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SUE-PER SIZE: Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping of the 127kg Sue Tilley is the priciest work by a living artist. -- PHOTO: AP
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NEW YORK - British artist Lucian Freud's 1995 fleshy nude portrait of a dozing civil servant named Sue fetched US$33.6 million (S$46.3 million) on Tuesday at Christie's International in New York.
This makes it the priciest work by a living artist ever sold at an auction. Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, his life-size, 2.1m-long painting of the 127kg Sue Tilley curled up on a ratty sofa, was estimated to sell for US$25 million to US$35 million.
A 1952 Mark Rothko painting with red bands on a yolk-yellow background was the evening's top lot. Estimated to sell for about US$40 million, it brought in US$50.4 million.
Freud, 85, took the priciest-artist title from US artist Jeff Koons, whose shiny, hot-pink steel Hanging Heart (Magenta/ Gold) sold last November for US$23.6 million at Sotheby's in New York.
Freud, grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, painted Tilley in his studio, using thick, flesh-toned paints to define her massive thighs, stomach and breasts.
The seller was an anonymous European collector who bought the painting from the artist's dealer, the Acquavella Galleries in New York. Christie's spokesman Milena Sales confirmed that the auction house has a 'direct financial interest' in the painting, though she declined to elaborate.
Freud's works have come on strong recently at auctions. His previous record was set last November, when Ib And Her Husband, an intimate portrait of the artist's daughter and husband, fetched US$19.4 million at Christie's in New York.
Total sales for the auction were US$348.3 million, in the upper half of the pre-sale estimated range of US$282 million to US$398.6 million.
Bloomberg
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