Wynn pays top price at auction
- Share via
For the second night in a row, Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn bought the most expensive item at a New York auction of Impressionist and Modern art. This time around, Wednesday night at Christie’s, he paid $17.3 million for a self-portrait by Paul Cezanne.
The previous evening, Wynn landed a $23.5-million Renoir painting at Sotheby’s. Both acquisitions will be displayed at his gallery, the Wynn Collection, in Las Vegas.
A bronze cast of Edgar Degas’ perennially popular “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen” brought the second highest sum at Christie’s, $10.3 million, from dealer Richard Gray, who has galleries in New York and Chicago.
The selling price fell squarely within the auction house’s estimated range of $8 million to $12 million, but failed to reach the $12.3-million record sum paid in 1991 by seller Francois Arnault, the French collector who owns Christie’s.
Nine other works brought more than $1 million apiece, including Piet Mondrian’s classic painting “Composition in White, Blue and Yellow,” which fetched $8 million from an anonymous collector.
But six of the 31 artworks offered were not sold. Christie’s total take, $59.7 million, fell short of the auction house’s $64-million low estimate.
*
Suzanne Muchnic
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
