A Jackson Pollock Just Sold for $181.2 Million, and Christie’s Put Nicole Kidman and David Bowie in the Sales Pitch

A Jackson Pollock drip painting sold for $181.2 million on Monday night (May 18), and the room clapped. Number 7A, 1948 more than doubled the artist’s previous auction record of $61 million, set at Sotheby’s in 2021, and made it one of the most expensive artworks ever auctioned.

The painting, a canvas nearly 11 feet wide from the collection of the late Condé Nast chief S.I. Newhouse, opened at $82 million and drew more than 60 bids over about 10 minutes, with at least five bidders in play. The hammer fell at $157 million, to a buyer represented by Christie’s global president Alex Rotter. Christie’s has not named the buyer, and ARTnews says the dealer Iwan Wirth was an underbidder, possibly for the collector Laurene Powell Jobs.

A billion-dollar night

The Newhouse sale of 16 works totaled $630.8 million with fees, and a 20th-century evening sale right after it made another $490.3 million, bringing Christie’s to about $1.1 billion across 64 lots. According to ARTnews, that makes the Newhouse collection, which has now passed $1 billion across four sales, likely the most expensive ever sold at auction apart from Paul Allen’s in 2022.

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The records kept coming. Constantin Brâncuși’s bronze head Danaïde sold for $107.6 million. Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), from the philanthropist Agnes Gund’s collection, made $98.4 million, beating the artist’s 2012 record, and Joan Miró’s Portrait de Madame K. reached $53.5 million, per Ocula. Eight records fell in total.

The Kidman ad, set to Bowie

The marketing was part of the story. Days earlier, Christie’s released a two-minute short film of Nicole Kidman circling the Brâncuși in an empty gallery to David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” ARTnews reported, in a video inspired by a Man Ray film of Lee Miller. The sculpture then sold to its guarantor after about half a dozen bids.

Why it matters

The caution is in the details. ARTnews noted that Christie’s sale showed unusual depth below $20 million, with bidding that had been missing from recent “highly choreographed and overestimated” auctions. But the top end of the market still depends on a thin set of buyers, and the sale landed just as the broader art market is trying to prove its recovery. Sotheby’s had set the tone four days earlier, when an $85.8 million Rothko led a $433.1 million evening and the same sale a year earlier made $186.1 million, per ARTnews.

ARTnews also quoted the adviser Laura Paulson on that Sotheby’s night, saying:

The sale was robust, and it felt authentic,

Laura Paulson, art adviser, ARTnews

More marquee evenings follow at Christie’s, Phillips and Sotheby’s this week, after a Frieze New York opening day that set a confident tone, and the question for the market is whether the money reaches past the trophy lots. For how a strong spring turned into a record half-year, see our Christie’s and Sotheby’s first-half report.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.