NEW YORK – A painting by Rene Magritte shattered an auction record for the surrealist artist on Nov 19, selling for more than US$121 million (S$162.4 million) at Christie’s in New York.
The seminal 1954 painting had been valued at US$95 million, and the previous record for a work by Magritte – who lived from 1898 to1967 – was US$79 million, set in 2022.
After a nearly 10-minute long bidding war on Nov 19, Empire Of Light (L’Empire Des Lumieres) was sold for US$121,160,000, “achieving a world-record price for the artist and for a surrealist work of art at auction”, according to auction house Christie’s.
The painting – depicting a house at night illuminated by a lamp post while under a bright, blue sky – is one of a series by the Belgian artist showing the interplay of shadow and light.
Empire Of Light was part of the private collection of Ms Mica Ertegun, an interior designer who fled communist Romania to settle in the US, where she became an influential figure in the arts world.
She died in late 2023 and was married to the late Mr Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who founded the Atlantic Records label.
The sale of the Magritte painting was an expected highlight of this week’s autumn sales season in New York, at a time when the art market has seen a slowdown since 2023.
Christie’s – which is controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by the Pinault family – said sales totalled US$2.1 billion in the first half of this year.
That is down for the second straight year, after a peak of US$4.1 billion in 2022 as the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the same Christie’s auction on Nov 19, a celebrated 1964 painting of a gas station by 86-year-old Ed Ruscha, titled Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn In Half, sold for US$68.26 million, setting a new auction record for the American pop artist. AFP
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