Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn' Just Broke the American Auction Record

On May 9th, 2022 at a Christie’s auction house, viewers were stunned to see Andy Warhol’s 1964 silkscreen print, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn break the previous auction record. At a whopping $195 million, the sale brought an exciting beginning to the 2022 auction season.

The iconic depiction of actress Marilyn Monroe‘s face, entitled Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, sold in just under four minutes. The 1964 Andy Warhol work broke the 2017 auction record by an American artist, which belonged to Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat’s 1984 Untitled, a painting of a skull, sold at Sotheby’s for over $110 million in 2017. The skull painting had broken the previous record, also held by a Warhol piece.

The details about the buyer of the 40×40 inch silkscreen painting of Marilyn are still unknown. This Christie’s auction in New York’s Rockefeller Center, which helped to kick off the 2022 season, was a charitable one. The buyer of the Marilyn will therefore get to decided on which charity 20% of the proceeds from the sale go to. The entire auction housed 36 works, seeing the total sales reach $318 million.

While this sale is certainly groundbreaking, with the growth of record-breaking NFTs and the digital art market, who knows what’s next! In the meantime, discover more works by master artists on Artsper.