By Chris Michaud
NEW YORK, May 14 (Reuters) – Works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard
Richter and Jeff Koons each sold for more than $25 million on
Wednesday, helping drive Sotheby’s $364 million sale of
contemporary art, which the auction house said was among its
highest totals ever.
Capping two weeks of key spring auctions at Sotheby’s and
Christie’s that saw mixed results overall, the sale was a far
cry from the buying frenzy that gripped rival Christie’s on
Tuesday, which set a record for the biggest art auction in
history with a total of $745 million.
“Tonight the market continued in a very solid way,” said
Alex Rotter, Sotheby’s worldwide head of contemporary art. “We
came in perfectly within our estimates.”
The auction house had estimated the sale would take in
anywhere from $337 million to $474 million.
Rotter added, “The global market in particular was very
strong,” noting that people from 37 countries worldwide placed
bids during the sale. Participation from Asia and Latin America
was especially significant, Sotheby’s said.
The top-priced work was Warhol’s “Six Self-Portraits,”
executed shortly before the artist’s death and never before
offered at auction. The set sold for $30.1 million, including
commission, well within the pre-sale estimate range of $25
million to $35 million.
Carrying the same estimate, Richter’s “Blau” fetched $28.7
million, while Koons’ sculpture, “Popeye,” sold for $28.2
million against an estimate of about $25 million. The “Popeye”
buyer was casino magnate and art collector Steve Wynn, who
announced that the sculpture would go on public display at one
of his Las Vegas properties.
Other highlights included Jean-Michel Basquiat’s
“Undiscovered …” which fetched $23.7 million, and an untitled
work by Mark Rothko that sold for $12.2 million against an
estimate of $8 million to $12 million.
Sotheby’s said more than half the art sold went for more
than its high estimates. Artists seeing new records for their
works included Keith Haring, James Rosenquist, Dan Flavin and
Mike Kelley.
One major casualty was an untitled work by Willem de
Kooning, which was expected to sell for $18 million to $25
million, but went unsold when no bids could be attracted above
$16.5 million.
(Reporting by Chris Michaud in New York; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
