Jeff Koons is again the world's highest-paid living artist: beaten to $91 million for his bunny

Jeff Koons beats David Hockney and once again becomes theworld’s highest-paid living artist: one of his steel bunnies was hammered at auction last night at Christie’s, in New York, for the remarkable sum of $91,075,000. This is the highest price ever fetched at auction for a living artist, and it surpasses by just under a million dollars the previous record set a few months ago, in November, by David Hockney, when his Portrait of an artist fetched $90.3 million. Jeff Koons thus recaptures the scepter, which Hockney had won six months ago by outperforming the previous record, set in 2013, when a Balloon Dog by Koons was sold at Christie’s for $58.4 million.

The record-breaking work, a 1986 Rabbit, which was estimated at $50 million to $70 million on the eve of the sale, is a three-foot-tall work made of stainless steel.Christie’s writes that a host of critics have spoken of this controversial work, alternately calling it “cute, sinister, cartoonish, imposing, vacuous, sexy, creepy, dazzling, iconic.” According to reports in the New York Times, Koons’ work was reportedly won by art dealer Robert E. Mnuchin, father of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The Rabbit passed at auction last night exists in only three examples (plus an artist’s proof) and is the only one still in the possession of private collectors, according to Christie’s.

In the same sale last night, other significant results were achieved. A 1964 work by Robert Rauschenberg, Buffalo II, which was presented at that year’s Venice Biennale, sold for $88,805,000, breaking the artist’s record, and again a Kiss by Roy Lichtenstein sold for $31,135,000, while a Spider by Louise Bourgeois sold for $32,055,000 (a record for the artist). High results also for Andy Warhol, with a Double Elvis fetched a round $53 million, for a 1959 Point of Pines by Frank Stella, which totaled $28,082,500 (another single-artist record), and for a Peinture aux formes indéfinies by Daniel Buren, which at $2,175,000 also represented an artist’s record for him. In total, the Post-War and Contemporary Art Sale totaled an impressive $538,971,750 million.

The quotations of Jeff Koons, who was recently in Italy, and to be exact in Carrara (here you can find the full transcript of the lecture he gave at the Academy of Fine Arts), were given as going downhill: with this blow, therefore, he seems to have wanted to give a dry denial.

Pictured: Jeff Koons, Rabbit (1986; stainless steel, 104.1 x 48.3 x 30.5 cm)

Jeff Koons is again the world's highest-paid living artist: beaten to $91 million for his bunny

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