Rothko, Warhol Have a Busy Week

Flip through the catalogues for Christie's and Sotheby's sales of post-war and contemporary art next week, and you'll find some artists featured numerous times.

There are no fewer than seven Rothko's headed for the block — four at Christie's and three at Sotheby's. That's three more than appeared on the market either last November or this past May, when Sotheby's sold the Rockefeller Rothko for $72.8 million. Not only did that color-field painting shatter the previous auction record for the artist's work by more than $50 million, it also became the most expensive piece of contemporary art sold at auction.

"With the prices that some of these artists are reaching, people who have had these works in their collections for 20, 30, 40 years are now considering selling their paintings," said April Richon Jacobs, a junior specialist at Christie's.

But there is one artist who tops Rothko in number of lots offered at Christie's this coming Tuesday evening: Andy Warhol. He's a perennial favorite, according to Jacobs.