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Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portrait auctioned at record-breaking $195 million
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published May 10, 2022
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Courtesy of Christie's Auction House
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published May 10, 2022
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Andy Warhol’s iconic powder blue and hot pink portrait of Marilyn Monroe has sold for $195 million, becoming one of the world’s most expensive oeuvres.
Christie’s New York auction house announced the sale of "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn," Monday afternoon, one of five silk-screen printed Monroe portraits Warhol made in the aftermath of her 1962 overdose.
“I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death,” Warhol said , describing those prints, and others he made around that time. At his infamous East 47th Street studio, known as the Factory, performance artist Dorothy Podber pulled out a gun and shot the canvases several months after Warhol printed them, piercing four of five Monroe portraits — hence how they got their nickname, the "Shot Marilyns."
Artworks by Leonardo da Vinci, Willem de Kooning, Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin among others fetched more than $195 million over the years, but the “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” now represents the most expensive 20th Century artwork to sell at an auction, according to Christie’s.
The previous record for that specific category was set in the sale of “Untitled,” a 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that sold for $110 million in 2017.
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andy warhol
Marilyn Monroe
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christie's auction house
Gwynne Hogan
Gwynne Hogan is a former Gothamist reporter.
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