Phillips de Pury isn’t your ordinary auction house: it looks far beyond dueling paddles and the highest bidder to offer the audience an experience that is both informative and interactive. The avant-garde establishment began wowing us at last Tuesday’s opening reception where a chic assortment of art-savvy guests gathered to sip cocktails and ponder the collection. However, the attendees were a bit more eclectic than usual. Why? Probably because Phillips’ Milk Studios space was filled with a provocative selection of toy and urban art.
Skateboarders and Park Avenue collectors alike crowded around Takashi Murakami lithographs, KAWS skateboards and Shepard Fairey’s OBEY prints. Tim Biskup’s Super-Giant Helper, a 90-inch-high, one-eyed “toy” painted with multicolored teardrops, a gun and a knife, had everyone staring. Tom Sachs’ bronze and acrylic Hello Kitty doll attracted much attention and Keith Haring’s beat-up skateboard was unanimously voted to be one of the strongest pieces in the show.
As part of their renowned “Tastemaker” series, Phillips employed such progressive connoisseurs as Cynthia Rowley and husband, Bill Powers, to point out their favorite pieces. Bursting with creativity, Rowley and Powers who, in addition to their respective careers as a fashion designer and the Editor-At-Large of Purple Magazine, co-own Half Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, highlighted the aforementioned Hello Kitty, a handwritten Richard Prince piece and a unique Andy Warhol doodle as their preferred works.
Powers took his Tastemaker role a step further when he led the Wednesday evening panel discussion, during which Kid Robot’s Paul Budnitz, artist Christopher Brooks and Ken Miller, editor of Rizzoli’s soon-to-be released book, SHOOT, enlightened a packed house about urban and toy art.
Most interesting, however, was that the niche contemporary works were juxtaposed against the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, an image of a fashion-fueled Erwin Wurm sculpture and an eerie Man Ray photograph. The collection touched on the art, design and tastes of the past, present, and dare I say, future, proving that Phillips de Pury is an authority on style and a Tastemaker in and of itself.
