René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1954) sold for $121.16 million at Christie’s yesterday, setting a new record at auction for the late French Surrealist.
L’empire des lumières(“The Empire of Light”) is one of 27 similarly-titled works that the artist painted between the 1940s and ’60s. Each work in the series depicts a scene that appears to be simultaneously day and night. The artist’s previous auction record, set in 2022, was also for a work from the series, L’empire des lumières (1961), which sold at Sotheby’s London for £59.42 million ($79.24 million).
The record-breaking work, which hammered after a 10-minute bidding battle, was the leading lot from the Christie’s sale of works from the collection of the late furniture designer, Mica Ertugan. The sale realized $184 million in total, and was a white glove sale, selling 100% of its lots.
The sale was immediately followed by the auction house’s 20th-century evening sale, which realized $302 million. That auction was led by Ed Ruscha’s Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964), which sold for $68.26 million, a new auction record for the artist. The painting is one of few 1960s large-scale works by Ruscha in private ownership and was a key part of the artist’s traveling retrospective that took place from 2023–24. Its price exceeded Ruscha’s previous auction record of $52.49 million, set in 2019 at Christie’s New York for Hurting the Word Radio #2 (1964).
Totaling some $436 million across the night, the sales are the first in a series of auctions held by Christie’s this week in New York. Along with benchmarks for Magritte and Ruscha, three additional auction records were set during the evening for:
