Last night, Sotheby’s offered its selection of Contemporary art and the good works, which were priced right, found buyers. The sale brought in $295M (low end of the pre-sale estimate range was $254M) with a sell-through rate of 81.5%.
A Cy Twombly blackboard painting brought the top price at $70.5M (a new auction record for the artist) and Warhol’s Mao made $47.5M. The Warhol, which carried a guarantee of about $45M, was sold by Steven Cohen who bought the work in 2007 for about $17M … nice profit! Another nice return was seen in Pollock’s drawing Number 17, 1949, that made $22.9M — it last sold in 2003 for $5.3M.
There were a few failures which the trade is chalking up to over ambitious estimates … and with all the works hitting the market over the last two weeks, buyers can, and will be, choosy. To read more of Robin Pogrebin and Scott Reyburn’s review, click HERE.
Cy Twombly