Despite a distinct lack of fireworks, art market history was made tonight at Christie’s Rockefeller Center salesroom when the gavel came down on Marlene Dumas’s Miss January (1997). The painting made $11.5m—$13.6m with fees—becoming the most expensive work by any living female artist to sell at auction.
The towering portrait, measuring 280cm in height, depicts a beauty queen stood confidently, nude from the waist down save for a single pink sock. It was sold from the collection of the Miami mega-collectors Mera and Don Rubell, who acquired it from Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam more than 20 years ago.
Miss January was brought to the rostrum midway through Christie’s 21st century evening sale (this sale is ongoing and this article will be updated to reflect the full auction). Under the stewardship of auctioneer Yu-ge Wang, the work elicited just two bids and swiftly went to its guarantor via Christie’s deputy chairman Sara Friedlander.
Miss January supplants the previous record-holder, Propped (1992) by Jenny Saville, which in 2018 sold at Sotheby’s in London for £8.2m (£9.5m with fees, which was then around $12m). Tonight’s result also surpasses Dumas’s previous auction record, which was $6.3m for The Visitor (1995), sold at Sotheby’s London in 2008.
Works by women make up seven of the Christie’s sale’s top 15 most expensive lots by pre-sale estimate, including works by Simone Leigh, Cecily Brown and Julie Mehretu.