The acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas work repeatedly showing the wife of assassinated president John F. Kennedy led a solid, but unspectacular auction in a packed-to-overflowing room at Sotheby’s. The price reached was at the low end of the pre-sale estimate.
Jeff Koons’ “Pink Panther,” a porcelain sculpture of a topless blonde hugging the famous cartoon character, sold for $16.8 million. That was below the estimate of $20-30 million.
Warhols dominated the top sales, with “Shadow – Red” selling for 4.8 million, far above the estimate of $700-900,000 and “Round Jackie” fetching $3.7 million, compared to the presale estimate of $3-4 million.
Total sales for the evening of contemporary art were $128 million.
Rival Christie’s holds its own contemporary art auction on Wednesday in New York.
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