Christie's $239 Million Night Breaks Record

After a quiet night on Tuesday at Sotheby's, Christie's postwar and contemporary sale last night demonstrated once again how much money is out there and flowing into the market. The evening broke a record for a postwar and contemporary sale, with a total of $239,704,000 changing hands. A large, abstract painting by Willem de Kooning, called "Untitled XXV," set a new record for a postwar artwork, selling for $27.12 million to the New York dealers Christopher Eykyn and Nicholas Maclean.

The total hammer price (not including Christie's' commission) was $212,995,000, on the high end of the pre-sale estimate of $160 million–$220 million. The evening's top works included two Warhols: the 1971 "Mao," which was purchased via telephone by a Hong Kong businessman, Joseph Lau, for $17.376 million, and the 1964 "Sixteen Jackies," which sold for $15.696 million.

Clyfford Still's "1947-R-No. 1" sold for $21.296 million, a record for the artist and almost three times the work's high estimate. The painting has been in a private collection for 35 years. The artist was famously mistrustful of museums, galleries, and collectors and often placed restrictions upon works he sold, stipulating that buyers could not resell them. According to a Christie's specialist, Robert Manley, there are only around 150 works that were sold without such restrictions.

De Kooning's "Untitled XXV" was listed in the catalogue as "Estimate on Request" — a tactic by which the auction house can slightly protect itself against overshooting with a high estimate and then falling short. The Christie's auctioneer, Christopher Burge, started the bidding at $9.5 million, and it soon passed $20 million. At $22.5 million, a new bidder jumped in, as though the painting had suddenly become interesting at that price, but she eventually lost out to Messrs. Eykyn and Maclean. The painting's sale surpassed the previous record for a work of postwar art, which was set last year when Larry Gagosian bought David Smith's sculpture "CUBI XXVIII," for $23.8 million.