Bacon masterpiece sets record at auction

New York: Francis Bacon's "Triptych, 1976" sold for $86 million (Dh315.9 million) at Sotheby's contemporary sale on Wednesday, setting a record for postwar art and contributing to the auction house's best result in its nearly 300-year history.

With a $362 million (Dh1.3 billion) total, the auction house eclipsed even its best Impressionist and modern art showings, marking yet another milestone for the seemingly unstoppable contemporary and postwar art market.

Hot market

It was the second consecutive night of landmark records in the hot market, after Lucian Freud's "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" established a new mark for a living artist when it sold for $33.6 million (Dh123.4 million) at rival Christie's on Tuesday.

"You could really see global bidding," said Tobias Meyer, Sotheby's head of contemporary art, after some auction officials had privately expressed concern that unstable financial markets might tamp down spending on fine art.

Officials were uncharacteristically evasive about the geographic makeup of the buyers, saying only that it was "global, all over the place."

The previous record for a work by the Irish-born Bacon, who died in 1992, was $52.7 million (Dh193.5 million), set last year.