Christie’s contemporary art sale was held on Wednesday night in New York City, where two of artist Andy Warhol’s paintings helped set a new auction record.
The auction house reportedly pulled in a total of $852.9 million in one night, its highest total ever, according to the website Fortune.com, but the two Andy Warhol paintings that were sold, “Triple Elvis” and “Four Marlons,” which were the top selling pieces, still didn’t beat the artist’s all-time highest sold painting.
“Triple Elvis” reportedly sold for $81.9 million and “Four Marlons” brought in $69.6 million at Christie’s, according to the media outlet SF Gate. Andy Warhol’s highest sold piece was the “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster” painting, which was auctioned at Sotheby’s last year for a total of $104.5 million.
The two paintings sold at the auction were reportedly known as Warhol’s most famous portraits. The 7-foot-high portraits were reportedly acquired by German casino company WestSpiel in the 1970s for one of its casinos.
Aside from Warhol’s paintings, the untitled blackboard painting also attracted a large amount of attention throughout the night as well and was eventually sold for $69.6 million, well above its expected sale of $55 million.
A handful of the most well-known U.S. collectors reportedly showed up to last night’s auction, including Michael Ovitz, a former Hollywood agent, J. Tomilson Hill, the vice chairman of Blackstone Group and Andrew Saul, a New York business, according to the New York Times.
