Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portrait sells for record $195 million
Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen portrait of Marilyn Monroe, arguably one of the most recognizable images born out of the last century, sold for a record-setting $195 million (including fees) at Christie’s New York on Monday evening. The result makes it the most expensive work by a 20th-century artists ever to be sold at auction, ArtNews reports.
It sold to art dealer Larry Gagosian, who was bidding in the room.
The painting, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964), depicts a press photo from Monroe’s 1953 noir film Niagara. The image of the actress is one Warhol used repeatedly in his work until his death in 1987. It derives from his “Shot Marilyn” portrait series, which Warhol produced after an incident at his downtown studio when he prompted a collaborator, Dorothy Podber, to shoot into a stack of canvases.
The result for this 1964 work almost doubled the artists’s previous auction record of $105.4 million, set when his 1963 canvas Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) sold at Sotheby’s in 2013. The present lot had been held in a private collection for five decades.
Four bidders—one on the phone with Christie’s co-chairman of Christie’s Impressionist and Modernist, Adrien Meyer, two others on the phone with New York specialists, and a bidder in the room—competed for the work, which was offered as the last lot of the night.
The painting, which was offered in the sale without a financial guarantee, hammered at a bid of $170 million, going to Gagosian, the room bidder, for a final price of $195 million. The hammer price was $30 million below the $200 million estimate upon request that Christie’s had designated it ahead of the auction.