A Warhol sold for $85 million in New York

It took two minutes and a brief duel between two auction house representatives, who took orders over the phone, for this 1963 work to drop for $74 million at the hammer. That’s $85,350,500 with costs, while Sotheby’s estimated it at over $80 million.

The pop art master, who died in 1987, has become an auction star, and the last time a monumental canvas from this series, known as the Death and Disaster Series, sold in 2013, it set a new record for artist, for $105 million at Sotheby’s. Since then a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1962), has been auctioned in early May at Christie’s, also in New York, for $195 million, becoming the most expensive work of the 20th century ever sold at auction.

From his full name White Disaster [White Car Crash 19 Times], the canvas sold on Wednesday evening, made with silkscreen ink and graphite, represents 19 times in black and white the same image of a macabre car accident, with a scene sometimes dazzled, as if by the light of a flash. It is 3.6 meters tall and comes from a private collection. No information is filtered about the buyer’s identity.