The high end of the market recovers from the downturn. The top 10 items sell for almost $700 million.
Bloomberg News, December 31, 2010.
Excerpts from article below:
The value of the world's most expensive items sold at auction more than doubled in 2010 as the top end of the market bounced back from the financial crisis.
The priciest 10 lots amounted to $698.6 million, compared with the combined $326.1 million of 2009, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Buyers around the globe snapped up works by trophy-named 20th century artists, and historic Chinese art ousted European Old Masters as the other main contributor.
Here are the year's 10 most valuable artworks at auction:
1) Pablo Picasso's 1932 painting of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter, sold for $106.5 million.
2) Alberto Giacometti's 1961 bronze "Walking Man I", sold for a record $103.4 million.
3) A Qianlong Dynasty vase sold for $83.2 million.
4) Amedeo Modigliani's 1917 pink-fleshed nude sold for $68.96 million.
5) A Song Dynasty scroll painting sold for $65.9 million.
6) An Andy Warhol black and white silkscreen sold for $63.4 million.
7) Alberto Giacometti's bronze of a flattened head sold for $53.3 million.
8) A Modigliani modernist limestone head sold for $53 million.
9) Pablo Picasso's 1903 portrait of the artist Angel de Soto sold for $52 million.
10) Henri Matisse's bronze relief of a nude woman sold for $48.8 million.
