Roy Lichtenstein painting sells for record $43million at Christie’s auction in New York
A painting by the late Roy Lichtenstein has sold for $43.2million (£27million) in New York - an auction record for the pop artist.
The 1961 artwork is called 'I Can See the Whole Room! ... and There's Nobody In It!'
It shows a man's face peering out of the painting through a peephole in a black background.
The four-square-foot work in graphite and oil work is one of the earliest and most important of Lichtenstein’s pop art pictures.
It sold last night at a Christie's auction house postwar and contemporary art sale.
Leonardo di Caprio was at the auction, in which Louise Bourgeois also broke a record with her 1996 bronze spider, which fetched $10.7million (£7million).
Andy Warhol's 'Four Campbell's Soup Cans' went for $9.8million (£6.1million), toward the high end of the estimate.
Lichtenstein's previous auction record was set last November when the New York artist's 1964 painting 'Ohhh... Alright...' sold for $42.6million (£26.4million) at Christie's.
That piece was a comic strip style image of a distressed redheaded woman speaking into a telephone.
The price of his artworks has soared despite the financial crisis, with last year's sale more than doubling his 2005 record of £10m for In the Car.
Lichtenstein, who died in 1997 of pneumonia, is famous for his cartoon-inspired paintings and helped launch the pop art movement along with artists including Andy Warhol and Jasper John.
He mixed text and image, drawing on adverts and bubble-gum wrappers for inspiration. His black outlines, flat vivid colors and use of Benday dots have become iconic, along with his satirical imitations of classical artists.
Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas, said: 'The financial markets have been volatile all year, yet the art market has continued to perform well. It's incredibly strong.'
November 27th, 2011 - 23:29
Connecting the Dots Between the Record $43 Million Lichtenstein and the $431 Comic Strip It Was Copied From
By Judd Tully
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/750696/connecting-the-dots-between-the-record-43-million-lichtenstein-and-the-431-comic-strip-it-was-copied-from