Hockney’s ‘holy grail’ makes a record splash with £70m sale
A PAINTING by David Hockney has smashed the auction record for a living artist, fetching £70million in a frenzied sale.
The 1972 work, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) went under the hammer at Christie’s in New York on Thursday. The record was previously held by American artist Jeff Koons for his Balloon Dog (Orange) sculpture that sold for £36.8million in 2013.
In an unprecedented move, the painting had no reserve price or guarantee, creating additional hype and mystery around the sale.
Bidding opened at $18 million (£14million) and soon went to $50 million (£39million), by which time there were seven parties still in the running. It was eventually sold to an anonymous phone bidder.
The reported seller was Joe Lewis, the British billionaire currency trader and owner of Tottenham Hotspur. He lives in the Bahamas and is an avid art collector. Ahead of the sale, he was reported to have turned down several offers in the region of £60 million.
One Christie’s expert said: “We rarely can say, ‘This is the one opportunity to buy the best painting from the artist.’ This is it.”
Alex Rotter, co-chairman of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s in New York, described the painting as “the holy grail” of Hockney’s work. “It has all the elements that you would want in a Hockney: the California landscape, the beautiful trees and flowers and the sky, and then what we know him most for, which is the pool.”
Hockney was inspired to do the painting by two photographs he saw on the floor of his studio: one of a swimmer in Hollywood, and another of a boy staring at an item on the ground.
The standing figure is thought to represent the artist’s former partner, Peter Schlesinger, whom he met in 1966. Hockney had already begun the painting when the couple split up in 1971; after a break, he resumed the piece the following year.
The best price previously achieved at auction by the Bradford-born artist was $28.4million (£22million) in 1990.
Speaking last week to The Art Newspaper, Hockney, 81, said he became fascinated by pools after seeing them as he flew into Los Angeles.
“I began to notice the pools, and I devised ways to [paint them] that didn’t look like photographs. Photographs are just a frozen moment, and I knew dancing lines weren’t frozen.
“I only did about 12 pool paintings. I didn’t do that many.”