Christie’s auction house needed just 40 minutes to sell more than $630 million (about 3.5 billion Brazilian reais) worth of works of art, breaking the records of both painter Jackson Pollock and sculptor Constantin Brancusi on Monday (18).
The auction house subsequently closed the sale with further records broken and another $490 million (2.7 billion reais). The first part of the $1.1 billion (6.1 billion reais) auction in New York featured 16 works from the renowned SI Newhouse collection.
This was the fourth time Christie’s auctioned a series of works by the late media magnate, owner of Condé Nast, as well as a significant portion of local newspapers and radio and television stations across the United States. But it was the first time the auction house featured Nicole Kidman in a promotional video, filming her fluid encounter with Brancusi’s gilded bust, “Danaïde,” which was about to become one of the evening’s star lots.