Earlier this week, the sale of Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) fetched a record-setting price of just over $195 million during Christie’s sale of The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann. The price was the highest ever paid for a 20th century work and for an American artwork at auction, topping the previous records of $179.4 million in 2015 for Pablo Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O) and $110.5 million in 2017 for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, 1982.
The buyer was none other than American art dealer Larry Gagosian, who was responsible for the sale of the piece from S.I. Newhouse to the Ammanns in 1986. (Gagosian has not said publicly for whom he was bidding.)
The 40-inch by 40-inch painting, which Warhol created using a silk-screen technique and a cropped publicity photo from the film “Niagra,” is part of a series that were shot with a pistol by performance artist Dorothy Podber in 1964. The canvas sold by Christies was not pierced by a bullet. Alex Rotter, chairman of Christie’s departments specializing in sales of 20th and 21st century art, described the piece as “the most significant 20th-century painting to come to auction in a generation.”
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The sale of the painting marks a new high watermark not just for a Warhol work—previously topping out at $105 million for Single Car Crash (Double Disaster) in 2013—an American piece, and a 20thcentury work, but also for a philanthropic auction. Proceeds from Christie’s sale will benefit the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation in Zurich, which is dedicated to improving the lives of children around the world by supporting health care and educational programs.
Still, the sale price of $170 million before fees fell short of pre-auction estimates of $200 million or higher, which may signal a cooling of what has been a red-hot art market for contemporary art. Sotheby’s sale of The Macklowe Collection, Part 1 last November, which featured some of the most significant works of modern and contemporary art sold at auction, fetched $676.1 million—well above the $600 million that was expected. It was characterized by Sotheby’s as “the most valuable single-owner auction ever staged.”
The Warhol painting also failed to become the most expensive ever sold at auction. That distinction is still held by Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvatore Mundi, which fetched $450 million at a 2017 Christie’s sale.
The Ammanns Collection sale, which brought in a total of $318 million, kicked off two weeks of important auctions in New York. Among the most anticipated: Christie’s May 12 sale of The Collection of Anne Bass, which featured 12 highly significant works from the 19th and 20th centuries and brought in $363 million, just above the pre-sale high estimate of $361 million; and Sotheby’s sale of an additional 30 works from the Macklowe Collection on May 16, expected to bring in up to another $236 million. Sotheby’s said in its announcement of the sale of the second Macklowe trove: “From Gerhard Richter to Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, leading names from the previous sale return with artworks from crucial moments in their careers, which act as critical counterpoints to those offered in the November sale.”
Among the works expected to garner the highest sale prices is another Warhol painting: Self Portrait from 1986, an 80-inch by 80-inch acrylic and silk screen ink on canvas work painted just before his death in 1987. The painting’s pre-sale estimate ranges from $15 million to $20 million. Another is Mark Rothko’s Untitled, 1960, which, having been in the Macklowe collection for nearly 40 years, has never before been brought to auction. It’s estimated to fetch between $35 million to $50 million.
One thing that does not appear to be cooling off any time soon is the American public’s fascination with Warhol and Monroe, at least as evidenced by their enduring command of popular culture focus, from fashion to the stage.
At this year’s Met Gala, Kim Kardashian donned not one but two dresses worn originally by Monroe: the first, a crystal-embellished nude-colored gown worn by the actor wore during her sultry performance of “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” at John F. Kennedy’s birthday in 1962 which Kardashian donned for the red carpet; the second, a green sequin dress designed by Norman Norell that Monroe wore the same year to the Golden Globes, in which Kardashian posed for a photo shoot in her hotel room after the gala.
Netflix has also rekindled interest in the lives of both artists with new documentaries about each. Released April 27, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, explores the actor’s final days. It comes on the heels of The Andy Warhol Diaries, a six-part documentary based on the artist’s dictated memoirs published posthumously in 1989.
Other aspects of Warhol’s life have garnered attention this spring in museums and on stage. The Brooklyn Museum’s Andy Warhol: Revelation, which examines the influence of his Catholic upbringing on his work, runs through June 19; “The Collaboration,” which ran from mid-February through early April in London, explored his partnership with artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
