{"id":680345,"date":"2026-05-19T20:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/680345\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T20:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:11:10","slug":"jackson-pollock-drip-painting-soars-to-record-181-2m-us-sale-at-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/680345\/","title":{"rendered":"Jackson Pollock drip painting soars to record $181.2M US sale at auction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 2 minutes<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<p>A Jackson Pollock artwork highlighting the artist&#8217;s famed painted swoops, swirls, pours and drizzles soared to an eye-popping sales record at a New York auction Monday evening, fetching $181.2 million US.<\/p>\n<p>Number 7A, 1948, one of the American abstract expressionist&#8217;s iconic drip paintings, nearly tripled the artist&#8217;s previous sales record at auction, according to Christie&#8217;s Auction House.<\/p>\n<p>Considered the centrepiece of Monday&#8217;s sale and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christies.com\/en\/stories\/jackson-pollock-number7a-1948-john-elderfield-44b8c76206ad4793a8dccc3c899ea86f\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a groundbreaking piece for the artist<\/a>, the mesmerizing oil-and-enamel on raw canvas artwork \u2014 which stretches nearly a metre high and more than three metres wide \u2014 sold in less than seven minutes of furious bidding to an unidentified bidder for $181,185,000 (all figures US).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Monday&#8217;s buzzy sale came after a 10-day public exhibition of the Pollock and other pieces at Christie&#8217;s Rockefeller Center location, which drew nearly 20,000 visitors eager to take a peek.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A man at a spotlit podium gestures to the right, an abstract artwork projected behind him, as an audience sits in darkness below him.\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779221470_91_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.5\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>Adrien Meyer, co-chair of impressionist and modern art at Christie&#8217;s, led the sale of Number 7A, 1948 in New York on Monday evening. (Christie&#8217;s)<\/p>\n<p>Pollock painted Number 7A, 1948 when he was 36, less than a decade before his death, inside the barn at his Long Island home, near East Hampton, Christie&#8217;s said.\u00a0While most of his drip paintings went to museums, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christies.com\/en\/lot\/lot-6585089?ldp_breadcrumb=back\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Number 7A, 1948 was the largest of these works to remain in private hands<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It was among 16 modern artworks being sold Monday evening from the private collection of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/entertainment\/samuel-newhouse-dead-1.4315813\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">late S.I. Newhouse, the American media titan and co-owner of the Cond\u00e9 Nast media empire who died in 2017<\/a>. The auction house previously sold other artworks from his collection, most recently in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Dana\u00efde, a sculpture by Constantin Brancusi, joined the Pollock in crossing the $100 million threshold, ultimately fetching $107.6 million. <\/p>\n<p>In total, Monday evening&#8217;s sale of 20th century artworks from the Newhouse collection \u2014 which also included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miro, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns \u2014 saw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.christies.com\/en\/auction\/masterpieces-the-private-collection-of-s-i-newhouse-24923-nyr\/browse-lots\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">all 16 lots sold for a total of $631 million<\/a>, including auction house fees.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were pleased to see the enthusiasm of our team was matched by our clients and delighted by the eager and engaged bidding from start to finish,&#8221; Paige Kestenman, Christie&#8217;s co-head of the 20th Century Evening Sale, said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-680345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}