Warhol `Elvis` fetches $37 million at NYC auction
Baku, May 10 (AZERTAC). Andy Warhol`s `Double Elvis` sold for $37 million and works by Roy Lichtenstein and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei broke their own records at Sotheby`s contemporary art sale on Wednesday.
Lichtenstein`s `Sleeping Girl`, depicting a woman with closed eyes and flowing blond hair, fetched $44,882,500; Weiwei`s 1-ton, handmade porcelain `Sunflower Seeds` brought $782,500.
Another major work on the auction block - Francis Bacon`s `Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror` - sold for $44,882,500. The buyers` names for each of the four pieces were not released.
The sale came on the heels of art auction history. Last week, the auction house sold Edvard Munch`s `The Scream` for $119.9 million, making it the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.
"The reason for these record-breaking sales is, quite simply, the quality of material on show," said Michael Frahm, a contemporary art adviser at the London-based Frahm Ltd. "The key is quality."
Warhol`s `Double Elvis (Ferus Type)`, a silver silkscreen image of Elvis Presley depicted as a cowboy, fetched $37,042,500. It had been expected to sell for $30 million to $50 million. The auction house said it was the first "Double Elvis" to appear on the market since 1995. Warhol produced a series of 22 images of Elvis. Nine are in museum collections.
The rock and roll heartthrob is shown armed and shooting from the hip, a shadowy Elvis figure faintly visible in the background. It was offered for sale by a private American collector, who acquired it in 1977.
It had been in the same private collection for more than 30 years.
The `Elvis` silkscreen was exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1963, the year it was created. The auction catalog described the work, based on a movie publicity photo, as `the deification of a contemporary warrior-saint, the towering, pre-eminent idol bearing a deadly weapon as if protecting the mythical world of celebrity itself.`
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