The sale at Christie’s with Jussi Pylkannen and the top selling Basquiat. Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2013.
Global bidding helped Christie’s achieve the highest total for a February evening auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art in London last night. The sale at which the top price was £9,337,250 for Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) brought in a total of £81,668,850. There were artists records for Peter Doig (£7,657,250), Pierre Soulanges (£3,289,250), Allen Jones (£2,169,250), Michaelangelo Pistoletto ( £1,273,250) and Wade Guyton (£735,650). A selection of works offered from the collection of Mrs. Ingvild Goetz made £4,286,750 three times the low pre-sale estimate.
Francis Outred, International Director and Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, Christie’s Europe: “An exciting night of Christie’s theatre saw Jussi Pylkannen excelling in the face of an unprecedented volume of bidding from around the world. Some works carried up to fourteen phone lines, as the thirst for post-war & contemporary art continues to develop. Five world records were achieved, including for Peter Doig and Pierre Soulages, the new and the old masters in our field, alongside the consistent growth of the market for Basquiat, Bacon, Hockney and Richter”.
Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (2004) sold for £8,441,250, Francis Bacon’s Man in Blue VI (1954) sold for £4,969,250 (it was bought by the previous owner in 1971 for £31,000), David Hockney’s Great Pyramid at Giza with Broken Head from Thebes sold for £3,513,250, Damien Hirst’s Away from the Flock (Divided) sold for £1,945,250, Peter Doig’s The Architect’s Home in the Ravine (1991) sold for £7,657,250 and Allen Jones’s Table, Chair, Hatstand sold for £2,169,250.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for January 28 and January 7, 2013).