Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portrait sells for $195 million at auction

The Warhol portrait, described by Christie’s art expert Alex Rotter as “one of the greatest paintings of all time,” sold in about four minutes of bidding to dealer Larry Gagosian. It wasn’t clear on whose behalf he was bidding. A Christie’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday.

Monday night’s sale marked the start of New York’s spring auction season, which is returning to life after a two-year lull caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The record sale was set as investors seek out safe-haven investments, such as art, amid uncertainty in global financial markets fueled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Pre-auction, the portrait had been expected to fetch as much as $400 million. The total price was ultimately $195,040,000.

According to Christie’s, the news of Monroe’s death on Aug. 5, 1962, “struck a personal chord for Warhol,” who began featuring her in his work shortly after, using a cropped publicity photo from the film “Niagara.”

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Warhol’s silk-screen series of the actress — each painted with a different background color — garnered fame after a fellow artist, Dorothy Podber, entered his studio in September 1964 and shot at the stack of prints with a pistol. (Warhol himself was badly injured in a 1968 shooting. He died in 1987 of a heart attack.)

Accounts of the Podber episode vary — some say it was a misunderstanding over the words “to shoot,” which Warhol apparently understood to be a request by Podber to photograph his work; others have described the word play as deliberate, Christie’s said in a pre-auction write-up of the work.

The works in Monday’s auction were from the estate of the Swiss art dealers Thomas and Doris Ammann. Proceeds from the art sales will go to their charitable foundation.