Auction in New York: a Marilyn by Warhol could go for 200 million dollars

2022-05-07T08:17:04.281Z

Christie's will sell, Monday, May 9, a portrait of the American icon by the master of pop art. This auction could become the most expensive work of the 20th century.

Rain of new records in sight on the very lucrative art market in New York, the Christie's house will sell on Monday a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol which could go for 200 million dollars, which would make it the work of most expensive 20th century art ever sold at auction.

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Read alsoAuction: Andy Warhol's

Marilyn Monroe

announced as breaking all records

The great New York competitor, Sotheby's, is not left out since it will sell from May 16 for a billion dollars worth of contemporary and modern works of art, including a second batch of the very famous collection Maclowe.

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Sotheby's, which moved from London to New York and has been owned since 2019 by Franco-Israeli telecom mogul Patrick Drahi, smashed it all in November by totaling $676 million in sales in a single evening with the first batch of this Macklowe collection.

It had been put on the market following the divorce of the wealthy couple formed by Harry Macklowe, a real estate developer, and Linda Burg, an honorary administrator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met).

Without a doubt, the enthusiasm is unprecedented,

" said Joan Robledo-Palop, collector and CEO of Zeit Contemporary Art, to AFP.

The year 2021 was already that of all records with, for example, 7.3 billion dollars in sales for Sotheby's.

New hens with golden eggs

Experts believe that the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought New York to its knees in 2020, certainly wiped out in-person auctions but not the appetite and money of buyers, especially New Yorkers and Asians.

In addition, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), digital objects certified as unique thanks to blockchain technology, are considered the new goose that lays the golden egg.

At Christie's, property, via its investment company Artémis, of François Pinault, a very large French fortune, we pride ourselves that the painting

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn

painted in 1964 by Andy Warhol is "

the most important painting of the 20th century to be sold at auction in a generation

”.

The famous image of Marilyn Monroe, American actress and world icon with a tragic destiny (1926-1962), belongs to the Zurich foundation Thomas and Doris Ammann (a brother and a sister), which will devote the proceeds of the sale "

to a work of charity

" for "

health and education programs

" for children around the world, according to Christie's.

Marilyn, a new Mona Lisa?

For anecdote and legend, the four

Shot Marilyns

works , including this

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,

a one meter square, take their names from an incident that occurred in 1964 in Andy Warhol's studio in Manhattan : a woman asking the artist if she could "

photograph

" the paintings ("

shoot

" in English) fired at them with a revolver.

Christie's experts even compare this image of smiling Marilyn, whose original photo was taken from

Henry Hathaway 's film

Niagara , to the mysterious smile of
Mona Lisa

, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

If it leaves "

around 200 million dollars

" as Christie's hopes, the "

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn