Is the art market impervious to the current economic turmoil? Yesterday’s Postwar & Modern art sale at Christie’s in London would seem to indicate the answer is yes—at least in the case of blue chip works from the postwar period. Witness the two world records established at the auction by Yves Klein’s “Le Rose du bleu,” which sold for $36.7m, more than $10m above its high estimate, and an untitled work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which realized $20.16m. All told, $207.33m changed at the sale, nearly double Sotheby’s results from its parallel event the night before.
A number of other works exceeded their estimates at Christie’s, including an untitled Cy Twombly, which pulled in $3.3m, a smaller Twombly executed on card, which brought in $1.1m, and a Lucio Fontana red canvas for 1967, for which a buyer paid $1.7m. More substantial prices were established for Gerhard Richter’s “Structure (2)” from 1989, which drew a high bid of $19.6m, and Lucien Freud’s “Study for Self-Portrait,” which soared to $33.4m.
Read more at The New York Times.
