David Hockney pool painting soars to $90 mln, record for living artist

An iconic 1972 painting by British artist David Hockney soared to $90.3 million at Christie’s on Thursday (November 15), smashing the record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist.

With Christie’s commission, “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures),” surpassed the auction house’s pre-sale estimate of about $80 million, following a bidding war between two determined would-be buyers once the work hit $70 million.

The previous record for a work by a living artist was held by Jeff Koons’ sculpture “Balloon Dog,” which sold for $58.4 million in 2013. Hockney’s previous auction record was $28.4 million.

The 1972 work by the 81-year-old British artist, one of Hockney’s most famous paintings which depicts a man in a pink jacket looking down on another figure swimming underwater in a pool, was reported to have been consigned by British billionaire currency trader Joe Lewis.

Christie’s did not identify the seller or the successful bidder, who was bidding via telephone during a nearly 10-minute contest for the work.

Morgan Long, senior director of art investment house Fine Art Group, hailed “a great result for Christie’s,” saying it achieved its predicted $80 million price “through a combination of clever marketing and what looked like sheer determination on the part of (a) phone client to take the painting home.”

In a virtually unprecedented move for such a valuable painting, “Portrait of an Artist,” which was on exhibition at Tate Britain, the Pompidou Centre and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art over the past two years, was sold with no reserve, the minimum price at which the consignor agrees to sell a piece.

The price went far to boost the success of Christie’s post-war and contemporary art auction, which took in a total of $357.6 million, roughly the middle of its expected range, with 41 of the 48 lots on offer finding buyers.

Other sale highlights included Francis Bacon’s “Study of Henrietta Moraes Laughing,” which sold for $21.7 million against a pre-sale estimate of $14 million to $18 million, and Alexander Calder’s “21 Feuilles Blanches,” which more than doubled its high estimate, selling for just under $18 million.