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A 1964 Andy Warhol lithograph of Marilyn Monroe's lips, "I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever," fetched $90,000 in an online Christie's auction of Warhol works that ended Tuesday. (Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc.) |
Marilyn Monroe, one of America’s most beloved pop cultural icons, and New Coke, one of its most despised, commanded the biggest bids in the first in a series of online Christie’s auctions of Andy Warhol artworks that ended Tuesday.
The winning bids totaled $1.84 million for 124 auction lots. It was the second round of all-Warhol sales in a multi-year effort by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to liquidate its holdings to boost its grantmaking endowment. Winning bidders also must pay a 25% buyer's premium.
The first sale, a regular auction in November at Christie's in New York City, reaped $17 million.
QUIZ | At the auction house: Can you guess the price?
“I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever,” a 1964 lithograph on two sheets of paper showing five different-colored pairs of Monroe’s lips, attracted 50 bids in the online auction and fetched $90,000 -- 16 times higher than the pre-sale top estimate of $5,000.
“New Coke,” a colored screen print on two sheets of paper dated around 1985, the year Coca Cola changed its soda’s formula to the general distaste of the guzzling public, went for $75,000, more than doubling the $35,000 top estimate.
The auction's bestselling celebrity image was Warhol’s own: He appeared in a dozen pieces (11 of them photographs) that collectively brought in $116,200, including $38,000 for a T-shirt with his fright-wigged visage.
PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times
Only one of the show’s 125 auction lots failed to attract any bids: “Madonna and Child,” a 1981 graphite drawing on paper that showed a baby suckling its mother’s breast, had been expected to sell for $30,000 to $40,000.
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