Getty Image / Tony Vaccaro / iStockphoto / AndreyPopov
History was made this week when Jackson Pollock‘s Number 7A, 1948 painting fetched the most of any ‘truly abstract painting’ ever at auction. It also crushed the record for any Pollock art works sold at auction to date and raised the bar higher than anyone imagined.
Going into the auction at Christie’s, the world-renowned auction house estimated the Number 7A, 1948 would sell for somewhere in the realm of $100 million. The final sale price smashed that estimation and the riveting moment was filmed (video below) for all the world to see as the auction heated up.
‘Number 7A, 1948’ by Jackson Pollock Sells For Record $181 Million At Christie’s Auction
The final sale price of $181 million makes this the fourth-most expensive piece of artwork ever sold at auction according to the BBC News. It is also far and away the most expensive ‘truly abstract painting’ ever sold.
Coming into this auction, the previous record for a Jackson Pollock piece sold at auction was $61.2 million. His Number 17, 1951 painting fetched that amount back in 2021. Just five short years later and the record has nearly tripled.
Here is the moment it all went down at Christie’s Auction House:
@christies_inc This evening at Christie’s New York, Jackson Pollock’s ‘Number 7A, 1948’ set a new record for the artist. Lively bidding ended with a hammer price of $181.2M. ‘Number 7A, 1948’ from the collection of Si Newhouse is one of the largest of the artist’s celebrated drip paintings ever to appear at auction — a monumental work from his breakthrough years in Springs, Long Island. It transformed our auction room into a theatre of suspense, concluding in one of the most riveting bidding sequences of the season at Rockefeller Center.
In total, this lot at Christie’s Auction House brought in $1,121,126,500 with 97% of the lot sold. The auction on Monday night combined the ‘Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse’ and the ’20th Century Evening Sale’ lots together. It also broke an attendance record at Christie’s for a ‘sale exhibition preview’ with 20,000 attendees visiting Christie’s Rockefeller Center to see the pieces before they were sold.
The ‘Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse’ itself fetched $631 million. Combined with the previous sales from Newhouse’s private art collection, it has fetched $1.05 billion in total. That is second only to Paul Allen’s collection which was sold in 2022. They are the only two private art collections to have sold for over $1 billion at auction to date, according to Christie’s.
Other major pieces sold were Brancusi’s Danaïde (circa 1913) for $107,585,000, Joan Miró’s Portrait de Madame K. (1924) for $53,535,000, and Tête de femme (Fernande) (1909), Homme à la guitare (1913), La femme enceinte, 1er état (conceived in 1950; this bronze version cast circa 1951-1953) and Tête de femme (1907) which sold for $48,360,000, $40,885,000, $22,485,000 and $14,435,000 respectively, per a Christie’s press release.
Just a truly wild night at the auction house.