Regardless of a definite lack of fireworks, artwork market historical past was made tonight at Christie’s Rockefeller Middle salesroom when the gavel got here down on Marlene Dumas’s Miss January (1997). The portray made $11.5m—$13.2m with charges—changing into the most costly work by any residing feminine artist to promote at public sale.
The towering portrait, measuring 280cm in top, depicts a magnificence queen stood confidently, nude from the waist down save for a single pink sock. It was offered from the gathering of the Miami mega-collectors Mera and Don Rubell, who acquired it from Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam greater than 20 years in the past.
Miss January was delivered to the podium halfway by way of Christie’s twenty first century night sale (this sale is ongoing and this text shall be up to date to mirror the complete public sale). Underneath the stewardship of auctioneer Yu-ge Wang, the work elicited simply two bids and swiftly went to its guarantor through Christie’s deputy chairman Sara Friedlander.
Miss January supplants the earlier record-holder, Propped (1992) by Jenny Saville, which in 2018 offered at Sotheby’s in London for £8.2m (£9.5m with charges, which was then round $12m). Tonight’s end result additionally surpasses Dumas’s earlier public sale document, which was $6.3m for The Customer (1995), offered at Sotheby’s London in 2008.
Works by ladies make up seven of the Christie’s sale’s prime 15 most costly heaps by pre-sale estimate, together with works by Simone Leigh, Cecily Brown and Julie Mehretu.
