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£5m splashed out on a Canoe at record sale
By Tom Teodorczuk, Evening Standard 08.02.07
Peter Doig's White Canoe, inspired by the 1980 film Friday the 13th, went to mystery bidder at Sotheby's
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A Sotheby's sale of modern art in London has made a record-breaking £45.8 million. Thirteen works sold for more than a million pounds each.
The top lot was Scottish artist Peter Doig's 1991 painting ,White Canoe, which astonished art critics by going for £5.73 million - five times the predicted price.
The sale follows Sotheby's record £95 million auction of Impressionist and early 20th-century art on Monday.
Tonight's Christie's sale of Francis Bacon's Study For Portrait II, being sold by Sophia Loren for an estimated £12 million, will round off one of the most extraordinary weeks in London art auction history.
Eleven records were set last night at Sotheby's in New Bond Street. Doig's work, which depicts a boat on a lake and is inspired by the 1980 horror film Friday the 13th, went to a mystery bidder, thought to be Russian.
The painting had been in Charles Saatchi's gallery and was said to have been sold to Sotheby's last year.
The auction house acknowledged "it had a financial interest" but refused to comment beyond that. Doig, 47, who a decade ago commanded about £50,000 for his work, smashed his previous highest sale of £1.1 million last June.
The White Canoe sale was the highest price paid for a living European artist, overtaking Lucian Freud's previously held record for his two pieces, Man In A String Chair and Red-Haired Man On A Chair, which both sold for £4.15 million. Cheyenne Westphal, chairman of Sotheby's Europe, said: "The night was a shock for all of us."
British Expressionist painter Frank Auerbach's 1977 work, The Camden Theatre In The Rain, predicted to sell for a maximum £700,000, made £1.92 million, a record for the artist.
Tim Noble and Sue Webster's Toxic Schizophrenia, another work which formerly hung in the Saatchi Gallery, was purchased for £356,000 by US dealer Larry "Go-Go" Gagosian.
The iconic flashing light red bleeding heart, which had a high estimate of £250,000, also set a record for the British duo. Art experts heralded the work as confirming the pre-eminence of modern British artists.
Oliver Barker, head of Sotheby's contemporary art department, said: "This sale is symptomatic of the acceleration of interest in post-war British artists like Peter Doig, Frank Auerbach and Bridget Riley."
German painter Gerard Richter's Abstraktes Bild, which had a high estimate of £1.8 million, sold for £2.7 million, another artist record.
Photographer Andreas Gursky also entered the history books when his Diptych photograph 99 Cent II sold for £1.5 million, a record for the artist as well as the highest price paid for a photograph at auction.
Other high-profile sales included Riley's Horizontal Vibration at £636,000 (high estimate £400,000), Francis Bacon's 1961 painting Head (Man in Blue) which fetched £1.7 million - below the £2 million high estimate, and Andy Warhol's 1971 painting Flowers, making £1.03 million.
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