In June 2010, after he’d secretly married his longtime associate Michaela Neumeister in London, Simon de Pury, the chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company auction house, wanted to mark the occasion with friends. But being de Pury, an auctioneer who’s equal parts showman, performer, and connoisseur, he felt that the celebration called for something that might guarantee their 600 guests—the jaded jetset of the art world—a priceless experience.
A hip-hop aficionado who moonlights as a DJ, the 60-year-old de Pury knows how to get a party started: He commissioned food artist Jennifer Rubell, daughter of Miami megacollectors Don and Mera Rubell, to stage an installation at London’s Saatchi Gallery. When the guests arrived, de Pury and Neumeister were on display in separate glass-fronted cubicles, getting ready for the evening. De Pury shaved and had his hair cut before shattering his doorway—with a hammer, of course—and then retrieved his bride by breaking hers. Soon everyone was invited to toast them, toss their champagne glasses off a balcony, and eat from the his and hers spreads arrayed alongside each of their dressing rooms. Sausages hung from the ceiling over a plinth stocked with beer near de Pury’s; 2,000 oysters and bottles of champagne were laid out next to Neumeister’s. The de Pury Diptych was rife with none too subtle symbolism.
Downstairs, the assigned dinner tables were actually 69 unmade beds— a nod to Tracey Emin’s signature work—heaped with silver platters of crayfish, whole hams, roasted chickens, and piles of quiches. “People were hopping from bed to bed,” said de Pury, recalling how his friends—among them, Emin, photographer Mario Testino, and Charles Saatchi—had to tear into the feast with only their hands and knives. “People didn’t know what to do until they realized they had to participate.” Dessert arrived on yet another floor, below, in the form of 100 wedding cakes made by 100 different London bakeries, presented on individual stands, “so the room looked like a Wayne Thiebaud painting,” he said. “And then I DJ’d a bit for people to dance. It was really an art performance.”
To the Swiss-born de Pury, all the art world’s a stage. “He’s the Jeffrey Deitch of the auction world, always seeking the most theatrical, the most spectacular performance or artwork, irrespective of its quality,” said collector Adam Lindemann, author of the 2006 book Collecting Contemporary, who met his wife, the dealer Amalia Dayan, while she was working at Phillips. “Simon needs a happening; he’s addicted to the adrenaline. He’s got a tremendous career, but he’s also obsessed with the newest thing. Most times after a long tenure in the art world, you become jaded. But Simon is willing to do anything. He’s a man on a mission.”
