Word: auctioned
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Thus it was with Velásquez's portrait of his mulatto assistant, Juan de Pareja, which brought $5,544,000 at Christie's last November-the highest price ever paid for a work of art at public auction. The winning bid belonged to Wildenstein & Co., and young Alec Wildenstein explained at the time, with a straight face, that the family gallery had bought it because his great-grandfather had been in love with it and left instructions to snap it up if it ever came on the market. But last week the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced...
...once remarked, "everyone will be famous for at least 15 minutes." Warhol's own 15 minutes has been very long. His fame is self-replicating: like a perpetual-motion machine, it grinds on amid the iridescent cavorting of his superstars and the thump of heavy, if rigged auction prices ($60,000 from a Swiss dealer for a Campbell's soup can recently). It has reached the point where Warhol is not so much famous for doing something-he rarely turns out any paintings beyond a few commissioned portraits a year, and no longer directs his own films...
...this was decisively demonstrated last week in Parke-Bernet's Manhattan auction rooms, where Millionaire Norton Simon was putting some of his $80 million collection on the block...
...Gogh, L'Hôpital de St. Paul á St. Rémy, joined the no longer select club of certified million-dollar marvels by fetching $1,200,000. A smallish Gauguin self-portrait, far less impressive than several others he painted, brought $420,000-an auction record for that artist. Degas's 37½-inch-high La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans, wearing the original cloth tutu and silk hair ribbon Degas used, broke the existing auction record for sculpture, selling for $380,000. Ironically, the little statue was received with such hostility when Degas first exhibited...
...told, the sale took in $6,506,300 for 74 works, the highest ever for any art auction held in America. Said Auctioneer Peter Wilson with satisfaction: "A real shot in the arm for the art market." He spoke as a merchandiser, not a critic...