3 min read · 20 May 2024
Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) by Andy Warhol sold for $3.68m. Image courtesy of Christie's
New York: Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn), which sold for $3.68m, led Christie's $75.19m day sale, marking the tail end of the city’s spring auctions. For all the highlights, see HENI News
New York: Lynne Drexler led Bonhams $2.61m post-war & contemporary art auction when her painting Rita's Laundry Line (1981), sold for $229,100, 350% above its estimate. HENI News
New York: Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (1959), an assemblage of a tin can and pocket watch that the artist once gave to Frank Stella, was among the works that failed to find a buyer at Christie’s and so was bought-in. HENI News
Accra: Kehinde Wiley has been accused by the Ghanaian-British artist and curator Joseph Awuah-Darko of sexual assault, an allegation the US artist denies.
Hong Kong: Yayoi Kusama’s red-dot Infinity painting, which measures more than five foot tall, heads to auction at Bonhams with a more than $5m estimate.
And in other news
Legal: Christie’s website went back online on Sunday, May 19, more than a week after the auction house was targeted by a cyberattack.
"‘For most of my career, I was up against a brick wall. But resistance [to my work] has begun to crumble, and [the attention] is threatening to turn into a tsunami,’ Judy Chicago tells The Guardian ahead of the opening of her solo show at London’s Serpentine Galleries."
- The Guardian
On this day
On May 20, 1883, Mount Krakatoa erupted in Indonesia. Researchers have speculated that the blood red clouds in Edvard Munch’s The Scream was inspired by the volcano’s effect on the sky being seen in Scandinavia that summer. The theory is weakened by the ten-year gap between the eruption and the painting, however.
Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Norway