RECENT ART SALES BREAK RECORDS ACROSS THE BOARD
In the last month, records in art sales have been broken on multiple fronts. Pop artist extraordinaire Roy Lichtenstein’s Sleeping Girl from 1964broke a previous record of $43.2 million set by the artist at Christie’s in November by selling for $44.8 million at Sotheby’s - Christie, notably, also just sold Rothko’s Orange, Red, Yellow for the highest price of any Post-War piece at $86.9 million. But the most significant news of all in this crazy month of art sales was the transfer of Edvard Munch’s game-changing The Scream painting, which became the most expensive work of art in the world at $119,922,500. Arguably the second-most recognizable work of art in the world, the painting surpassed Picasso’s work and Giacometti’s sculpture - the only sculpture in the world worth more than $100 million - for the title. Yahoo! reports:
Besides “The Scream” and Picasso’s “Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust,” only two other works have sold for more than $100 million at auction. Those are Picasso’s “Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)” for $104.1 million in 2004 and Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” for $104.3 million in 2010.
