Christie’s held a record-setting $1 billion evening sale on May 18 featuring Jackson Pollock, Constantin Brancusi, and Nicole Kidman. Pollock’s 10-foot-long drip painting “Number 7A, 1948” sold for $181.2 million, nearly tripling the previous auction record of $61.2 million for “Number 17, 1951” from 2021. Brancusi’s cast-bronze bust “Danaïde” (c. 1913) sold for $107.6 million, becoming the second most expensive sculpture ever sold after Alberto Giacometti’s “L’Homme au Doigt” (1947). The works were from S.I. Newhouse’s collection and were promoted in a video starring Kidman dancing to David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” A subsequent evening auction of 20th-century works included Mark Rothko’s “No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)” (1964), which sold for $98.4 million with fees, surpassing the artist’s prior record.
"Pollock's 10-foot-long drip painting “Number 7A, 1948” shattered records for work by the late artist, selling for $181.2 million. The superlative sale nearly tripled the artist's previous auction record of $61.2 million for the sale of “Number 17, 1951” in 2021."
"In the same sale, Brancusi's cast-bronze bust “Danaïde” (c. 1913) went for $107.6 million, becoming the second most expensive sculpture ever sold after Alberto Giacometti's “L'Homme au Doigt” (1947) fetched $141.2 million in 2015."
"In the weeks before the sale, Christie's hyped up the collection in a promotional video featuring an entranced Kidman dancing around the Brancusi- a gold-leafed bust inspired by a young art student the Romanian sculptor had met in Paris - to the tune of David Bowie's “Golden Years.”"
"During a subsequent Monday evening auction of 20th-century works at Christie's, Mark Rothko's “No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)” (1964), from the late philanthropist Agnes Gund's personal collection, came under the hammer at $98.4 million with fees, surpassing the artist's previous record of $86.9 million in 2012."
Read at Hyperallergic
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