A sale of post-war and contemporary art at Christie's in New York has generated sales of $744m (the highest total in art auction history, according to the auction house), with many pieces smashing their estimated values.
A pair of works by Andy Warhol – Race Riot, 1964 and White Marylin – sold for over $100m, $30m more than was expected. The latter, a portrait of Marylin Monroe, was completed shortly after her death in 1962.
Black Fire I, a work by abstract expressionist Barnett Newman in his characteristically minimal 'zip' style, sold for $84.2m, the most ever paid for the artist and twice as much as the previous record.
Other works by Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Mark Rothko all sold for tens of millions, while Francis Bacon triptych Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards, portraying the painter's close friend and the sole heir to his estate, sold for $80.8m. Last year Christie's sold Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud for $142.4m, making it the most expensive work ever sold at auction.
It's another successful day's business for Christie's, who sold £4.5bn-worth of artworks and collectibles last year, a record annual amount for any auction house – and driven in part by wealthy Asian clients spending more money in western markets.
Their recent sale of impressionist works generated $286m, breaking the expected amount, but unlike the post-war sale many individual pieces sold for less than their estimates.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
