After selling for a record-breaking $195 million-plus fees on Monday, pop artist Andy Warhol’s picture of Marilyn Monroe is officially the most expensive piece of artwork by an American artist ever sold at auction.
Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, has remained a pop culture phenomenon for more than three decades. He and his work have recently experienced a cultural resurgence, with Netflix releasing a Ryan Murphy-produced docuseries based on Warhol’s memoirs in February, at least three onstage productions about Warhol’s life opening in New York and London, and a Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibit about Warhol’s life and Catholic faith last year.
The Supreme Court will determine later this year whether a print created by Warhol based on a photographer’s image of singer Prince violates copyright laws.
Warhol’s 1964 Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, a forty-by-forty-inch silkscreen portrait of Marilyn Monroe surpassed the $110.5 million fetched by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 Untitled in 2017.
The canvas, which was sold as part of an estate auction of Swiss brother-and-sister dealers Thomas and Doris Amann, was purchased by Larry Gagosian in under four minutes of bidding.
The proceeds from the sale will benefit the Ammann Foundation, which supports children’s health and educational activities. Gagosian has not stated whether he was acting on behalf of himself or a client. According to Artnet News, the work has now come full circle, having been sold by Gagosian to Thomas Amman in 1986.
The auctioneer appeared to “wring the offers” despite the extremely short time between the call and hammer fall, according to the New York Times, and the record-breaking sale marks a value well below the $400 million the work was supposed to garner.
“It was an incredibly healthy price, but at the same time I believe the buyer got a deal,” art adviser Abigail Asher told the paper. Numerous sources credit the stock market’s recent slide with chilling auction prices.
Philip Hoffman, the founder of the New York-based advisory company Fine Art Group, remains positive regarding the art market’s prospects. “There’s been a huge amount held back for two years, and there’s a huge amount of pent-up demand” from buyers, he told the Times. “The right moment has come.”
Sources: Dailywire, Time, Nytimes