Modigliani nude fetches $170 million, 2nd-highest ever at an art auction

Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu Couche”, painted 1917 to 1918. Oveall, it was a mixed night for the auction house.

Modigliani’s 191718 canvas “Nu Couche” is broadly considered among his finest works. The billionaire was in the news in July this year for drinking tea from a 500-year old ceramic bowl that once belonged to a Chinese emperor.

Christie’s has achieved several record prices for artists at their auction in New York last night. Coming in second at $95.4 million was Roy Lichtenstein’s Nurse (1964), which had been estimated to bring about $80 million. Nurse reached a new price level for Lichtenstein at auction. Works by masters Modigliani, Lichtenstein, Courbet and Balthus brought record prices for the artists at Christie’s second specialized sale of 20th-century art on Nov. 9 in New York. It sold for $179.4 million at Christie’s in May. “It’s leveled off at a very high level”.

“She is a woman of incredible elegance and dignity”, Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie’s global president and chief auctioneer, said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg.

Impressionist, modern and contemporary art by well-known artists “do not require a tremendous amount of aesthetic or intellectual risk on the part of the collector”, said Sarah Lichtman, assistant professor of design history at Parson School of Design.

When I first became aware of the breast-blurring, my initial instinct was to let out a low bellow, like a wounded and hungry animal, then go all She-Hulk and destroy my computer. It also represented a far cry from the prices being asked for the Italian artist’s work in his own brief and unsuccessful lifetime (he died of tuberculosis in 1920 at age 35).

Amedeo Modigliani’s “Reclining Nude” joined the ranks of nine other works that have exceeded $100 million at auction.

Notable: The work was created in 1962.

From 1954-55, Pablo Picasso did a series of 15 paintings inspired by Delacroix’s “Les Femmes d’Alger”, with versions named “A” through “O”.

Reclining Nude was sold at Christie’s on Monday after a protracted bidding battle.

“I don’t care about the value, nor do I care about the money I spent buying it in the first place”.

“Emperor Qianlong has used it, now I’ve used it”, he told the Wall Street Journal, referring to the Qing Dynasty emperor.