On Monday night it became the priciest image of all time, even though it is not as sexy as the one of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch.
Andy Warhol's 1964 silk-screen of the actress' face sold for about $195 million in less than four minutes at Christie's.
The most expensive painting of the 20th century was sold by Christie's.
The 40-inch-by-40-inch painting, a trophy given its vibrant colors and glamorous subject matter, surpassed the previous high price of $110.5 million for a Basquiat skull painting at the same auction house.
The city has only begun to return to normal after two years of the coronaviruses epidemic, and the sale on Monday kicked off the spring auction season. Christie's salesroom at Rockefeller Center was filled with the familiar faces of dealers and art advisers who welcomed the opportunity to bid on blue-chip artworks in person again.
There is a lot of appetite, a lot of money and a lot of quality, according to the Austrian gallerist who was at the sale.
The upcoming two weeks of auctions could raise as much as $2 billion, according to the founder of the Fine Art Group.
The works at the Christie's auction were not accompanied by a guarantee, but a minimum price that a third party or the auction house would be willing to pay. All of the proceeds from the sale of the works were donated to the foundation of the Ammann family, which supports health care and educational programs for children. The estate wanted to make more money.
The risk of flying without a net was something that Guillaume Cerutti, Christie's chief executive, was fond of.
20 percent of the proceeds from the painting will be given to charity, and the buyer of the painting will have a say in that.
The Ammann siblings started a gallery in 1977 that specialized in Impressionist, Modern, postwar and contemporary artists. Thomas Ammann died in 1993 and his sister continued to lead the gallery. She died last year.
The top of the market is still strong and there is a lot of demand for quality. Other assets are bringing prices that you haven't seen before.
The 36 works in the sale brought a total of $318 million, but two of them did not sell.
The auction in Christie's newly designed sales room with specialists positioned on the sides and reporters on stools in the back was strong out of the gate. The auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen was on the phone and in the seats as he tried to sell the painting.
The American conceptual artist Mike Bidlo's Not Picasso (Bather with Beachball) went for over $1 million with fees.
The third lot was bought by the collector Peter Brant. XI was over an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. Cy Twombly's blue, green and purple painting on a wooden panel was purchased by a dealer for $17 million over the high estimate.
The Marilyn silk-screen, which Rotter recently called the most significant 20th-century painting to come to auction in a generation, felt like something of an anticlimax. The painting set a record, but there was speculation that it could be as much as $400 million. It was not clear who the bidder was for the painting, which eventually went to Gagosian.
The art adviser said that expectations were very high and that the buyer got a deal. It is one of the icons of the 20th century.
The Warhol painting is based on a promotional photo from the actress's film. In 1964, a woman walked into Warhol's Factory studio with a pistol and shot at a stack of Marilyn paintings. The canvas was not pierced by the bullet.
The Ammann siblings bought Warhol's work from Newhouse in 1998. The work of Newhouse was bought by a billionaire hedge-fund manager for $200 million.
The big question hanging over this auction season is whether the current market can absorb so much big-ticket material, with a surfeit of blue-chip art coming up for sale and a limited pool of very rich buyers.
The Warhol sale was expected to give another shot in the arm to the contemporary art market.
Christie's has a 21st Century evening sale on Tuesday and a 20th Century evening sale on Wednesday. The 1909 Picasso bronze cast, which was recently deionaccessed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be offered by Christie's on Thursday. It is estimated at $30 million and has a guarantee.
The Macklowe collection, which was the first cache of which brought more than $656 million in the fall, will be offered next week by Sotheby's. The 1969 Cy Twombly blackboard painting is estimated to be worth up to $60 million, while the Study of Red Pope 1962 is estimated to be worth up to $40 million.
On May 18th,Phillips will hold its 20th Century & Contemporary Art evening sale, featuring a bright orange 1982 untitled Basquiat with an estimate of $70 million, the seller, the Japaneseentrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, bought it just six years ago at Christie's for $5
Rebecca Fine is the managing director of Athena Art Finance.
The demand for work by Black artists is still unknown. Kerry James Marshall's Beauty Examined is estimated to be $8 million to $12 million. Sunday was at between $1.2 million and $1.8 million.
The relationship between Warhol and Basquiat continues to fascinate, given their history as competitors and close friends. Tony Shafrazi designed a poster for his show of paintings that featured the two artists in boxing gloves as if they were preparing to spar with each other.
Jessica Beck is the curator of art at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
The collector asked if he would sell his version of the Marilyn, but he said it had sentimental value.
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