Record £70m splashed on a Hockney painting
A DAVID Hockney painting has sold for £70million, smashing the auction record for a living artist.
Portrait Of An Artist (Pool With Two Figures) from 1972 sold for just more than $90million at Christie’s in New York.
The previous record for a work by a living artist was £45million, paid for a Balloon Dog sculpture by American Jeff Koons, in 2013.
Hockney’s painting shows two men, one doing the breaststroke under water while the other watches from the side of the pool.
The standing figure in the painting is said to represent Hockney’s former partner Peter Schlesinger, whom the painter met in 1966 while teaching art in California.
Yorkshireman Hockney, now 81, had begun the work when they split up in 1971.
After a break, he went back to finish it the following year.
Alex Rotter, co-chairman of post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s in New York, said the picture sold on Thursday is “the holy grail” of Hockney’s work.
He said: “It has all the elements that you would want in a Hockney painting. The California landscape, the beautiful trees and flowers The painting on show in New York this week. Inset below, artist Hockney and the sky and what we know him most for, which is the pool.” Christie’s has declined to reveal the name of the seller. However, it is reported to be businessman Joe Lewis, an 81-year-old investor who owns the Tavistock Group and Tottenham Hotspur. He is estimated to be worth £3.8billion. Other highlights of the sale included Francis Bacon’s Study Of Henrietta Moraes Laughing, which sold for almost £17million, and Alexander Calder’s 21 Feuilles Blanches, which doubled its estimate, selling for around £14million.
Hockney is considered to be one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
His previous auction record was £22million, paid for his 10ft landscape Pacific Coast Highway And Santa Monica, painted in 1990.