Ai Weiwei record leads USD28.6m sale at Phillips in London

Ai Weiwei’s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” depicts the signs of the ancient Chinese zodiac

A group of 12 large bronze animal heads by China’s dissident artist Ai Weiwei led Phillips’ 18.2 million pound (USD28.6 million) contemporary art evening auction in London.
“Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads,” which depicts the signs of the ancient Chinese zodiac, fetched 3.4 million pounds on Monday, within its presale estimate of 3 million pounds to 5 million pounds. It was the sale’s top lot and set an auction record for the artist.
The auction took place as global equities slumped amid concerns over fallout from Greece’s financial crisis. It was the first of three contemporary evening auctions in London this week, which are jointly expected to tally as much as 392 million pounds.
The 50-lot sale’s tally exceeded the low estimate of 17.2 million pounds and was an 84 percent increase from Phillips’ auction a year ago, when 23 lots totaled 9.9 million pounds. The eight unsold lots included works by blue-chip artists Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud and George Condo.
Ai’s animal heads are displayed on individual stands, with the largest piece, a rooster, at 12.5-feet-tall. The 2010 work, which is the first in an edition of six, has been exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2010, New York’s Pulitzer Fountain near Central Park in 2011 and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington in 2012.
Ai’s previous auction record of 2.9 million pounds was set in February, also at Phillips, for a smaller, gold-plated version of the 12 zodiac animals.
Many works sold to absentee bidders or attracted just one or two bids from dealers and Phillips staffers on the phones.
To promote the piece, Phillips displayed it at a dinner for clients during the Art Basel fair at Les Trois Rois hotel in Switzerland. Katya Kazakina, Bloomberg