By Carter B. Horsley
This evening auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie's November 8, 2005 is highlighted by a spectacular group of Abstract Expressionist paintings that includes some extraordinary museum-class works.
Mark Rothko (1903-1970)(see The City Review article on a major Rothko exhibition) is presented by four works. Franz Kline (1910-1962) by two works. Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)(see The City Review article on a major de Kooning exhibition) by 9 works.
The most outstanding Rothko is Lot 34, "Homage to Matisse," a classic, 105 5/8-by-51-inch oil on canvas that is dated 1953. It is one of several works in the auction consigned by the collection of Edward R. Broida, a real estate developer in Los Angeles who recently gave many works to the Museum of Modern Art. It has an "estimate on request" and is expected to go for more than $15 million. It sold for $22,416,000 including the buyer's premium as do all results mentioned in this article. The price was a world auction record for the artist and a world auction record for a post-war work.
The catalogue entry for this lot notes that Rothko rarely titled his works once he had arrived at his mature style by 1949 and that this is a rare exception:
"It was painted in 1954, the year of the great French painter's death and it is equally rare in that it is a public declaration by Rothko of the debt he owed to another, and in particular, European artist. Like many artists of the New York School Rothko was often wary of allowing his work to be seen as in anyway indebted to the then all-powerful French tradition in painting. Wishing to be seen as an indepedent artist and originator in his own right, Rothko was also ideologically opposed to the so-called 'School of Paris' for what he saw as its lack of moral and political conscience in an age of profound crisis. ....More than any other single artist, it was Matisse's example that had informed much of the direction as well as the ultimate liberation of Rothko's art between 1930 and 1949. In the 1920s Rothko had enrolled himself in the class of Max Weber a former pupil of Matisse's short-lived art school in Paris and in the 1930s Rothko shared a close friendship and working relationship with Milton Avery who, responding to Matisse's example, had inspired Rothko with his landscapes and female figures flattened into lyrical expanses of opaque color. Essentially though it was Matisse's example and in particular, paintings like his Red Studio of 1911 that had given Rothko the courage to pursue his great breakthrough of 1949 when the represential forms, objects and symbols of his art finally disappeared and dissolved into his now familiar rectangles of pure non-objective color. The Red Studio was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art in the late 1940s and was first permanently installed in the museum in 1949. As Rothko told Dore Ashton, soon after the painting went on show he would repeatedly 'spend hours and hours' sitting in front [of] it. 'When you looked at that painting,' he said 'you became color, you became toatlly saturated with it, as if it were music.'....Both Rothko and Matisse were responding to the essentially Symbolist idea that there is a direct and ultimately transcendent correspondence between color, sound, sensation, eeling and memory."
The auction was extremely successful with a sales total of $157,441,600. The pre-sale estimates were $101.2 million to $145.6 million. After the auction, auctioneer Christopher Burge said that the sale total was the highest ever for a post-war art auction and described the results as "absolutely extraordinary." He said that 82 percent of the buyers were American and 37 lots sold for over $1 million and 18 records were set. More than 70 percent of the offered lots sold above their high estimates.
Action in the crowded auction room was hectic and about 63 percent of the successful bidders were in the room, in sharp contrast to the high percentage of telephone bidders in recent years.
Lot 48, "Blue Over Red," is a strong Rothko oil on canvas that measures 64 1/2 by 35 1/4 inches. Executed in 1953, it is property from the collection of Selma and Israel Rosen. It has an estimate of $4,500,000 to $6,500,000. It sold for $5,616,000.
Lot 24 is an untitled oil on paper mounted on canvas by Rothko that measures 26 by 19 1/2 inches. Executed in 1960, it has a modest estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. It sold for $2,536,000, setting a world auction record for the artist for a work on paper. It is property from the collection of Lee V. Eastman, an entertainment lawyer who died in 1991.
The catalogue entry for this lot makes note of the fact that Rothko "learned from and relied on the example of his forebears among them James Abbot McNeill Whistler, William Turner, Paul Cézanne and most importantly Fra Angelico." The latter artist is the subject of a retrospective exhibition this fall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"The success of Rothko's paintings is directly related to his intense study and mastery of light," the entry continued. "He imbued his paintings with a preternatural luminosity. In this pursuit, he was particularly influenced by Fra Angelico whose frescoes he often admired on his sojourns to Italy. 'When Fra Angelico painted his scenes of Edenic beauty, he was true to the Thomist vision of beauty as 'that in which the eye delights,' but he acknowledged the Thomist principle that painting is knowledge as 'it satisfies our desire to understand and know.' For the Thomists, the world and its beauties could be depicted only as effects for which there could be only one cause. God would be the source of all visual pleasure, and the light that would grace the world of nature would always flow from Him. Therefore, in Fra Angelico's exemplary panels, the light is evenly distributed, not modified.'[quotation from Dore Ashton's book About Rothko, New York, 1983, p. 148]...Untitled shares this unified luminosity. It does not though speak of God's divivity but instead endeavors to illuminate the secular mystery of man's psyche."
Another Rothko from the Eastman collection is Lot 28, which is also untitled. An oil on paper mounted on canvas, it measures 24 by 18 1/2 inches and was painted in 1959. It has a somber palette of crimson and blacks. It has an estimate of $1,000,000 to $1,200,000. It sold for $1,472,000.
Another work from the Eastman collection is Lot 22, "Elegy to the Spanish Republic #122," an oil, charcoal and graphite on canvas by Robert Motherwell (1915-1991). It measures 55 3/4 by 76 inches and was painted in 1972. It has a modest estimate of $1,200,000 to $1,800,000. It sold for $2,144,000.
"Based on Motherwell's evocation of the Spanish Civil War, which occurred a decade earlier to his first Elegy in 1949, he has said that the Elegies were visual equivalents of the poetic lament for the dead," the catalogue entry for this note observed, adding that "The somber look and tone of the paintings universalize the war's massacres and injustices enacted by man, all the while avoiding the proselytizing tone of political painting. Sinec the 1950s, Motherwell had produced fresh variations of the Elegies, all the while, remaining faithful to its primary structure. Elegy to the Spanish Republic, No. 122, exemplifies the later Elegies, which are characterized by a dazzling combination of austerity and elegance, and most notably, the inclusion of other colors such [as] the ochre. It has been well documented that the source of the Elegies was an illustration Motherwell made to accompany a poem by Harold Rosenberg, A Bird for Every Bird, for the second issue of the journal possibilities in 1949....he has alluded to the fact that each one of his Elegies begins as an automatic drawing, and certain shapes are then blocked to create the signature armature of the vertical bars and ovals...."
Another major work by from the Broida collection and certainly the finest work in this auction is Lot 38, "Painting in Black and White and Color (Washington Wall)," by Franz Kline (1910-1962).
A monumental oil on canvas, it measures 43 1/8 by 175 inches and was painted in 1959. It has a very conservative estimate of $2,500,000 to $4,000,000 as it is perhaps the most spectacular, powerful and dramatic Abstract Expressionist painting and one that should elevate Kline's status significantly. It sold for $5,448,000.
The catalogue provides the following commentary:
"By the late mid-1950s, Kline had refined his black and white paintings and arrived at new innovations. In 1956, he artist introduced color to his black and white abstractions, selectively and with great bravado. The second inovation included two large mural-like paintings in 1959, one being Orange and Black Wall and the other, Washington Wall. The latter has been described in the literature as a cinemascope. There is an element of theatricality built into this work. The work can been in stages which includes the introduction, crescendo and the denouement of the image. What is also notable about this painting is the combination of opposite directional pulls to the extreme left and right sides, which is the basis for its sheer vitality. The addition of color, usually bright and unmodulated, to his abstractions occurred during a pivotal moment in Kline's career. He changed dealers and in 1956, began showing works at [the] Sidney Janis Gallery, which brought him higher visibility and greater acclaim. ....While the critics at that time denounced it as a risky move to introduce color, Kline took on the challenge of painting with color to produce the same extraordinary combination of dynamism and gravitas, which previously only the black and white abstractions were thought to possess. He used color as the means to add visual complexity to the structure of the composition. Washington Wall consists of numerous vectors and strong diagonals, which give the appearance of tautness and vitality....Every mark appears spontaneously rendered but the overall image is a vey complex one, where brushstrokes are constructed in an architectural fashion.....The two strong diagonal lines that jut out from the right side of the picture to the very end on the other side contain incredible velocity, interspersed among the diagonals are triangular white areas that contribute to the feeling of aceleration. While the composition is asymmetrical, proportionally it is a balanced picture because the white area of the left section has great tonal value and acts as the passive foil to the active brushwork. Kline often used an edge or the side of the canvas to lay down the groundwork for the image, rooting it and from there, bursts forth explosions of paint."
Lot 26 is a superb, large, untitled oil on canvas by Franz Kline that measures 79 1/8 by 59 1/8 inches. Executed in 1960, it is property from the collection of Lee V. Eastman who acquired it from the artist. It has a modest estimate of $2,500,000 to $3,500,000. It sold for $1,808,000.
"When one confronts a black and white painting by Kline, one is nearly overcome by the massive scale and raw power of the brushstrokes. While Kline took pains to create preparatory sketches for his black and white paintings, the end result appears as if the image had been spontaneously sprung forth from the artist's brush, already fully formed into exitence. While Rothko and Newman's sublime paintings act as monochromatic fields that enfold the viewer, Kline's works on the other hand, dominate the vision of the beholder with fierce energy and vertiginous scaffoldings of substantive paint....In spite of their radically simplified composition and stark appearance, Kline's paintings contain subject matter. Kline asserted that his paintings usually allude to some kind of a personage or structure. Like de Kooning's it can be said Kline's approach to abstraction is rooted in concrete experience. Oftentimes one seems a semblance of a rectangle, suggesting a door or passageway; other times the structure resembles bridges and highways. There is another reference to the urban architecture skyscrapers, whose sharp angles jut up to the sky. In this particular work, a rectangular shape appears to be suspended in the air, a recurring motif that originated in earilier paintings such as Leda and Wotan, both of 1950. There is a black horizontal band on the bottom edge as to denote earth and its gravitational pull. The rectangular shape floating or hurtling above could also represent a person, more specifically, a dancer coiled in a pose in mid-air. A lover of the theater and dance, Kline painted an abstract evocation of the dancer Nijinksy in 1950. The compact shape alludes to the body - a being that is dense, alive and yet floating above, defying gravity in this instant moment. A sense of immediacy is aided by the tight cropping of the black forms, especially in the upper right corner. But these aspects are simply points of inspiration, as these paintings in the end do not reference anything representional. Unititled may possess the energy and tension of a dancer, but it does not depict a dancer.....Some critics have incorrectly assumed that Kline was influenced by Asian calligraphy because of the flourishes of paint and economy of expression. But he had denied such an influence. This is proven by the strong presence of white ...[in] his paintings, which is equal to that of the black. They work in concert with each other, providing contrast and support. Nevertheless, there is a strong ideographic element in his work, which was a prevalent theme in other Abstract Expresionists' paintings by such artists such as Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Tobey....."
Of the many de Koonings in the auction, two abstractions stand out, Lots 17 and 25.
Lot 17 is an untitled oil and charcoal on two sheets of card mounted on panel that measures 22 by 14 1/2 inches. Executed in 1957, it has a modest estimate of $700,000 to $900,000. It is another property from the collection of Lee V. Eastman who acquired it from the artist. It sold for $1,304,000.
"This Untitled work," the catalogue observed, "...belongs to a celebrated body of paintings where the artist was at his most abstract. This austere and highly compact picture emanates a severe elegance. By tightly focusing his picture to only broad brushstrokes painted in sharp vectors or dashed across the surface in a vehement fashion, de Kooning made oil paint the subject matter. The perfomative aspect of Abstract Expressionism and its insistence on the participation of the spectator make for a thrilling experience when viewing a painting such as Untitled. It has been simplified into pure abstrauction, but it does not feel at all like a reduction in its execution. With its rapid brushstrokes that dazzle the eye and a highly pesonalized palette of burnt oranges, brilliant blues, marigold yellows, warm reds, sensual pinks along with black and white, abstraction never looked so alluring....Untitled consists of two pieces of painted collage; the act of collage held generative powers for the artist. Thomas Hess explains de Kooning's habit of tearing drawings as something vitally integal to the artist's working method. 'Fundamentally, tearing drawings was a means of pictorial orientation. It is a practice in which art refers most of all to art - the shapes becoming the subject of another shape and then of still another shape in an increasingly complicated fugue of interlocking elements. But beneath this intense concentration on the pictorial, one senses the breath and pulse of the artist's passion.' On his studio walls, de Kooning had tacked up small oil on paper pieces as a repository of images to use as collage elements for his paintings or to jumpstart a new picture. Around this time, de Kooning created small 8 by 7 inch paintings using collage elements as the means of inventing new compositions. With collage's rich potential, de Kooning achieved numerous pictorial possiblities. It also gave him a sense of freedom because with the open-ended abstract shapes, collage did not have to have a specific spatial orientation and did not involve narrative like surrealist collages. His process is very similar to cubist collage in their shaped planes of color either built up or dismantled, but de Kooning's personalized painted gesture seems to make it into a more subjective endeavor. In Untitled, de Kooning joined the two separate collage elements so the edges unite to form a diagonal line.....There is a slight sense of depth where the left side of the painting, which includes an expanse of white, pulls forward while the cool blue of the right side recedes."
Also from the Eastman collection is Lot 25, "Untitled #10," which is also the same dimensions as Lot 17 but it is in a horizontal format rather vertical. It also dates to about the same period as Lot 17 and also has a very modest estimate of $700,000 to $900,000. It sold for $1,136,000.
"What is truly remarkable about this work is how much of de Kooning's creative process is plainly visible," the catalogue entry noted, adding that "It is a veritable record of his pictorial decisions regarding the structure, composition, feel and tone of the resulting picture. There is an incredible amount of active drawing underneath the paint. The underdrawing's sweeping lines, rubbed cancellations, and shifting planes attest to de Kooning's preference for a dialtctical approach, of constantly pitting one state of being with its opposite. The drawing also acts as a counterbalance to the seemingly spontaneous and improvised appearance of the bainted brushstrokes. A special kind of translucency is achieved by the various layers of charcoal and paint, and results in a shimmering depth of surface."
Yet another Eastman de Kooning is Lot 15, a large untitled oil on canvas from 1977. It measures 88 by 76 1/2 inches and has an estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000,000. It sold for $10,656,000. The catalogue includes an interesting quotation from de Kooning: "Miles Davis bends the notes. He doesn't play them, he bends them. I bend the paint."
The catalogue observes that "the group of paintings executed in 1977 represent the pinnacle of achievement in de Kooning's late works. They are magisterial, corporeal and filled with virtuoso effects. For the artist who has explored the dialectical relationship between figuration and abstraction to their greatest potential, the series from 1977 is a major hallmark. The works are a breathtaking summation of his lifelong discourse on the nature of painting." The entry also notes that in this work de Kooning has not totally abandoned "figuration" and has left 'tatanlizing clues to flesh and body images throughout Unittled as it is his nature not to exclude the concrete and the real. In the lower left corner of the painting, for example, located is a woman's red high-heeled shoe. Tinges of flesh tones suggesting the body are highlighted on the white passages. A hand outlined in black floats in the lower section of the painting."
Bill Viola (b. 1951) is the Rembrandt of video and Lot 1 is a color video triptych on three LCD panels that is number one of an edition of five. Overall, it measures 16 1/4 by 75 by 2 inches and was created in 2001. In this work, three women maintain "an intensive locked gaze with the camera as they undergo a succession of strong emotional states," the catalogue notes, adding that the artist is "one of the few contemporary artists to broach the murky territory of the spiritual with purpose and artistic success." "A practicing Zen Buddhist, Viola draws on his own quest for self-knowledge and seeks to make art that 'cultivates knowledge for how to be in the world, for going through life.' The lot has an estimate of $120,000 to $180,000. It sold for $374,400, breaking the previous record of $72,865 set at Christie's in London June 27, 2002.
Lot 5 is a unique taxidermied animals work by Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960). It is entitled "The First, They Said, Should Be Sweet Like Love; The Second Bitter, Like Life; And The Third Soft, Like Death." The work was created in 1998 and is 65 inches tall. It has an estimate of $700,000 to $1,000,000. It sold for $844,800. The catalogue notes that this work is related to two previous Cattelan works that stacked animals, the first of which was inspired by a Brothers Grimm fairytale The Musicians of Bremen, which was "embedded with a moral tale that encouraged cooperation as a means of attaining a Utopian state."
Lot 30 is a major early work by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) entitled "In The Car." An oil, magna, and graphite on canvas, it measures 30 by 40 1/8 inches and has an "estimate on request." It has been consigned by the artist's son, Mitchell. The catalogue entry for this 1963 work contains a superb six-page essay by noted art historian Robert Rosenblum in which he recalls what "might have been the greatest visual trauma of my gallery-going life, Roy Lichtenstein's three-week long debut at Castelli's, from February 10 to March 3, 1962":
"I was so startled by this full-scale offense to the decorum of domestically-scaled gallery walls that I might even have gasped out loud. Coiuld I possibly be looking at a painting of an ad for the latest model in American washing machines or supermarket turkeys? And perhaps even more alarming, was I really seeing oil-on-canvas paintings of blown-up comic strip panels that celebrated the mechanized macho violence of a fighter plane bombed to oblivion or the soap-operatic moments of an all-American girl's bliss, whether her first kiss or the excitement promised in a thought balloon that, with a nervous stammer read: 'It's...not an engagement ring. Is It?'...there was the simultaneous shock of a visual language that looked unspeakably crude, especially by contrast with the nuanced colors and handmade brushstrokes familar to the ab ex world and even, one began to realize, to Johns's flags, which had at first looked like impersonal replicas but then began to look lovingly crafted. Expousing the low-budget techniques of lowly commerical artists, Licthenstein's paintings hurt the eye with their insistence on only the three primary colors, a trio that, with Mondrian, had once evoked abstract essences, but that now proclaimed the shrill chromatic shorthand of comic books and mail-order catalogues.Then there were the black contours, again conjuring the rockbotom visual economy of commercial imagery, wilfully insensitive lines that mocked highfalutin traditions of an artist's personal touch. And adding insult to injury, there were the Ben-Day dots which, mirroring their source in cheap, belt-line image reproduction, conveyed with mechanized perfection the textures, the lights and shadows that high-minded artists had slaved to achieve. And beyond this, there was the threat to old-fashioned ideas of originality. Weren't these paintings imply unedited copies of existing images? Court this be art? ....He not only upset everybody by the gross images with which he chose to pollute art's sanctuaries, but by the equally gross visual vocabulary with which he depicted these commonplaces of American life. But very quickly, my training as an academic art historican gave me a handle on his seemingly unprecedented challenge to aesthetic proprieity. As the dust settled, many examples poppled up to supply a respectable genelogical table, among them, Courbet's proletariat subject matter; Seurat's regimented dots and primary hues; Beardsley's poster-flat, black-and-white graphics; Picasso's Cubist embrace of cafe signs and billboards. This, in turn, not only helped to make Lichtenstein's art look backwards as well as forwards, but helped to absorb the initial shock of what at first lookled ugly, permitting us to look more carefully at how ugliness could become a new kind of beauty. So it was that within a year, by the time of Lichtenstein's second show at Castelli's, from September 29 to October 2, 1963, things began to look very different....slowly, Lichtenstein's unique genius became visible. Here was an artist who, working with what was always considered to be the crudest, anti-art imagery of cartoon narratives and cheap merchandising, created a complete visual universe of his own, a signature style that shouted his name. This, in fact, turned out the be the enduring wonder of his art. Like an alchemist, he had managed to transform base metals into gold. With astonishment, we began to realize that his works were, of all unexpected reversals, marvels of decorative elegance and complexity, like American translations of Japanese prints....no other artist of his time had made so clear America's prejudices that boys were destined to become virile men, eager to destroy the enemy, and girls would end up as happy housewives, keeping their kitchens spick-and-span. In the Car pairs male and female perfection, distilled from the comic book source to an ideal clarity. The male driver has a young movie star's still unwrinkled face, marked by the firm, straight contours defining his jaw and adorned with a cleft chin that mirrors his furrowed brow. As for his girlfriend, who might be a stand-in for Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren, her equally flawless face is all curves, from the flowing, Art Nouveau cascade of her abundant coiffure to the smaller echoes in her smoothly rounded chin, her pursed lips, her glowering cat-eyed stare (with just a dot of blue in the iris to confirm her Aryan blood), and the profile of her elegantly itsy-bitsy nose that displays the ideal results offered in the nose-job ad Andy Warhol made famous in his Before and After series of 1962....However fascinating In the Car may be as a cultural mirror of everything from the rejevnating mix of high and low in the 1960s to the growing taste for camp, it is above all a sumptuously beautiful painting that extracts from the comic-book image both graphic punch and intricate detail reborn as a taut, immaculate network of jig-saw puzzle perfection."
The painting has an ambitious estimate on request and Carol Vogel of The New York Times in an article published October 27, 2005 wrote that "it is expected to fetch more than $15 million," which is a bit ambitious considering that it is a bid faded and that another 1963 version of it, almost double its size, is in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. It sold for $16,256,000, a world auction record for the artist. The previous record was $7,159,500 set at Christie's in New York November 13, 2002.
Lot 37 is a strong and vibrant oil on canvas by Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) that is entitled "Stardust." It measures 60 by 48 inches and was painted in 1959. It has a modest estimate of $500,000 to $700,000 and is property from the collection of Katharine and Morton G. Schamburg. It sold for $1,584,000, breaking the previous auction record for Hofmann of $1,105,600 set at Sotheby's November 12, 2003.
The auction has two major works by Philip Guston (1913-1980), Lots 39 and 35. The former is entitled "The Mirror" and is an oil on canvas that measures 68 by 60 1/2 inches. Executed in 1957, it has an estimate of $3,000,000 to $5,000,000. It sold for $3,152,000. Lot 35, "Zone," is a 46-by-48-inch oil on canvas that Guston executed in 1953-4. It has an estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000,000. It sold for $5,504,000. Both lots are part of the Broida consignment and both were included in the major retrospective exhibition on Guston at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year.
The auction also has two important works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lots 42 and 45. The former is entitled "Study for Pope I" and is an oil on canvas that measures 59 7/8 by 46 7/8 inches. Executed in 1961, it has an estimate of $7,000,000 to $9,000,000. It sold for $10,096,000, breaking the previous record of $9,007,299 set at Christie's in London June 23, 2005. Lot 45 is entitled "Two Figures" and is an oil with sand on canvas that measures 77 7/8 by 55 7/8 inches. It was also painted in 1961 and has an estimate of $2,500,000 to $4,000,000. It sold for $2,368,000. It is also part of the Broida consignment.
Another Broida consignment is Lot 46, "Untitled (Ocean Park)," a nice acrylic and graphite on paper by Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993)(see The City Review article on a Diebenkorn exhibition). It measures 17 1/2 by 12 inches and was painted in 1980. It has a modest estimate of $350,000 to $550,000. It sold for $856,000.
Another highlight of the auction is Lot 43, "Naked Girl Perched on a Chair," by Lucian Freud (b. 1922). An oil on canvas that measures 47 1/4 by 29 3/4 inches, it was painted in 1994 and has an estimate of $4,000,000 to $6,000,000. It sold for $5,728,000.
Lot 2, "Untitled," by Kiki Smith sold for $284,800 setting a world auction record for the artist.
Lot 3, "Untitled (W17) Rundogrundogun," by Christopher Wool said for $1,248,000, setting a world auction record for the artist.
Lot 4, "Red Morning (Hate)," by Gilbert & George, sold for $856,000, setting a world auction record for Gilbert & George.
Lot 7, "Untitled (Cowboy)," by Richard Prince, sold for $1,248,000 setting a world auction record for a work by the artist and a world auction record for any photograph.
Lot 29, "One Dollar Bill," by Andy Warhol sold for $1,248,000 setting a world auction record for a work on paper by the artist.
Lot 36, "Jurassic Bird," sold for $4,994,000, setting a world auction record for artist.
Lot 41, "Nazis Murder Jews," by Alice Neel sold for $408,000, setting a world auction record for the artist.
Lot 55, "Large Rod Series, Circle/Rectangle 5,7,9,11,13," by Walter de Maria, sold for $240,000, setting a world auction record for the artist.
Lot 56, "Untitled," by Robert Smithson, sold for $710,400, setting a world auction record for the artist.
Lot 63, "Colin de Land," by Elizabeth Peyton sold for $856,000, setting a world auction record for the artist.
Lot 67, "Hollywood Study #3," by Ed Ruscha, sold for $553,600, setting a world auction record for a work on paper by the artist.
Lot 70, "The Great American Love (Love Wall)," by Robert Indiana, sold for $856,000, a world auction record for the artist.