$86 Million Worth of Bacon Sells At Sotheby's

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
May 15th 2008 at 4:02PM

The big wow from Sotheby's contemporary art sale on Wednesday, was the record price set for a Francis Bacon. His "Triptych, 1976" sold for $86.281 million setting a record for postwar art and topping the estimate of around $70 million. Sotheby's had their best night in their nearly 300-year history bringing in a total of $362 million, which bested the $348.2 million haul from Christie's just the night before. While at the Christie's sale a Mark Rothko painting went for over $50 million, at this sale a similar painting went unsold. Seventeen other artists also set record including Robert Rauschenberg, who died this week. His "Overdrive" sold for $14.6 million. Takashi Murakami's amusing sculpture "My Lonesome Cowboy" went for $15.16 million which is rather amazing considering his previous record for $2.7 million. At the sale 87 percent of the 83 lots were sold and the sale exceeded the high presale estimate of $357 million. Fine art spending is alive and well, if there's a fall coming, well, inevitably there will be one, it seems it won't be for a while yet.

[Thanks, Rob!]

Tags: art, francis bacon, robert rauschenberg, sothebys