The painting sold by five would-be buyers in nine minutes, a Christie’s representative told CNN.
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In May, Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s “Women of Algiers (Version O)” set the record for highest sum paid at an an auction sale with $179.4 million at Christie’s.
Chinese art collector Liu Yiqian confirmed to the NY Times that he was the buyer of the painting. Considered one of his best known works, the 1917-1918 painting almost created a scandal when it was first exhibited in Paris. “His “Portrait de Paulette Jourdain”, from around 1919, sold for $42.8 million at Sotheby’s sale of the A. Alfred Taubman estate last week, well over its estimate of $25 million”, reports The NY Times.
A controversial buy, Liu picked up this scroll, which purportedly dates to 1790, at Sotheby’s NY in September of 2013. He was a dropout who made his fortune in the stock market and is now an avid art collector who owns two museums in Shanghai.
The price reached for the shocked looking blonde with sexy red lips smashed the previous record for a Lichtenstein – $56 million paid for “Women with Flowered Hat” in 2013. The sutras were expected to sell for just $150,000, but an intense bidding war drove the price up to an astonishing million. Its pre-sale estimate is $20 million to $30 million.
Nodding to the sale’s unsold lots, Christie’s’ global president and auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen said that was the risk of “pushing the envelope”.
Another highlight was Gauguin’s “Therese”, which fetched nearly US$31 million, setting a world auction record for a sculpture by the artist.
“It was a sensational picture and it brought a sensational price”, said Guy Jennings, managing director of the Fine Art Fund in London and Christie’s former deputy chairman of Impressionist and modern art in NY. If sold for the estimate, the price would exceed the artist’s current auction record of $10.7 million and set a record for a sculpture by a female artist.
Lui spent a cool $45 million on this 15th century Buddhist tapestry at Christie’s Hong Kong this past November.
While the Modigliani and the Lichtenstein drew the big dollars in Manhattan today, the Christie’s sale blew hot and cold. A year ago Liu bought a few exquisite Chinese porcelain, paying over $36 million for a small Ming Dynasty cup adorned with a rooster and a hen tending to their chicks.
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“This painting leaps off the page as the most vibrant, sexual, lyrical of the catalogue raisonné”, said Ana Maria Celis, a Christie’s specialist in postwar and contemporary art.
