\n Netting $107.6 million with fees, \u201cDana\u00efde\u201d surpassed Brancusi\u2019s previous auction record of $71.2 million almost as soon as bidding began. A pivotal drip painting by Pollock \u2014 of which few of its scale remain in private hands \u2014 also soared skyward, to applause, landing at $181.2 million with fees to become the night\u2019s top-grossing lot. The price tag far surpassed the abstract expressionist\u2019s previous 2021 record of $61.2 million \u2014 and he did it without the help of Kidman.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Jackson](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/jackson-pollock-number-7a-1948.jpg\")
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\n Hours before the sale, Sara Friedlander, a chair of post-war and contemporary art at Christie\u2019s, said that the celebrity campaign was just one of many approaches used to promote the sales. Brancusi was \u201csuch a modern innovator,\u201d she said, \u201cand so I think for us to do things that are innovative around extraordinary objects is something we, too, are experimenting with.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Works by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Henri Matisse, Joan Mir\u00f3, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg also contributed to the allure of the Newhouse sale. As a single-owner collection, only that of the late Paul G. Allen has generated more at auction \u2014 in 2022, the two-part blow-out sale of works amassed by the Microsoft co-founder fetched a record-breaking $1.5 billion on the first night alone. Newhouse\u2019s works have, instead, sold in occasional tranches, including the $91 million sale of \u201cRabbit\u201d that made Jeff Koons the world\u2019s most expensive living artist (by public auction records, at least) in 2019.\n <\/p>\n
\n Newhouse\u2019s collection came to auction, in part, thanks to Tobias Meyer, an art advisor and former auctioneer who has represented the media titan\u2019s family. Meyer was the instrumental voice behind steering this collection,\u201d Friedlander said.\n <\/p>\n
![\"\u201cDana\u00efde\u201d](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/constantin-brancusi-danaide.jpg\")
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\n But it also came down to apartment space, too, according to The New York Times, which reported<\/a> that Newhouse\u2019s widow, Victoria, was scaling down. \u201cI\u2019m not getting any younger and I feel the time has come to start downsizing,\u201d she told the paper. \u201cIt\u2019s an effort to simplify my life.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The top end of the art market, led by Christie\u2019s and Sotheby\u2019s, has been hellbent on a rebound over the past year, after a series of rocky sales and global economic uncertainty cast doubt on demand for blockbuster works. Both auction houses have courted powerhouse single-owner collections, including those of Allen, Leonard A. Lauder<\/a> and Pauline Karpidas<\/a>, to inject the market with rare paintings from 20th-century artists that are getting harder to come by. Monday\u2019s sales at Christie\u2019s also included three masterworks from the collection of former Museum of Modern Art president Agnes Gund<\/a>, which set a new $98.4 million record for Mark Rothko, while Sotheby\u2019s offered up treasures worth $166.3 million from the late art dealer Robert Mnuchin last week.\n <\/p>\n \n The strategy appears to have whetted the appetites of billionaire buyers, but recent wins may not signal the market\u2019s long-term recovery. According to Artnet<\/a>, there are no more than 30 \u201cwhales\u201d \u2014 the market\u2019s biggest spenders \u2014 with the power to make a major auction sink or swim. And, like the $236.4-million Gustav Klimt record last fall, a decisive star lot can buoy the rest, hiding any still lingering or lurking uncertainties.\n <\/p>\n \n Still, Monday\u2019s evening sales, which also included 48 20th-century works from outside Newhouse\u2019s collection, certainly flexed collectors\u2019 strength. A record-breaking 20,000 visitors came to see the works at Christie\u2019s before they went back into private hands. Kidman may have been talking about AMC when she said, \u201cWe come to this place for magic<\/a>,\u201d but the art market still has some rabbits to pull, too.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 On Monday evening, it took auction house Christie\u2019s just 40 minutes to sell more than $630…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-592269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rothko\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/rothko-no-15-two-greens-and-red-stripe.jpg\")
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