The Hockney was by far the night’s top lot—unsurprising given it nearly doubled the previous record-holder for a work by a living artist, Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons plays with ideas of taste, pleasure, celebrity, and commerce. “I believe in advertisement and media completely,” he says. “My art and my personal life are based in it.”

Working with seductive commercial materials (such as the high chromium stainless steel of his “Balloon Dog” sculptures or his vinyl “Inflatables”), shifts of scale, and an elaborate studio system involving many technicians, Koons turns banal objects into high art icons. His paintings and sculptures borrow widely from art-historical techniques and styles; although often seen as ironic or tongue-in-cheek, Koons insists his practice is earnest and optimistic. “I’ve always loved Surrealism and Dada and Pop, so I just follow my interests and focus on them,” he says. “When you do that, things become very metaphysical.” The “Banality” series that brought him fame in the 1980s included pseudo-Baroque sculptures of subjects like Michael Jackson with his pet ape, while his monumental topiaries, like the floral Puppy (1992), reference 17th-century French garden design.

Hockney’s 12-foot-tall sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange) (1994–2000), which sold for $58.4 million in November 2013. But, overall the sale was only a modest success. The night’s $357.6 million total, which includes fees, came in below the sale’s low estimate, which does not include fees. It also narrowly missed the $362.5 million mark notched by Sotheby’s one night before when only two lots failed to sell.

Hockney’s record capped a quick rise in his status as one of the few artists who can command prices in the upper eight figures. Just two years ago, his auction record was $11.7 million. Thursday evening’s result now places him in the same echelon as Cy Twombly, whose record of $70.5 million was set in 2015, and Mark Rothko, whose $86.9 million record came in 2012.

The lack of a reserve on the Hockney, brought on by consigner Joe Lewis’s confidence in a strong performance, caused bidding to open at the relatively low threshold of $18 million and allowed for a wave of bidders to enter the fray. The majority of those bidders dropped out when the work crossed $55 million, leaving four Christie’s specialists to battle over the night’s star lot. After the sale, auctioneer Jussi Pylkkänen said he counted nine people vying for the work.
“We got multiple bidders on it—which, quite honestly, was not easy this week,” said Alex Rotter, post-war and contemporary department chairman at Christie’s, in the post-sale press conference.