$315.9 Million Adds Up to Sotheby’s Best-Ever Sale

NEW YORK—Any recession jitters lingering from last week's lackluster Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale at Sotheby's were quelled last night when the house achieved a total of $315,907,000. It is the highest sale total in Sotheby's history in any category, the previous record having been scored at an Impressionist and Modern Art sale 17 years ago.

Much was at stake for the auction house, as a reported 78 percent of the sale had been guaranteed, meaning that Sotheby's had agreed to pay a minimum amount to the consigners regardless of whether the work sold. After the auction, Sotheby's Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art Tobias Meyer admitted that "there was a time around five o’clock when my heart was beating very fast. But then I realized how much interest there was." He said that while the buying was mainly American, it also represented "high-quality hunger from a global community," and he remarked on the "unprecedented number of people" who had attended the previews.

Leading the sale was a 1969 painting of a bullfight by Francis Bacon, which sold to private dealer Philippe Segalot for $45.9 million. Segalot was a big buyer at last night's auction, also nabbing works by Robert Ryman and Andy Warhol. "It was incredible," Segalot said of the sale. He attributed its overall success to "a good mood" after Christie's successful auction the previous night, "and good artworks." Segalot is known to bid for such high-profile collectors as Francois Pinault, but he would not comment on who last night’s purchases were for.

Also outperforming its estimate was Jeff Koons's 1.5-ton sculpture Hanging Heart. Consigned by collector Adam Lindemann, the piece fetched $23.5 million, making it the most expensive work by a living artist ever to sell at auction, surpassing Damien Hirst's pill cabinet sculpture Lullaby Spring, which sold at Sotheby's London in June for $19 million.

Last night's sale set records for a number of other artists, including Matthew Barney, Ellsworth Kelly, Anish Kapoor, Richard Serra, and John Chamberlain, whose 1962 gnarled metal sculpture "Big E" brought $4.6 million. Other notable sales included an iconic Donald Judd stack sculpture, which went for $7.4 million to the San Francisco-based collector and Gap founder Don Fisher, who recently announced plans to open a vast private museum in the city's Presidio area. There were also records for works on paper by Robert Ryman and Andy Warhol, and a record for a painting by Koons.

The sale included a smattering of contemporary Chinese paintings, which performed well, with works by Fang Lijun and Zhang Xiaogang achieving record prices. (Sotheby's investment in contemporary Asian art can be gauged by, among other things, the fact that on December 6 it is setting up an exclusive exhibition of it—including works by Zeng Fanzhi and Wang Guangyi—at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Miami to coincide with the wildly popular Art Basel Miami Beach.)

Fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who was present at Christie's sale on the previous evening, made a repeat appearance last night at Sotheby’s, where he was seated in the front row and sporting blue tinted hair, a diamond stud earring, and a bright orange scarf. A man seated with Jacobs appeared to be the winning bidder on Andy Warhol's 1962 Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot), for $8.4 million.

Click on the photo gallery above for images and analysis of the sale's top lots.

Sarah Douglas is staff writer for Art & Auction.