A Jackson Pollock painting sold for $181.2 million at Christie’s in New York on Monday night, smashing the previous auction record for the Abstract Expressionist artist by nearly three times. The evening sales, which also included new auction records for Mark Rothko and Constantin Brâncuși, realized more than $1 billion in a single evening for only the second time in auction history. All prices include fees.
The Pollock work, Number 7A (1948), came from the collection of the late Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse and is now the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction. More than three meters in length, the painting of black drips punctuated by flecks of red marks the moment where Pollock “frees himself from the shackles of conventional easel painting and produces one of the first truly abstract paintings in the history of art,” according to a statement from Christie’s.
The auction for the work took seven minutes of bidding in the room and by telephone in what observers described as a three-way contest. The previous auction record for Pollock was set in 2021 for Number 17 (1951), which sold for $62.1 million at Sotheby’s. Several of his works have changed hands privately at higher levels, reportedly up to around $200 million.
Number 7A was the most expensive work to sell in Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse, which brought in $631 million. Combined with Christie’s 20th-century evening sale, which followed and made $490.3 million, the night realized $1.12 billion across 97% of lots.
A second nine-figure result came from Brâncuși’s bronze Danaïde (ca. 1913), which sold for $107.6 million. This set a new record for the artist and is the second-highest price ever paid at auction for a sculpture (the highest price is the $141.3 paid for Alberto Giacometti’s L’Homme au doigt (1960) in 2010). Brâncuși’s previous auction record was $71.2 million, set in 2018.
The 20th-century evening sale was led by Rothko’s No.15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe) (1964), which sold to a phone bidder for $98.4 million. That price marks a new auction record for Rothko. Other records set included for Joan Miró, whose Portrait of Madame K (1924) sold for $53.5 million, and Alice Neel, whose Mother and Child (Nancy and Olivia) (1982) sold for $5.7 million.
The results were greeted by market professionals as a strong signal at the top end of the market. “Three works breaking the $100 million barrier at a single house in a single evening—the Rothko approaching $100 million, the Brâncuși at $107 million, and a fierce three-way bidding battle driving the Pollock towards the $200 million mark—is something we haven’t witnessed in years,” Philip Hoffman, founder of advisory firm The Fine Art Group, told Artsy. “This is a clear signal that serious capital remains deeply committed to the very finest works of art.”
