-1.4 million). The work last sold at Sotheby\u2019s London in June 1990 for \u00A3352,000.If that wasn\u2019t enough auction activity for one day, Christie\u2019s also staged \u201CThinking Big,\u201D a single-owner collection of large-scale sculpture and installations from Charles Saatchi to benefit the Saatchi gallery\u2019s Foundation. It was difficult to judge the success of the sale since it sold without estimates or reserves \u2014 meaning there were no minimums required for a lot to sell. Overall, however, the enormous brood made \u00A33.1 million ($5 million) and set 23 artist records \u2014&amp;nbsp;including Tracey Emin\u2019s, with the sale of the infamous \u201CTo Meet My Past,\u201D of the artist\u2019s poster bed with accessories, which sold to a gentleman seated in the front room of the salesroom for \u00A3481,875 ($770,518). He declined to give his name as he rushed out of the salesroom.The Contemporary evening auctions resume for their finale at Christie\u2019s on Friday.To see images of works, click on the slideshow."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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