Marilyn Monroe’s Painting: The Most Expensive Ever In The World

The Marilyn, known as “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,” was one of five renditions in various variety plots that artist Warhol painted in 1964, two years after Marilyn Monroe’s death.

While slightly below the $200 million estimate, and well below the $250 million to $300 million whisper prices many dealers had been hoping for, the sale is still seen as a vote of confidence for art as a long-term store of value amidst volatile market cycles.
The buyer was not identified.

Andy Warhol’s 1964 portrait of Marilyn Monroe sold for $195 million at Christie’s Monday night, becoming the most expensive work of American art ever sold.

The price imply that the art market, essentially at the exceptionally very good quality, is to a great extent holding up to the tensions of falling stocks and increasing interest rates. Christie’s and Sotheby’s arrangement to sell more than $2 billion worth of art in the next fourteen days, and the noteworthy price for the “Marilyn” could support the certainty of affluent purchasers for other works.

The price of this piece shows that quality and shortage are continuously going to push the market forward. With its brilliant colours and spellbinding articulation, the pictures became a portion of Warhol’s most notorious and renowned pictures. An orange version recently sold to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin for over $200 million.

The portraits were based on a promotional photo of Monroe from the film “Niagara.” The portraits became even more famous when, shortly after they were completed, a woman walked into Warhol’s Factory studio with a gun and shot at a stack of four of them.

The City Ranked As The Most Expensive In The World

The “sage blue” painting escaped damaged and the others were repaired. But the shooting added to their allure and became part of their titles.

The version which was sold on Monday May 9, was owned by a Swiss art dealer family, the Ammanns, who have owned it since the early 1980s. The proceeds will go to charity. The Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation in Zurich said it will use the funds to support health and education programs for children worldwide.

Beside breaking the record for the most expensive work of American art at any point unloaded, it is the second-most expensive masterpiece at any point sold at closeout, behind Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” that sold at Christie’s in 2017 for $450 million and in front of Picasso’s “Les Femmes d’Alger,” which sold for $179 million of every 2015.

Dissimilar to most hyper-priced works sold at auction, “Marilyn” was not sold with a guarantee, which is a minimum price at which a third party or the auction house agrees to purchase the work.

Dealers say the sellers wanted to maximize the charitable proceeds, and guarantees typically require sellers to give up some of the price upside above the guaranteed amount.