The prices that works by Andy Warhol are now fetching are gasping for air. Now another work has achieved a seemingly fantastic sum. In New York, the large format "White Disaster [White Car Crash 19 Times]" changes hands.
A huge work by American artist Andy Warhol, typical of the 1960s, has sold at auction in New York for 85 million dollars (82 million euros). At the Sotheby's auction house, "White Disaster" changed hands after two minutes and a brief bidding between two representatives of the auction house on behalf of interested parties over the phone. The appraised value was more than $80 million.
The works of the pop artist Warhol, who died in 1987, have become a bestseller at auction houses. At the last auction of a work from the "Death and Disaster Series" at Sotheby's in 2013, a painting changed hands for $105 million. In early May this year, a portrait of the movie star Marilyn Monroe, "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" (1964) was auctioned at Christie's in New York for $195 million. It became the most expensive work of the 20th century ever auctioned.
There was a higher price in 2017 for a picture from another century - "Salvator Mundi" by Leonardo da Vinci, which the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bought for 450 million dollars. It is dated around the year 1500.
The work, fully titled "White Disaster [White Car Crash 19 Times]," auctioned Wednesday night, features 19 times the same image of a macabre car crash in black and white. It is 3.60 meters high. There are only three other works by Warhol in this large format, one of which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York. The painting sold at Sotheby's came from a private collection. As usual, the auction house did not provide any information about the buyer.
However, Warhol buyers could have gotten real bargains in New York the day before. Two works sold for less than $500,000 at the Philipps auction house. The self-portrait "Nosepicker 1: Why Pick on Me" changed hands for $491,000 and the painting "Living Room" for just $315,000. The later star painted the pictures in 1948 as an art student in Pittsburgh. They came from the possession of Warhol's relatives.
