Auction record

Art marketanalysis

Sultry Klimt portrait smashes European auction record, selling for £85.3m in London

The night's star lot made up nearly half of the £190.3m total for Sotheby's Modern and contemporary evening auction

Louvre interrupts sale of €2.6m record-breaking terracotta sculpture

Under patrimony laws the museum cannot intervene during the auction but can buy up works at the final price

Alexandre Crochet. With additional reporting by Gareth Harris

Ancient Greek gold coin from Crimea sells for a record-breaking £4.8m

The rare stater depicting a satyr—a "marvel of speaking portraiture"—was once in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum but was sold to raise money for the Soviet government

Louise Bourgeois's record-breaking $32.8m Spider crawls to top of Sotheby's contemporary art sale

A double-header night of The Now and contemporary art auctions set ten new artist records, boosting confidence after a lacklustre Christie's sale of the Gerald Fineberg collection

Kandinsky makes £37m auction record at a procedural but solid Sotheby's London evening sale

Strong Asian bidding helped secure the success of the 58-lot two-part auction, which brought the house £147m

Queen Elizabeth II portrait makes $853,000 in Toronto—a record for a Warhol print at auction

Healthy bidding at Canadian auction house Heffel also achieved strong results for painter Lawren Harris

Five years since the $450m Salvator Mundi sale: a first-hand account of the nonsensical auction

At the record-breaking sale at Christie's New York on 15 November 2017, the audience gasped and whooped as if they were at a very exclusive firework display

The five year warranty on the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo is about to run out—could the buyer have asked for their money back?

Warranties of authenticity offered to buyers can be hard to enforce when auctioneers can fall back on the “generally accepted opinion of scholars and experts”

L.S. Lowry painting could fetch a record £8m for football charity that received official ‘mismanagement’ warning

The Players Foundation says the current financial crisis has forced it to reassess how it manages its assets and ensures its benevolent work is ongoing

The ten most expensive Vincent van Gogh paintings

Of course Sunflowers is included, along with some surprises—and another on the way

a blog by Martin Bailey

Grateful Dead t-shirt sets auction record at Sotheby’s

Counterculture relic originally design by Hells Angel artist Allan "Gut" Terk sold for nearly $18,000

Chinese gold sculpture breaks German auction record at €14m—almost triple the previous high

A Chinese collector bought the 15th century gold and bronze Ming-dynasty sculpture of the god Vajrabhairava earlier today

Shoe designer's $18.9m 'Double Eagle' sets new world record for a coin at auction

The unique coin from 1933, part of a collection amassed by luxury shoe designer, Stuart Weitzman, sold at Sotheby's in New York yesterday

Rejected Tintin cover design sets record for comic book art with €3.2m auction price

Sale of controversial 1936 painting criticised by organisation behind artist Hergé’s estate

Record for Barkley Hendricks and $18.2m Calder at otherwise unremarkable Sotheby’s sale

Almost half of the auction's total sales value was bought by Asian buyers, but 12 lots sold below their estimates

A tale of two cities: Christie's 20th-century relay sale sees six records set in Hong Kong before slower New York finish

In demand contemporary artists hit big in Asia but several Modern stalwarts failed to make a splash in multi-city hybrid auction

Phillips London sets new records for Emily Mae Smith and Portia Zvavahera in £26.3m contemporary evening sale

While the top lot of the night—a fiery self-portrait by George Baselitz—struggled to meet its low estimate, a bidding war broke out over Dana Schutz's painting of a bright orange Trump

Sotheby’s to offer $60m Francis Bacon triptych in May New York sales

The work comes from the collection of the Norweigan shipping heir Hans Rasmus Astrup and is the second major coup for the auction house’s spring sales season

René Magritte: a buyer's guide

The artist’s trademark motifs make his work easily recognisable and desirable—but there is more to this Surrealist than apples and bowler hats

Banksynews

Banksy painting of chimps as MPs sells for record £9.9m at Sotheby's

Nicole Eisenman, Jean-Michel Basquiat and a dozen Italians help weather the Brexit storm

Sotheby’s to hold the first major Aboriginal art sale in the US in November

The auction house cites increasing interest in Aboriginal art among US collectors and institutions

Rabbit hops to a record $91m at Christie's as Jeff Koons once again becomes the world's most expensive living artist

Post-war and contemporary sale in New York also produced a big sale for Robert Rauschenberg and new records for Louise Bourgeois and Jonas Wood

Hockney sets new auction record for a living artist, but were strings pulled behind the no-reserve sale?

The Yorkshireman's 1970s Californian scene, Portrait of an Artist, sold on the nose at $80m at Christie's in New York last night

Holy grail of folk ceramics made by 19th-century snake handler breaks auction record

The “snake jug” shattered the previous record for Anna Pottery, a niche favourite of Americana collectors

A record-setting $30.1m sale of an Assyrian relief at Christie's raises red flags

The 31 October sale has prompted calls for repatriation and criticism of the seller, highlighting the gap between art ethics and law

Trio of deaccessioned Georgia O’Keeffe paintings could make over $30m at Sotheby's

Modernist works from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum will be offered in New York in November

Christie's to offer $80m 'holy grail' Hockney painting in New York this November

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) could become the most valuable work by a living artist sold at auction

Basquiat leaps into different league: A market analysis

Record price for early work sends late graffiti artist into “super blue-chip” territory as demand—and prices—soar