Green Car Crash Quadruples Warhol Price Record

Christie's May 16, 2007 Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City was, to put it mildly, a roaring success. The sale total of $384,654,400 (US) was the second highest ever for an art auction, eclipsed only by Christie's November 15, 2006 Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale ($491 million). Of the 78 lots at auction, 74 sold, around three quarters of these sold above their pre-sale estimates and world auction records were established for 26 artists. (Joyous day, some of these artists are even still alive to reap benefit from their new pricing standards.)

The unquestionable belle of the ball, though, was Andy Warhol's Green Car Crash (1963) which sold for a cool $71,720,000, including the buyer's premium. The previous record for a Warhol was $17,376,000 (sold at the November 2006 sale) for Mao (1972). Which effectively means that the world auction record for Andy Warhol's work quadrupled *overnight* with $2.2 million to spare. I haven't seen such neat leap-frogging since third grade, and am sure that somewhere, on some other astral plane, Andy Warhol is showing no visible reaction whatsoever to this news.

See also:

• Pre-sale estimate notes:Andy's Interminable Fifteen Minutes
• Artist Profile: Andy Warhol
• Image Gallery: Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale