RECORDS SET AT AUCTION OF ASHLEY COLLECTION

Ten paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists from the collection of an entertainment industry executive sold at auction Wednesday for $4.4 million in a weeklong series of auctions that has totaled $33.2 million so far.

The sales of post-World War II art have thrust the value of several living artists’ work to near and beyond $1 million for the first time in the history of art and set world auction records for 26 of them, several of whom are from Europe.

The sale at Christie’s Gallery of works owned by Ted Ashley, vice chairman of Warner Communications, saw a nightmarish portrait entitled “Seated Figure,” painted in 1978 by Francis Bacon, sold to an unidentified private collector for $935,000. It was an auction record for the popular British artist.

Other top prices in the Ashley sale were $792,000 for a 1962 Roy Lichtenstein Pop painting in cartoon style entitled “Blang,” a record for the artist, and $550,000 for Mark Rothko’s 1954 blue-and-yellow abstract, called “Light Earth and Blue.”

Other Ashley prices included $638,000 for Willem de Kooning’s oil “Woman” painted in 1952, and $230,500 for Claes Oldenburg’s “Girls’ Dresses Blowing in the Wind,” created out of enameled muslin soaked in plaster in 1961. This was a record auction price for Oldenburg.

A $4.2-million sale of 49 works from other collections immediately following the Ashley sale set a record price of $825,000 for a work by Abstract Expressionist Sam Francis entitled “Summer No. 1.” It was bought by an unidentified Chicago dealer.

The sale set auction records for European artists Pierre Soulages, Francesco Clemente, A. R. Penck and Miquel Barcello and Americans Julian Schnabel, Roger Brown and Ronald Davis.

Sotheby’s gallery began the week of auctions with a series of four sales of post-World War II art from the estate of New York taxi fleet tycoon Robert C. Scull, his former wife, Ethel Scull, and various other collectors. Scull’s estate realized $8.6 million from the sale of 132 works--a record for a single-owner contemporary art sale--and Ethel Scull realized $4.8 million from the sale of only nine works.

Christie’s has scheduled three contemporary art sales running through today.

The final sale at Sotheby’s Wednesday morning set an auction record for a sculpture by Walter De Maria, “Cage II,” a stainless steel construction which fetched $63,200. Other records for individual artists were $52,800 for an abstract oil by Myron Stout and $47,500 for a magic realist portrait, “Constance West,” by Alfred Leslie.

In previous sales individual auction records were set for works by Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, George Segal, Mark di Suvero, Neil Jenny, Larry Poons, Richard Artschwager, Ellsworth Kelly, Bruce Nauman, Larry Rivers, Richard Pousette-Dart and Robert Morris.