Marilyn’s £158m payday
Bullet-damaged Warhol portrait fetches record
IT’S a slice of pop art history with a back story that’s almost as legendary as its subject.
Now Andy Warhol’s iconic Shot Sage Blue Marilyn print has smashed the record for the most expensive work by an American artist to sell at auction.
The silk-screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe, who starred in films including Some Like It Hot and The Seven-Year Itch, was one of five painted by Warhol in 1964.
But four of them attained immortality when performance artist Dorothy Podber spotted them stacked together in his Factory studio and asked to ‘shoot’ them.
Thinking she meant with a camera, Warhol agreed, prompting Miss Podber to take out a pistol and fire a bullet through the eyes of the paintings.
Warhol later restored the artworks, which became known as the Shot Marilyns and took on a life of their own. After the first sold for just £4,000 in 1967, the price crept up over the years as everwealthier collectors acquired them. Shot Sage Blue Marilyn fetched £158million ($195million) when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in New York on Monday. This made it the most expensive 20th-century artwork to sell at auction, taking the crown from Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, which sold for £145million in 2015.
American art dealer Larry Gagosian bought the painting, part of a collection from the estate of Swiss siblings and art dealers Thomas and Doris Ammann.
The auction ended with a sale price of £138million before taxes and fees. Before going under the hammer, it had been estimated to fetch £162million.
Christie’s chief executive Guillaume Cerutti said he was ‘thrilled’ by the sale.
The record for an American artist had been held by Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose 1982 painting Untitled, depicting a skull composed of black brushstrokes, fetched £90million at Sotheby’s in 2017.
Warhol, a leading figure in the pop art movement, first painted Miss Monroe in 1962 in the wake of her death from an overdose in Los Angeles.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which fetched £365million in 2017 – also at Christie’s in New York – is the most expensive work of art ever sold.
‘We are thrilled at the sale’