Art Auctions Hope to Fetch $600 Million Over 12 Days

Two Jackson Pollock drip paintings expected to fetch millions were among the offerings Tuesday in the first night of a 12-day, $600-million auction of art works.

Pollock’s “Number 8, 1950,” estimated at $8 million to $10 million, and “Number 19, 1949,” estimated at $3.5 million to $4.5 million, were expected to ring up the largest prices at the opening of the sale by Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the city’s biggest auction houses, and Habsburg, Feldman, a Geneva-based auctioneer.

“There is a tremendous amount of interest and purchasing power around the world,” said John L. Marion, chairman of Sotheby’s North America. “There is heavy buying from Europeans and tremendous interest from the Far East, especially Japan. Korean buyers are now emerging. And I would not count the Americans out, either.”

Sotheby’s and Christie’s were to auction 4,472 works, starting with contemporary art sales this week, and hope to bring in $572 million in sales.

Among the works to be auctioned Tuesday was “Triptych May-June,” completed by Francis Bacon in 1973 and inspired by the suicide of the artist’s close friend, George Dyer. It was expected to bring $3 million to $4 million.

Also on the auction block was Andy Warhol’s “Red Jackie,” portraying a ruby-lipped Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as First Lady in 1963. Its estimate before Tuesday’s sale was $300,000 to $350,000.

“Red Marilyn,” a 1964 depiction of Marilyn Monroe, will be offered at Christie’s tonight. The estimate for the signed, synthetic polymer silk-screen on canvas is $1.5 million to $2 million.

A Sotheby’s sale next Tuesday features Gaugin’s “Mata Mua,” completed in 1892 during the artist’s first trip to Tahiti. Estimated at $20 million to $25 million, it is being sold by Jaime Ortiz-Patino, heir to a Bolivian tin fortune, and Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.