Jeff Koons’ Rabbit sculpture sold for $91.1 million at Christie’s in New York last night, a new world record price for a living artist. The steel cast of an inflatable created in 1986 made more than $20 million over the top estimate.
The Post War and Contemporary Art evening sale brought in $538,971,750. There were 56 lots offered and 51 were sold. Koons’ Rabbit and Robert Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II ($88.8 million) were the two top lots of the auction. Spider by Louise Bourgeois sold for $32,055,000 million, a world auction record and the second highest price at auction for a woman artist.
There were world auction records for Koons’, Rauschenberg, Bourgeois, Frank Stella, Larry Rivers, Jonas Wood and Daniel Buren. Koons previously held the record for a work by a living artist with Balloon Dog (Orange). Last year the honour went to David Hockney Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) which sold for just over $90 million.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for March 27, 2019)
