Christie’s takes more than $1 billion in 3 days after another Rothko triumph

Work by the Latvian artist Mark Rothko continues to draw the highest prices at auctions in New York.

His ‘No.10’ sold for $81.9 million on Wednesday night, helping Christie’s reach turnover of more than $1 billion in three days, after another of his works topped sales at Sotheby’s earlier in the week.

The price paid for the 1958 painting of chromatic and horizontal divisions came close to the record $87 million paid for a Rothko work, ‘Orange, Red, Yellow’, auctioned at Christie’s in 2012, and far exceeded the $46.5 million sale of his ‘Untitled: Yellow and Blue’ at Sotheby’s on Tuesday.

The sales at Christie’s over the past three days, worth more than $1.4 billion, mean it is the first auction house to record sales of more than $1 billion in a single week.

Andy Warhol’s iconic ‘Colored Mona Lisa’, a pop reinterpretation of the Leonardo da Vinci classic, sold for $56 million and Lucian Freud’s painting of a nude woman titled ‘Benefits Supervisor Resting’ sold for $56.2 million.

These, together with the triumphant Rothko, are iconic paintings in the styles of their respective artists.

Even so, these prices, in the midst of a crazed speculative art market bubble, failed to match up to the staggering $179 million paid for Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version O)’ at Christie’s at Rockefeller Plaza on Monday.

A Giacometti sculpture also sold Monday at the socalled “auction of the year” for $141.3 million.

Other more ‘modest’ record prices for works by other artists were also noted.

The Robert Ryman work ‘Bridge’ sold for $20.6 million, and Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Johanson’s Painting’ for $18.46 million.