It’s an auction that will make noise. This time, silence will not be golden, to the great displeasure of André Prévot. This Monday, the portrait of Marilyn Monroe Shot Sage Blue Marilyn painted by Andy Warhol in 1962 will be auctioned by Christie’s in New York. The international auction house estimated the painting at 200 million dollars (about 190 million euros).
Christie’s considers that “this work is on its way to becoming the most expensive 20th century painting ever sold at auction. “. The profits will be dedicated to “improving the lives of children around the world, through health and education programs”, according to the Zurich foundation Thomas and Doris Ammann, which owns the painting.
The biggest sale of a single painting entirely for charity so far was held by the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller in 2018. However, according to AFP, the all-time high for any time period is to Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, obtained in November 2017 for the “modest” sum of 450.3 million dollars (427.7 million euros).
A new golden age of contemporary art auctions?
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, which had serious consequences on the New York art market in 2020, the latter is now reaching new heights. This is mainly due to large fortunes in the city as well as increasingly young Asian buyers.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) – digitized works, invented in 2017 by Dieter Shirley, an American computer scientist – represent a new resource for artists. For some experts, these NFTs would even be the next goose on the contemporary art market.