©2008–2009 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin

At Emmanuel Perrotin's booth, "The Simple Things," a collaboration between Takashi Murakami and hip-hop star Pharrell Williams, went for $2 million.

Andy Warhol Jake and Dinos Chapman Pablo Picasso Alberto Giacometti Joan Mitchell Henri Matisse Jean-Michel Basquiat Tracey Emin

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

“Maybe we’ll find the beginning of a conversation,” he added.

The dealer recalled selling other versions of the series in the $25–30,000 range when he first got hold of them almost three decades back. The 36-foot-long Big Retrospective Painting he sold four years ago to a private collector, who decided to return it to the market. Several sources noted that the work fetched $80 million back then, so someone might be eligible for a relative bargain.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility. If there was a surprise in the first few hours of the fair, it was that works were selling, even some expensive ones.

London’s White Cube had raked in approximately 15 transactions at prices ranging from £75,000 ($121,990) to £500,000, for works by such artists as Antony Gormley, the Chapman Brothers, Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin, Mark Quinn, Andreas Gursky, and Raqib Shaw. Summing up the general tenor, however early, the gallery’s Neil Wenman said, “It’s much more positive than we expected,” adding that they were “seeing more Americans than we thought.”

There was even a bit of impulse buying, as evidenced by Paris dealer and contemporary collector John Sayegh-Belchatowski, who bought Charles Ray’s all-white wall relief of an open paint can, Wet Paint (2008), in modified gypsum plaster with plastic and fiberglass, for approximately $300,000 from New York’s Matthew Marks Gallery.

Apparently unfamiliar with Ray’s near-mythic reputation stateside, the collector anxiously asked a passerby, “Is he really famous? I just walked by and immediately liked it.”

At London’s Lisson Gallery, Anish Kapoor’s hallucinatory, mirror-like wall piece Untitled (2009), consisting of stainless steel shaped as a giant disk, sold for £1 million. It came straight from Kapoor’s studio and sold to a European collector, according to the gallery.

But the grand prize would have to go to Paris-based Emmanuel Perrotin’s duplex stand and its fresh-from-the-studio Takashi Murakami collaboration with hip-hop star Pharrell Williams. Titled The Simple Things and set inside a chamber-like plexi vitrine, the Mr. Dob–themed sculpture is a hallucinatory work in fiberglass, steel, LED light system, and acrylic, and features seven objects — including a bag of Doritos, a bottle of Heinz ketchup, and a can of Pepsi — all made in different types of gold (pink, yellow, and white) and encrusted with rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds. It sold for $2 million.

“It looks bling, but it’s really anti-bling,” insisted Perrotin, still flush with excitement from the transaction, which involved a battle between four buyers, two of whom were friends and decided to buy the work jointly and share it.

“Personally, I’m proud not to have followed all these people with less ambitious works,” said Perrotin. “We have to follow the dreams of artists.” He further noted that the piece “was a homage to real life.”

Perrotin revealed that the workaholic artist was taking his first vacation in five years, celebrating the completion of the two-year project with Williams and his painting cycle for François Pinault at Palazzo Grassi in Venice.

Asked where Murakami was going, Perrotin said, “to a very small Japanese village to read his manga.”

Judd Tully is Editor at Large of Art+Auction.