Rockefeller's Rothko Rocks Auction

Sotheby's sale of contemporary art on Tuesday evening set a record price for a contemporary work at auction with Francis Bacon's Study from Innocent X, only to break it and set another with Mark Rothko's White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), above, nine lots later.

The sale totaled $254.8 million, a record for a contemporary art auction, against a presale estimate of $196.8 million to $265.1 million.

When the May auction season's most highly anticipated lot--the Rothko--came up, auctioneer Tobias Meyer sliced through the tension in the crowded room with a joke: "And now..."

The vibrantly colored painting, being sold by David Rockefeller, brought just over $72.8 million, including a buyer's premium of 20 percent on the first $500,000 and 12 percent on the remainder, against a pre-sale estimate of "in excess of $40 million."

Rockefeller watched from a skybox as bidders battled for the piece, whose significance within the context of Rothko's career is as impressive as its provenance. The painting marked Rothko's transition to a style characterized by blocks of color floating against the canvas's background for which the artist is most well-known.

Rockefeller bought the painting in 1960 from Elizabeth Bliss Parkinson, niece of Lillie P. Bliss, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the behest of Dorothy Miller, the first chief curator of the museum. The previous record for Rothko was set when Homage to Matisse fetched $22.4 million at Christie's in November 2005.

Inspired by Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X from 1650, Bacon's expressive portrait brought $52.6 million against a pre-sale estimate of "in excess of $30 million." Of the approximately 50 canvases Bacon devoted to the subject of the Pope, this is "the ultimate Pope image," Meyer said in a press release prior to the sale. The previous record for Bacon was set when another Pope painting, Study for Portrait II, fetched just shy of $27.6 million at Christie's in London this past February.

Both the Rothko and the Bacon hung at the front of Sotheby's sales room last night before an audience that included newsprint magnate Peter Brant and his wife Stephanie Seymour, Calvin Klein, and former Sotheby's Chairman Alfred Taubman. As for the paintings' final destinations? That's anyone's best guess.

by Callen Bair