An Andy Warhol painting has sold for $105m (£65.5m) in
the US, breaking the artist's record by more than $30m.
Silver Car
Crash (Double Disaster) depicts the aftermath of an accident, with a twisted
body sprawled across the mangled interior of a vehicle.
It is one of
four double-panel car crash paintings that Warhol created in 1963. The others
are all in museums.
His previous
auction record was set in 2007, when $71.7m (£44.2m) was paid for Green Car
Crash (Green Burning Car I).
Silver Car
Crash has previously been owned by collectors such as Charles Saatchi, Thomas
Ammann, as well as German multi-millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs.
Five bidders
went as high as $80m (£50m), said auctioneer Tobias Meyer. Sotheby's did not
identify the winner, who placed their bid by telephone.
"It's a
great price - and completely worth it," said Meyer. "It's the best
painting I've ever sold in my whole career."
The price was
the second-highest in history for a contemporary work of art - the highest being
the $142.4m (£88.7m) fetched by Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud
earlier this week at Christie's.
Warhol's
record-breaking work used images appropriated from newspapers, which he then
silk-screened onto canvas, using reflective silver paint, repeating the scene
many times over. The second panel in the 8-by-13 foot work is a blank canvas of
silver.
"It's the
monumentality of the image that is so powerful," said Mr Meyer. "It's
as if life and death come straight at you."
Wednesday evening's auction of post-war and
contemporary art made a grand total of $380.6m (£237.1m), Sotheby's highest
total ever, with auction records set by artists such as Cy Twombly and Brice
Marden.
Twombly's Poems to the Sea was estimated at only $7m
(£4.3m) but soared to $21.7m (£13.5m). Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled (Yellow
Tar and Feathers) also fetched $25.9m (£16.1m).
According to the New
York Times, the floor was packed with prominent collectors such as hedge
fund manager Daniel S Loeb, Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz, and Miami collectors
Don and Mera Rubbell.
The blockbuster sale came a day after Christie's sale
of contemporary art brought in more than $691.5m (£430.8m), the highest total
for any single auction in history.
Officials at both auction houses say the recent price
spikes have been driven by wealthy collectors entering what is an increasingly
global market.
"Global participation was evident throughout the
sale," said Alex Rotter, Sotheby's head of contemporary art in New York.
"When the quality is there, multiple people from
different cultural backgrounds are going for it, because it's
outstanding."
Buyers from Russia, Asia, the Middle East and Latin
America all participated in this week's sales.
"We will keep witnessing new records being
broken,'' said Michael Frahm, a contemporary art adviser at the London-based
Frahm Ltd.
"The demand for seminal works by historical
important artists is truly unquestionable.
"This is the ultimate trophy hunting."
Source: BBC
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