Painting by British artist, Lucien Freud, sells for more than $30 million
at Christie's, New York.

 NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA (MAY 13, 2008) POOL -

Eight records were broken at Christie's auction house on Tuesday
(May 13) at an evening sale of post war and contemporary art, including a
world record for a living artist.
    "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," by British artist, Lucien
Freud, sold for 33.6 million U.S. dollars, with buyer's premium.
    The sale had 58 lots, a number purposely kept low to concentrate on
quality, Brett Gorvy Co-head of Christie's post war and contemporary art,
said.
    "We created this sale very carefully. We cut down the number of
works within the sale. We also concentrated more and more on quality and went
out into the market looking for great material," Gorvy said. "And
that really was the calibre of the overall sale and also the fact that we hit
different aspects of the market, we had great works from the 50's, great works
from the 60's and we had superb contemporary work."
    A surprise for the curators of the sale was that the majority of the
buyers, 70 percent,  were American. European buyers made up 26 percent and
Asians four percent.
    "We didn't expect the dominance of America here at the sale. If
anything the signs were showing there would be stronger European bidding. It
was fantastic because I think the quality was extremely rare and that brought
out some wonderful collectors from America, a lot of old collectors came to
bid this time," said Gorvy.
    Andy Warhol's: "Double Marlon" fetched its expected price at
32.5 million USD including buyer's premium. Mark Rothko's "No. 15",
brought in 50.4 million USD, including buyers premium, 10 million USD above
its expected price.
    was/jrc