Phillips earned $840.7 million at auctions in the past year, according to the auction house ARTnews—a figure that marks a 15 percent decrease from the previous year’s total of just over $1 billion.
The Russian company is the smallest of the big three houses, with headquarters in New York, London and Hong Kong. In 2023, it spent its resources reconfiguring its main locations, announcing that it had added specialists in Asia in December. In July, Phillips consolidated its Los Angeles operations after eliminating two regional positions on the West Coast.
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In 2023, the top five works sold by Phillips, by artists such as Gerhard Richter and Fernand Léger, grossed a cumulative $87.6 million. That’s a 50 percent drop from the $173 million generated by the top five works in the house in 2022, when just two pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Yves Klein brought in $126 million.
A Phillips representative declined to provide additional comment on its 2023 results. The house also did not provide figures for its private sales totals.
In previous years, Phillips has announced figures for its private sales. In 2022, the house’s total private sales surpassed that of 2022, with an estimated $250 million brought in as the house focused on selling modern art exhibitions. That was 20 percent more than the $208.2 million the boutique house raised through private sales in 2021.
One of Phillips’ main competitors, Christie’s, also saw lower sales totals in 2023 than in 2022. Christie’s reported a 30 percent decline in auction sales in mid-December, from $7.2 billion in 2022 to just under more than $5 billion by 2023. Sotheby’s, another Phillips competitor, has not yet announced its sales figures for 2023.
According to a recent report by ArtTactic, a London-based data firm, auction sales in 2023 are down $2.3 billion from 2022 figures.
