The Scream (click on image to enlarge).
Edvard Munch’s The Scream made a new world art auction record of $119,922,500 at Sotheby’s in New York last night. A group of at least eight bidders jumped into the competition, but it was a prolonged battle between two highly-determined phone bidders that carried the final selling price to its historic level, after more than 12 minutes. The iconic masterpiece is one of four versions of the work, the only one left in private hands.
Even though 15 of the 76 works on offer were unsold, the sale total of $330,568,550 million marked Sotheby’s highest ever total for a sale of Impressionist and Modern Art. The Scream smashed the previous auction record of $106.5 million for Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, sold in 2010 by Christie’s in New York. Only two other works besides Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust have sold for more than $100 million at auction. Those are Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice) for $104.1 million in 2004 and Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I for $104.3 million in 2010.
Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art, selling The Scream. (Click on image to enlarge).
The top ten in the sale last night were: 1 – The Scream; 2 – Pablo Picasso, Femme assise dan un fauteuil $29,202,500: 3 – Salvador Dalí, Printemps nécrophilique, $16,322,500; 4 – Joan Miró, Tête humaine, $14,866,500; 5 – Constantin Brancusi, Prométhée, $12,682,500; 6 – Chaim Soutine, Le chasseur de Chez Maxim’s, $9,378,500: 7 – Paul Gauguin, Cabane sous les arbres, $8,482,500; 8 – Max Ernst, Leonora in the Morning Light, $7,922,500; 9 – Pablo Picasso, Tête de femme (Portrait de Françoise), $6,914,500; 10 – Tamara de Lempicka Nu adossé I, $5,458,500.
See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for February 21 and April 27 2012 and the post for February 4, 2012 on Cezanne’s Card Players.