Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis" sold for $37 mln at Sotheby's

PanARMENIAN.Net - Andy Warhol's "Double Elvis" sold for $37 million and works by Roy Lichtenstein and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei broke their own records at Sotheby's contemporary art sale on Wednesday, May 9, AP reported.

Lichtenstein's "Sleeping Girl," depicting a woman with closed eyes and flowing blond hair, fetched $44,882,500; Weiwei's 1-ton, handmade porcelain "Sunflower Seeds" brought $782,500.

Another major work on the auction block — Francis Bacon's "Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror" — sold for $44,882,500. The buyers' names for each of the four pieces were not released.

The sale came on the heels of art auction history. Last week, the auction house sold Edvard Munch's "The Scream" for $119.9 million, making it the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

Warhol's "Double Elvis (Ferus Type)," a silver silkscreen image of Elvis Presley depicted as a cowboy, fetched $37,042,500. It had been expected to sell for $30 million to $50 million. The auction house said it was the first "Double Elvis" to appear on the market since 1995. Warhol produced a series of 22 images of Elvis. Nine are in museum collections.

The rock and roll heartthrob is shown armed and shooting from the hip, a shadowy Elvis figure faintly visible in the background. It was offered for sale by a private American collector, who acquired it in 1977.

The record for a Warhol is $71.7 million for his "Green Car Crash — Green Burning Car I," sold at Christie's in 2007.

The "Elvis" silkscreen was exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1963, the year it was created. The auction catalog described the work, based on a movie publicity photo, as "the deification of a contemporary warrior-saint, the towering, pre-eminent idol bearing a deadly weapon as if protecting the mythical world of celebrity itself."