Christie’s hopes to achieve record value at auction of Andy Warhol’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe

Christie’s hopes to set a new record for a 20th century work of art with the auction of a Andy Warhol’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe in 1964.

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn One of the most iconic works in art history will go on sale for 200 million dollars in May auction week, Christie’s announced Monday at a press conference called without revealing the reason.

For the president of the section of art of the 20th and 21st centuries at Christie’s, Alex Rotter, this painting, the “most important” that comes up for auction in a generation- it is the “absolute pinnacle of American pop art and the promise of the American Dream that encapsulates optimism, fragility, celebrity, and iconography all at the same time.”

The famous image of Marilyn Monroe, the American actress and world icon of tragic destiny (1926-1962), belongs to the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation of Zurich, Switzerland, that will devote the money from the sale to health and education projects aimed at improving the lives of minors in the world.

“With 100% of the sale of a single painting for a charity, This is the largest philanthropic sale since the auction of the Peggy and David Rockefeller collection in 2018.said the auction house.

The name of the four reproductions “Shot Marilyns”, to which “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” belongs – one meter by one meter, is due to an incident that occurred in 1964 in Andy Warhol’s workshop in Manhattan: a woman who asked If the artist could “photograph” the paintings (“shoot” in English), he shot them with a revolver.

According to the anecdote, the bullet went through four canvases, which Warhol later repaired: the “Shot” series.

enigmatic smile

The “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” shows the actress with a pink face, red lips, blonde hair and blue eye shadow on a light blue background (sage blue, in English).

For the president of the Council of the Georg Frei Foundation, the work of Marilyn made by Warhol in 1964, based on a photo for an advertising poster for the film “Niagara” (1953) by Henry Hathaway, “bears witness to her intact visual power in the new millennium.”

“The spectacular portrait isolates the person and the star: Marilyn, the woman is gone; the terrible circumstances of her life and her death have been forgotten. All that remains is the enigmatic smile that links it to another mysterious smile of another distinguished lady, the Mona Lisa,” the auction house said in a statement.

If the portrait of the iconic actress is auctioned off at the advertised price, it would become the second most expensive work in art history awarded at auction, behind Salvator Mundi by Leonardo de Vinci, sold in November 2017 for $450.3 million.

And it would exceed the price paid for a work of the 20th century, “The Women of Algiers (version 0)”, an oil painting by Pablo Picasso, sold for $179.4 million in 2015 and “Lying Nude” by Amedeo Modigliani for $170.4 millionalso in 2015, according to a list established by AFP, and the three auctioned by Christie’s.

Despite the fact that the pandemic brought New York to its knees in 2020, its art market has never been so buoyant and has chained records thanks to the great fortunes of the city but above all to buyers from other parts of the world, especially Asians. and getting younger. (AND)