It was the gilded era of conspicuous consumption. New money, mostly from corporate raiding, chased after all things antique and rich: Old Master paintings, pedigreed jewels, Chinese porcelain, English brown furniture and everything 18th-century French. Meanwhile, Japanese tycoons went mad for the Impressionists — the higher the price, the better. One of these corporate samurai paid $39.9 million for van Gogh’s Sunflowers, 1888, at a Christie’s London sale, in April 1987. Still, the New York HQs of Christie’s and Sotheby’s outshined their London salesrooms. In SoHo, contemporary-art dealers flourished. And Andy Warhol presided over it all.

See more highlights from 1979–1988:

"1979-1988" originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2009 Table of Contents.