New York (AFP) – A painting by Rene Magritte shattered an auction record for the surrealist artist on Tuesday, selling for more than $121 million (€114 million) at Christie's in New York.
The seminal 1954 painting had been valued at €90 million, and the previous record for a work by Magritte (1898-1967) was €75 million, set in 2022.
After a nearly 10-minute bidding war on Tuesday, "Empire of Light" – L'Empire des lumieres – was sold for €114 million "achieving a world-record price for the artist and for a surrealist work of art at auction", according to auction house Christie's.
The painting - depicting a house at night, illuminated by a lamp post, while under a bright, blue sky - is one of a series by the Belgian artist showing the interplay of shadow and light.
It inspired American director William Friedkin to make his famous horror film "The Exorcist"(1973).
"Empire of Light" was part of the private collection of Mica Ertegun, an interior designer who fled communist Romania to settle in the United States where she became an influential figure in the arts world.
She died in late 2023 and was married to the late Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who founded the Atlantic Records label.
Art market slowing down
The sale of the Magritte painting was an expected highlight of this week's autumn sales season in New York, at a time when the art market has seen a slowdown since last year.
Christie's – which is controlled by Artemis, the investment holding company owned by the Pinault family – said sales totaled €2 billion in the first half of this year.
That is down for the second straight year, after a peak of €3.8 bllion in 2022 as the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic.
During the same Christie's auction on Tuesday, a celebrated 1964 painting of a gas station by 86-year-old Ed Ruscha, titled "Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half," sold for €65 million, setting a new auction record for the American pop artist.
(AFP)
