Warhol’s Blue Marilyn breaks records: art investment market is ‘on a roll’

Art, like gold, can claim a history as ‘a store of value’, but big caveats apply

Andy Warhol’s ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ was sold at auction for $195m
Andy Warhol’s ‘Shot Sage Blue Marilyn’ was sold at auction for $195m
(Image credit: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Blue Marilyn

This year’s spring auction season in New York was billed as a key test of the health of the art market, said DealBook in The New York Times – “an indication of whether top-quality trophies can continue to command high prices, no matter the instability of the world”. The “bellwether” work kicking off proceedings was Andy Warhol’s 1964 silk-screen of Marilyn Monroe, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, which sold for $195m – breaking records as both “the highest auction price ever for an American artist” and the most expensive 20th century work. That was taken as a good omen, amid the current “surfeit of blue-chip art”. As Philip Hoffman of advisory firm The Fine Art Group observed, “there’s been a huge amount held back for two years, and there’s a huge amount of pent-up demand from new clients”. He reckons Manhattan’s two-week auction marathon could raise $2bn.

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