Contemporary and postwar has been the most active part of the art market for the past few seasons, but buyers at Sotheby’s remained sober and controlled last night. In the end, 82% of the 73 lots sold, for a total of $68 million, just above the sale’s low estimate.

“It was a wonderful sale,” Sotheby’s auctioneer and worldwide director of contemporary art, Tobias Meyer, said afterward.

Pop art reigned at the sale, which emphasized works by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as a motley assortment of midcentury sculptors, young German painters and photographers, and Bay Area figurative painters. Last fall’s $93 million evening sale at Sotheby’s had featured more works by blue-chip contemporary artists.

“If anything, the whole thing was a little confused,” the president of PaceWildenstein gallery, Marc Glimcher, said. “Every fourth lot was a mood killer.”

The top lot of the evening was Andy Warhol’s 1963 “Liz,” which sold for $12.6 million to Manhattan jeweler Lawrence Graff. Bidding by phone, Mr. Graff fought over the work with a blonde woman in the room. Immediately after auctioneer Mr. Meyer slammed his hammer down, Manhattan dealer Robert Mnuchin encouraged the crowded room to give the tenacious blonde a round of applause.

Roy Lichtenstein’s collectors were out in force, with several in the room bidding up his “Blue Nude” (1995), one of eight lots being sold by the estate of Gianni Versace. It also sold to a phone bidder, after a tussle with a man in the room, for $5.3 million, more than a million above its high estimate. Three other Lichtensteins sold above their high estimates, including the sculpture “Ritual Mask” (1992), which went to dealer Larry Gagosian, for $486,400. Mr. Gagosian also left the night enriched by a Glenn Brown painting and a late Willem de Kooning painting.

Jeff Koons’s “Cake,” (1995-97), from his “Celebration” series, sold for $3 million to dealer Jeffrey Deitch, one of

Mr. Koons’s backers on the series. This was a record for a painting by the artist sold at auction. Other auction records were set for Chuck Close, Andreas Gursky, Robert Gober, Tom Friedman, Kara Walker, Red Grooms, and Marisol Escobar, whose “The Cocktail Party” (1965-66), a grouping of life-sized wood sculptures, sold for $912,000 – nearly nine times the previous record for a work by Ms. Escobar sold at auction.

Chuck Close’s “John” (1971-72), one of eight lots being sold by the Robert B. Mayer family, went to the Broad Art Foundation for $4.8 million, a record for a work by the artist sold at auction, while his “Eric” (1990), sold for $3 million. Over the past few decades, as Minimalism, Pop, and big 1980s paintings passed him by, Mr. Close has worked away at ideas about portraiture, printmaking, and the mass reproduction of images. “You couldn’t pick an artist less about auctions,” said Mr. Glimcher, whose gallery represents the artist.

Basquiat’s paintings, too, stood apart from the Pop ironists as fairly earnest efforts to pick apart language and identity. His massive red and yellow painting “Florence” (1983) sold for $2.6 million, while his denser “In the Cipher” (1982) went for $1.5 million, both to phone bidders at the low end of their estimates. Basquiat’s current retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum didn’t appear to affect his prices; he’s been earning $1-3 million at auction since the 1990s. One lesser painting did fail to sell, while a painting made with Warhol, “Amoco” (1984), set a record for one of their collaborations, at $1 million.

Marlene Dumas has also, for several months, held the distinction of having one of her works carry the highest price at auction for a woman, $3.34 million. Her multipanel painting, “The Messengers” (1992), a juxtaposition of skeletons and a naked girl, was one of the more somber works in the sale. It went for $912,000, near its low estimate, deflating the high hopes the Dumas market has carried lately. A rougher Dumas painting was passed over entirely.

“One or two extraordinary paintings don’t make a market,” said the director of London gallery Haunch of Venison, Harry Blain. But Mr. Blain saw this selective buying as a good sign. “People had identified specific items that they wanted,” he said. “The hype for very expensive works simply didn’t exist. I think it’s very constructive for the market. It restores confidence.”