Huge New York sale as world art markets boom

Francis Bacon’s Three Lives of Lucian Freud is set to break his own record of $86 million, Des O’Sullivan reports.

THE global contemporary art market is hot. Artprice has just reported that for the first time in market history, over one billion euro worth of contemporary art changed hands in the 12 months to June. Since then sales in Hong Kong have broken all records.

It is against this background that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art will come under the hammer in New York in the coming weeks. Anticipate the sound of breaking records. Christie’s, for example, expect the 490 works they are putting under the hammer — including fresh to market pieces by Picasso, Giacometti, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Miro, Moore, Magritte and Gris — to achieve more than $390m.