Sotheby's Contemporary Art Auction Sells Record-Breaking Warhol
- Author: Min-Q Kim
- Posted on: Monday May 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM
- Filed under: art, sotheby's, jackson polloc, mark rothko, andreas gursky, jean-michel basquiat, andy warhol, contemporary art auction, exclusive
Auctioneer Tobias Meyer, head of Sotheby’s contemporary art department, flanked by $60 million worth of art.
The buzz on the streets these days is the art world is rebounding from its recessive slump. Nothing has exhibited this more than recent auctions. A few weeks ago, a Picasso sold for (gulp) $106 million dollars at Christie's Fine art auction. (Our heads spin over all the things a person could do with that money.....buy a couple yachts, feed a third-world nation for a few decades...etc..) Indeed, the trend continued at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction on Wednesday night, May 12th, where we got a first-hand glimpse this elite sport. The room was electric at times, and when works did particularly well, the gallery broke into applause.
"Nineteen, twenty, twenty one..." In mere seconds, the pricetag for Mark Rothko's Untitled from 1961 increased by million dollar increments. (Yup, millions. Anyone have sweaty palms yet?) Eventually, the bidding stopped a a jaw-dropping $28 million. Add in the buyer’s commission to Sotheby’s (25 percent of the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million, and 12 percent of the rest), and the final pricetag was a staggering $31,442,500. It is especially incredible when you glimpse at the peice below. For non-artlovers, that's a $31 mill canvas of orange boxes. For art lovers, however, it's essentially priceless.
Mark Rothko, Untitled
signed and dated 1961 on the reverse
oil on canvas
93 1/8 x 80 1/8 in. 236.5 x 203.5 cm.
Another stand-out at Sotheby's was Andy Warhol's Self Portrait from 1986, the year before Warhol's death. Six different bidders drove the price to twice the listed price of $10,000,000 - $15,000,000. The final total? $32.6 million to Sotheby's Paris, who was bidding via telephone on behalf of an anonymous client. It was previously owned by famed fashion designer Tom Ford, and the $32.6M is the MOST EVER spent on a Warhol self-portrait.
Andy Warhol, drenched in purple, was the crown jewel of Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Sale.
Auctioneer and MC Tobias Meyer, head of Sotheby’s contemporary art department, stood with two digital screens projecting the work for sale, along with the current bid price in USD ($), as well as conversions in EUR (€), UK (£), SWI (F), JPN (¥), and HK (D). “Buying was totally global,” Meyer said after the sale. “There were many new collectors who came into the market tonight.”
The final take for the Contemporary Art Evening Auction was $190 million, well over the $168 million high estimate. (See Sotheby's website for details.) The output of the auction seemed to indicate investors have more faith in canvases than stocks these days (and perhaps rightly so).
If anything, we know Tom Ford went home happy.
Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled (Stardust) evokes the iconinc image of Charlie Parker and his saxophone. At $7.25M, this painting nearly tripled its $2.5M high estimate.
This painting was featured in a 1949 Life Magazine article "Jackson Pollock: is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" It sold Wednesday night for $8.67M.
All photos courtesy Sotheby's.
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