Getty Image / Lamparski
Christie’s Auction House held their ‘Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale’ last night and a ‘Rabbit’ sculpture (1955) by artist Jeff Koons set a world record for the most expensive piece ever sold from a living artist.
The piece sold for a record $91,075,000 and it is the second piece in an edition of three from the artist. The sculptor/artist, Jeff Koons, has an estimated net worth of over $200 million which easily makes him one of the most successful artists in history. It’s uncommon for an artist to realize so much commercial success during his or her life because it often takes generations for the brilliance of a piece to be realized, but this isn’t always the case with sculpting.
For the life of me, I cannot understand it. These days, he has an enormous workshop where he comes up with the ideas for his pieces but probably doesn’t even produce most of the works himself. Shit, with $200 million in the bank I’d probably be living out my days in Southampton or Sag Harbor. I couldn’t imagine remaining motivated to produce ground-breaking new artwork at the age of 66 after that much success.
Koons’ career really took off thanks to the ‘Puppy’ which I’m sure most of you have seen at some point because there are countless iterations of it now. It’s a sculpture of a puppy that’s built in the style of a balloon animal. ‘Rabbit’ measures 41 x 19 x 12 in. (104.1 x 48.3 x 30.5 cm.) which seems quite small to me for $100+ million but what do I know?
The ‘Rabbit’ sculpture was built in 1986 and it was expected to fetch somewhere between $50,000,000 and $70,000,000 but COMPLETELY blew past that projection and it was purchased by Robert E. Mnuchin who is an art dealer and the father of our current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to the NYT.
It was the ultimate prize among six works offered at Christie’s from the collection of the magazine publisher S.I. Newhouse Jr., who died in 2017. Estimated to raise at least $50 million, this sculpture, made in an edition of three and one artist’s proof, was the last example left in private hands, according to Christie’s.
The price, surpassing the $90.2 million with fees achieved, again at Christie’s, for Mr. Hockney’s 1972 painting, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures),” confirmed how Mr. Koons’s metal sculptures have become the ultimate billionaire trophies produced during the contemporary art boom of the 1980s and ’90s. The Hockney milestone came at the expense of Mr. Koons, the previous record-holder, whose “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold at auction for $58.4 million in November 2013. (via)
The Times goes on to state that ‘Rabbit’ elegantly alludes to former pieces from artists such as Andy Warhol but this allusion goes way over my head. All I see is a shiny stainless steel rabbit and I’m wondering why it wasn’t made out of silver, platinum, or gold.
The highest price paid for a piece of Koons artwork in the past five years was $22.8 million so this marks a HUGE surge in the value of his pieces. I’ve asked friends embedded in the Arts community to try and explain to me why these Jeff Koons pieces are worth record-breaking sums of money and nobody can give me a good answer. More of than not the answer is ‘I don’t know’ which is probably the best explanation available of why someone would ever spend almost $100 million on a tiny sculpture.
Maybe I’m just salty. My grandfather was a bronze sculptor and he apprenticed under Pablo Picasso while living in Rome after he graduated from RISD. Maybe I’m just salty because his sculptures aren’t worth more than any person could spend in a lifetime. Perhaps that’s it.
For more on this, record-breaking auction, you can click here to check out the NYT coverage.