Warhol beats Picasso in auction sales

Andy Warhol's Triple Elvis and Four Marlons sold for a combined US$151.5 million. Photo / AP

Andy Warhol was the top-selling artist at auction last year as increased competition for the most-expensive segment of the market drove global art sales higher.

Collectors bought 1295 works by the artist totalling US$653.2 million, ahead of sales for Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, according to preliminary figures by New York researcher Artnet. Auctions worldwide rose 10 per cent to US$16 billion.

Art sales have more than doubled from US$6.3 billion in 2009, as surging financial markets lifted the fortunes of the world's richest. The top 400 billionaires added US$92 billion in wealth this year, for a net worth of US$4.1 trillion at December 29, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Bidding for the most coveted artists has been driving much of the surge in auctions, according to Jeff Rabin, a principal at advisory firm Artvest Partners in New York.

"The headline number is not so much a comment on the art market as it is on global wealth," Rabin said. "We haven't seen a considerable increase in the number of objects sold. We have seen price appreciation at the top end."

A record US$2.3 billion of art was auctioned over two weeks in New York in November. As part of those auctions, Christie's on November 12 sold 75 contemporary works for US$852.9 million, a record for an evening auction.

"That total in one evening sale for less than 100 works is extraordinary," Rabin said.

At US$16 billion, last year's art sales would be the second-highest on record. The Artnet numbers for 2014 are preliminary, and final figures next week could still surpass the previous record of US$16.3 billion, set in 2011. The figures take into account sales of paintings, drawings and sculpture but not other collectibles such as furniture or decorative objects. The numbers also do not include private sales.

No women were among the top 10 artists in 2014, and only one, Gerhard Richter, 82, is still living.

Warhol, who died in 1987, had two of the most expensive works at auction in 2014. Triple Elvis, a 1963 silkscreen of Elvis Presley in a publicity image for the movie Flaming Star in which the singer is shown as a cowboy with a gun, sold for US$81.9 million.

Four Marlons, a 1966 canvas depicting four identical images of a young Marlon Brando wearing a leather jacket and a cap in a still from the movie The Wild One, fetched US$69.6 million. Both were sold in November at Christie's in New York.

Picasso was the second biggest-selling artist, with 2820 of his works fetching US$448.7 million. Although he did not have an individual work among the top sellers, collectors sought out the artist because he had "an incredible body of work and multiple periods of exceptional work", Rabin said.

Bacon, Richter and Mark Rothko rounded out the top five artists. Two Chinese artists, Qi Baishi, known for painting shrimp, fish and frogs, and Zhang Daqian, who was famous for his landscapes, ranked sixth and ninth, respectively.

- Bloomberg