200 Dollar Bills

Andy Warhol’s 1962 screenprint 200 Dollar Bills, sold at auction at Sotheby’s for an astounding $43.7 million, far outstripping the pre-sale estimate of $8-$12 million. Neither the seller nor the buyer have been disclosed, but the work has an exclusive art world provenance, having been once owned by taxi magnate Robert C. Scull, known for his collection of Pop Art. The sale makes 200 Dollar Bills the 25th most expensive work ever sold at auction, but not the most expensive Warhol- Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) sold at auction for $71.7 million in 2007.

There were several records set for artists in the auction Wednesday night, a record was set for Jackson Pollock works on paper, where a pen and ink drawing, Untitled, went for $2.8 million and a record for Bruce Nauman neon artwork was set, with Violins, Violence, Silence, selling for just over $4 million. It’s nice to know that the art world is so well grounded in current economic trends.