Warhol images of Elvis and Brando fetch $151 million

AFP / Don Emmert
Andy Warhol's 'Triple Elvis' (L) and Four Marlons are displayed during Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale, in New York, on November 12, 2014

Two iconic Andy Warhol paintings of Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando sold for more than $151 million at auction in New York, shattering pre-sale estimates by several million dollars.

Pop-art legend Warhol’s “Triple Elvis” — a 1963 silkscreen depicting three images of the King of Rock and Roll posing as a gunslinging cowboy — sold for $81.9 million at the Christie’s sale on Wednesday.

The striking seven-foot tall work, derived from a publicity still for the 1960 Don Siegel-directed Western “Flaming Star,” had been estimated to fetch $60 million.

The final sale price topped out at more than $20 million above the estimate after six minutes of frenzied bidding.

It was a similar story for the other Warhol classic sold Wednesday, “Four Marlons,” a giant set of four images of the legendary actor taken from his 1953 motorcycle gang classic “The Wild One.”

AFP / Don Emmert
Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Girl in Mirror’ is auctioned during Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale, in New York, on November 12, 2014

Both of Wednesday’s auction prices however were well short of the all-time record for a Warhol work set by “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster),” which fetched $105.4 million in November last year at Sotheby’s.

A flurry of bids also greeted the sale of Cy Twombly’s “Untitled” from his blackboard series, which went under the hammer for the first time.

The painting – a series of energetic looping spirals resembling chalk scribblings on a school blackboard — sold for $69.6 million, the highest amount ever paid for a work by the American, who died three years ago in Italy.

Several world records were set for masterpieces sold on Wednesday, including $30.4 million raised for “Smash” by Ed Ruscha, regarded as one of the leading lights of the American pop-art movement.

AFP/File / Emmanuel Dunand
‘Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)’ by Andy Warhol is on display during a press preview of Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art, in New York, on November 1, 2013

American photographer Cindy Sherman, 60, also set a record with her “Untitled Film Stills,” which fetched $6.8 million. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s “White No. 28″ earned $7.1 million, smashing its estimate of between $1.5 million and $2 million.

Revered British artist Francis Bacon’s “Seated Figure” meanwhile sold for $44.96 million, in the lower range of price estimates set between $40 million and $60 million.

A Bacon triptych — “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” — sold for $142.4 million last year, the highest ever price for a work of art sold at auction, surpassing the previous best of $119.9 million raised for the fourth print of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” set in May 2012.