Fashion
Magritte, Master of Surrealism, Joins the $100 Million Dollar Club
Move over, Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol. With an inscrutable painting, the Belgian painter breaks the nine-figure threshold at the fall auctions.
The Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte has become the latest member of that exclusive club of artists whose work has sold for more than $100 million at auction.
On Tuesday night at Christie’s in Manhattan, a version of Magritte’s famously enigmatic subject, “The Empire of Light,” depicting a deserted nocturnal street below a bright daytime sky, sold for $121.2 million with fees, a record for the artist, in a packed, dark gray-painted salesroom, moodily lit in a suitably Surrealist style.
Certain to sell for at least $95 million, courtesy of a guaranteed bid, the painting inspired a 10-minute duel between two telephone bidders. The price was the highest yet paid for a Surrealist work of art at auction, and made Magritte the 16th artist to break the $100 million threshold, according to data compiled by the French market analyst company Artprice.
Fellow nine-figure heavyweights include Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Klimt, Amedeo Modigliani,