Painting by Pollock Brings Record Price

A three-part auction of contemporary art Monday night rang up $27.9 million in sales and set a spate of records on the eve of the conclusion of a 10-day sale of Andy Warhol’s collection.

Jackson Pollock’s 1955 painting, “Search,” said to be the Abstract Expressionist’s last canvas, was sold to a Japanese dealer for $4.8 million, a record for contemporary art sold at auction. The previous record was $3.6 million for a Jasper Johns painting called “Out the Window.”

Pollock’s 5-by-7 1/2-foot abstraction, executed in the artist’s celebrated “drip” style, was part of the estate of Belle Linsky, a patron of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Pollock was offered in a $20.8-million sale by Sotheby’s that also set records for Franz Kline, Warhol and Los Angeles artist Richard Diebenkorn. An unidentified American dealer paid $1.9 million for Kline’s 1951 black-and-white abstraction, “Ninth Street.” Warhol’s classic Pop painting, “Coca Cola Bottles,” brought $1.4 million from an anonymous bidder. Diebenkorn’s 1957 figurative oil, “July,” commanded $1.2 million from an unidentified buyer.

Rang Up $5.2 Million

The Warhol sale rang up $5.2 million and brought the nine-day total from the artist’s estate to $22.3 million. The final session this morning is expected to push that figure to at least $23 million.

Sotheby’s had expected the entire 10-day auction of 10,000 items in Warhol’s collection to gross no more than $15 million, but the sale soared past that estimate last Saturday.

Unlike last week’s sales, which offered the public an eclectic array of Warhol’s jewelry, furniture, bric-a-brac and memorabilia, the Monday evening event, open only to ticket holders, was strictly devoted to fine art. Works by the Pop artist’s well-known colleagues, estimated to sell for up to $450,000, were the most expensive items in the Warhol auction.

A 1967 untitled oil and crayon work by Cy Twombly became the surprising star of the Warhol sale when Karsten Greve, a dealer from Cologne, W. Germany, bought it for $990,000. Sotheby’s had predicted that it would sell for $300,000 to $400,000.

“Screen Piece,” a gray abstraction by Jasper Johns, estimated at $350,000 to $450,000 fetched $660,000. Two of Roy Lichtenstein’s early Pop canvases stayed somewhat closer to their estimates. “Sailboats,” expected to bring $350,000 to $450,000, brought down the gavel at $605,000, while “Laughing Cat,” estimated at $200,000 to $300,000 commanded a price of $319,000.

Prices Not Reached

All 22 lots in the Warhol sale found buyers, but nine of the 52 lots in a sale of works consigned by various owners failed to reach their reserve prices and were bought in by the auction house.

Part of the Monday night sale was a benefit that raised $1.9 million for an AIDS care program at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Of the 15 works donated by artists, a recent untitled watercolor by Jasper Johns brought the top price of $350,000.

Johns will be in the spotlight again tonight, when Christie’s puts “Diver,” a huge, five-panel painting, on the block in another contemporary art sale. Advertised as “the most important painting by a living artist ever to be auctioned,” Johns’ encyclopedic abstraction is estimated to bring between $3.5 million and $4.5 million. But it will have to do a bit better than that to surpass Pollock’s newly established record of $4.8 million.