Sotheby's Wins with Warhol

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Nov 12th 2009 at 6:01AM

The Christie's crowd on Tuesday may not have been ready to shell out big bucks for Andy Warhol's "Tunafish Disaster," but the crowd at Sotheby's was more than happy to by a boatload of currency. The top pop artist's "200 One Dollar Bills" found a buyer for a monstrous $43.8 million at the Sotheby's art auction in New York on Wednesday.

Pauline Karpidas, an art collector in London, offered the piece, Bloomberg News reports but wasn't able to verify with the collector herself. It looks like she scored with this one. "200 One Dollar Bills" carried a presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million, which didn't last long.

The piece consists of what its title states: 200 real-sized one dollar bills reproduced in black on grey ... and with a blue replica of the Treasury Department seal. If they were real cash, the sale price was greater by a factor of 219,000.

This wasn't the only success of the evening, and overall, the outcome was fantastic. Only two of the 54 lots failed to find new homes, and the final number, $134.4 million, thrashed the presale estimate of $97.7 million.

Tags: andy warhol, AndyWarhol, art, art auction, art auctions, art collector, ArtAuction, ArtAuctions, ArtCollector, artist, artwork, auction, auctionhouse, auctions, sothebys