Shortly after veteran auctioneer Stephan Welz recently knocked down the final lot at Strauss & Co's day-long sale of collectable things at Cape Town's Vineyard Hotel, senior art specialist Ruarc Peffers walked over to his colleague, Emma Bedford, and high-fived her. The pair had good reason to be upbeat.The sale on March 16 grossed South Africa' s leading auction house R50-million in sales as 84% of the 653 lots found buyers.A treacly painting of a young Zulu woman wearing a ceremonial crown (isicholo) by Vladimir Tretchikoff fetched the sale's highest price for a canvas work, selling for R3.1-million (including VAT and commission). But the 1956 painting, originally owned by Canadian mining baron Jack Hammell, was not the biggest ticket work.That honour went to Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere, relatively unknown locally, who in 2013 invited emigré South African novelist JM Coetzee to curate her exhibition in the Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. A telephone buyer snagged De Bruyckere's 2006 work, a 4m sculpture of a human-like figure attached to a lamppost, for R3.4-million.Whereas De Bruyckere safely met her pre-sale estimate, Ed Young's super-realist prosthetic sculpture of Desmond Tutu soared past its high estimate, selling for R852,600.Made by CFX Productions, a Cape Town company specialising in props, animatronics and puppetry, the work was originally installed at the Institute for Democracy in Africa's office on Spin Street, Cape Town, until the institute closed in 2013.On seeing the work at its 2010 launch, Tutu laughed, pulled a fist at Welkom-born Young and said, "I'll send you bad dreams", a joke the UCT-trained artist awkwardly repeated to a mink and manure crowd assembled by Strauss for a pre-sale dinner.Other top sellers included two portraits by painter Robert Hodgins. His 1996 study in red of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, of the Dreyfus Affair that scandalised belle epoque France, fetched R2.5-million after two phone bidders chased up the price. A unique monoprint by William Kentridge depicting a head in a grey landscape sold for R1.47-million.The overall good performance of contemporary art on the evening made up for an earlier disappointment. Last year, Strauss began preparing for a dedicated contemporary art auction during Cape Town's busy art and design week at the end of February.The auction was later cancelled after key contemporary art dealers protested, in part because of a fear that their speculative pricing would be tested on the open market."Price pumping," Young described the strategy in an interview.With much riding on a successful showing of the retrofitted auction, both Strauss and contemporary dealers (and their artists) can now breathe a sigh of relief."It is important for young work to make it to auction," Young said about the sale, which he didn't attend. "It ensures liquidity and somehow determines current market prices."..