(BBC) – A painting by Roy Lichtenstein has sold at auction for $42.6m (£26.4m) – a new record for the US ‘pop artist’.
The cartoon-style painting, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder at Christie’s in New York, features a woman on the phone with a speech bubble containing the title.
The sale of contemporary and post-war works fetched $272.8m (£169.1m) in all.
Yet an Andy Warhol piece expected to fetch up to $50m (£31m) went for less than half that amount.
Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) was sold for $23.9m (£14.8m) at Wednesday’s auction.
On Tuesday, a Warhol canvas of a black-and-white Coke bottle sold for $35.4m (£21.9m) at rival New York auction house Sotheby’s.
The Lichtenstein sale smashed a previous record for the artist set in 2005, when his work In the Car fetched $16.2m (£10m).
In a statement, Christie’s said Ohhh…Alright… – painted in 1964 – “characterises Lichtenstein’s captivation and inspiration with techniques of commercial printing and reproduction.”
Other highlights of the sale included Jeff Koons’ sculpture Balloon Flower (Blue), which sold for $16.8m (£10.4m).
Records were also set by works from US sculptor Alexander Calder, Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Californian painter Mark Tansey.
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Source: BBC
