ENTHUSIASTIC BIDDERS SET RECORDS AT CHRISTIE’S CONTEMPORARY ART SALE

Despite fears that the art market might finally begin to crack, an overflowing salesroom of enthusiastic bidders last night at Christie’s proved the naysayers wrong as sixteen record prices, for artists including Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, and Lucian Freud, propelled the market for postwar and contemporary art to new heights, writes Carol Vogel in today’s New York Times. The entire sale produced a strong total: $325 million, against an estimate of $271.2 million to $373.3 million. Of the sixty-six works offered, all but five sold. David Rockefeller’s success last spring in selling his 1950 Rothko for $72.8 million, a record price for the artist, has drawn many more Rothkos to auction. Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange), a classic abstract canvas from 1955, became the most expensive work of the evening. Five bidders tried for the painting, which sold to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million, against a high estimate of $30 million. Betting on the strength of the market, Kent Logan, a San Francisco collector, offered Burning Gas Station, a 1965–66 painting by Ed Ruscha. His gamble paid off. The painting, which was estimated at $4 million to $6 million, was snapped up by Larry Gagosian for $6.9 million, another record price. Norman and Norah Stone, also from San Francisco, were the sellers of Piney Woods Nurse, 2002, by Richard Prince, whose retrospective is now at the Guggenheim Museum. Prince also scored a record price. The painting was bought by Jay Jopling, the London dealer, for $6 million, soaring above its $2.2 million high estimate.