Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- A Jeff Koons sculpture that was expected to fetch at least 1.8 million pounds ($2.6 million) in London didn’t get a single bid, as buyers shunned the star lot and chose items with estimates of 200,000 pounds or less.

Koons’s 6-foot, 8-inch-high glass-vitrine sculpture, filled with basketballs and soccer balls, was the only lot at last night’s Phillips de Pury & Co. sale tipped to fetch more than 1 million pounds. It was last sold in New York in 2004 for $434,000.

“Now buyers set the price,” said Michael McGinnis, Phillips’s director of contemporary art, in an interview after the sale. “That reality needs to sink in with sellers.”

Estimates don’t include auction fees.

Phillips’s results confirm that the contemporary-art market is still smarting from the demand slump that caused prices to drop by as much as half in the last six months. That’s as the credit crisis, which unfolded in the fourth quarter, slashed wealth.

Of the 53 items offered, 66 percent found buyers, netting a combined 4.2 million pounds, compared with last year’s 21.9 million pounds. Nine of the 10 top lots had estimates of 200,000 pounds or less. Nothing sold for more than 500,000 pounds.

Collectors are still “bargain shopping” for contemporary- art at the moment, said McGinnis.

At Christie’s International’s auction the previous evening, paintings by Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko estimated to fetch up to a combined 8.5 million pounds didn’t get any bids.

“Things are better at a lower price level,” said London- based dealer Ben Brown. “There is a market out there, but it’s at prices lower than everyone would wish.”

‘Congress of Elders’

At least three phone bidders fought for Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui’s “Congress of Elders,” a 2006 sumptuously colored 8- foot 6-inch high metal bottle-top hanging estimated at 180,000 pounds to 220,000 pounds; it sold for 192,000 pounds, with fees.

That was the second time an El Anatsui hanging has been auctioned. During the week of London’s Frieze Art Fair in October, Sotheby’s sold a like-sized, horizontal-format hanging for 349,250 pounds.

A 2006, 11-foot-wide painting by the Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi of Huang Jiguang, a Korean War hero, sold for 360,000 pounds; a 1980 set of four Richard Prince black-and-white popular magazine photos of women in hats, “Untitled (Four Women with Hats),” from an edition of 10, took 324,000 pounds. Both had presale low estimates of 200,000 pounds.

The priciest item was the 1994 Martin Kippenberger canvas, “Portrait of Paul Schreber (designed by himself).” This 8-foot high oil, lacquer and silicone portrait-cum-mind map of a German judge who suffered a nervous breakdown sold for 432,000 pounds to a sole phone bidder, against a low estimate of 400,000 pounds.

Reserves on many items had been lowered for this auction, said McGinnis. Still, he said the results of this sale “will make us tougher with estimates next season.”

Phillips charges a premium of 25 percent on the hammer price up to and including 25,000 pounds, 20 percent up to and including 500,000 pounds and 12 percent for more than 500,000 pounds.

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com.

Last Updated: February 13, 2009 02:56 EST