Christie’s had been expecting a huge price for Mark Rothko’s 1961 canvas, “Orange, Red, Yellow.” Accordingly, the painting carried an estimate of $35m-$45m into the auction house’s sale of postwar and contemporary art this week in New York. As it happened, Christie’s expectations were conservative. On Tuesday evening it sold for almost $87m, the highest price ever paid for a work of its category.The Rothko wasn’t the only painting with stratospheric results. Buyer also paid record prices for works by Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Alexander Calder Calder, Gerhard Richter and Yves Klein. “The air,” said New York dealer Allan Schwartzman, “is no longer thin on top.” All told, the evening sale brought in $388.5m, well above its $329m high estimate.
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