Warhol 'Mao' May Fetch record $120M
By Bloomberg News | May 7, 2008
An Andy Warhol portrait of Mao Zedong may fetch an artist record of $120 million in a private sale in Hong Kong, Christie's International said Tuesday.
Christie's is shipping Warhol's "Mao," a silk-screen-on-canvas portrait more than 14 feet tall, to Hong Kong in late May for display at the city's main convention center, to allow potential buyers to view the work, Ken Yeh, Christie's deputy chairman in Asia, said.
"That is a huge price to pay for a painting," Elaine Holt, a Hong Kong-based curator at Opera Gallery, which specializes in Western artworks, said. "Considering how well-known Warhol is in China and how wealthy some Chinese are, I wouldn't be surprised if a mainland collector bought the painting."
Warhol's 1963 "Green Car Crash," an acid-green painting of a gruesome car wreck, sold in New York for an artist auction record of $71.7 million last May at Christie's. A Warhol portrait of Elvis Presley sold privately last year might have fetched more than $100 million, Mr. Yeh said in a phone interview from New York.
