雅思阅读文章：The wizards of the Warhol market_雅思英语阅读

雅思阅读文章：The wizards of the Warhol market

　　IS Andy Warhols market as vigorous as his auction results would have us believe? The artist always plays a prominent role in the twice-yearly contemporary sales in New York, but this season his work saw a phenomenal turnover of $181m, almost a third of the weeks total proceeds at Christies, Sothebys and Phillips de Pury. The top lot in all three evening sales was a Warhol painting. But the consignment and bidding stories behind these star Warhols vary greatly. Each reveals a different market dynamic: a determined but thin response to rare masterpieces; the passion of Warhol owners for trading the work; and the skewing effects of guarantees . Indeed, there is more to the Warhol market than first meets the eye.

　　The most expensive work of the week was a four-panel self-portrait from 1963-4, which hit the block at Christies. Warhol himself had arranged the four crisply silkscreened canvases in various shades of blue. Moreover, the image had been made in a photo-booth; a ready-made format that affirms Warhols place as the heir to Marcel Duchamp. Only three bidders went for the work, but two of them were fervent. After a 15-minute duel, an anonymous buyer on the phone with Brett Gorvy, Christies Head of Contemporary Art, prevailed over a client of Philippe Sgalot, a French-born New York-based dealer, and secured the work for $38.4m, the highest price ever paid at auction for a portrait by the artist.

　　Other Warhol paintings also elicited real competition and sold for high prices. A lush red shadow painting from 1978 sold at Sothebys for $4.8m and a 1985 canvas entitled Third Eye, painted by both Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, sold at Phillips for $7m, a record price for a collaboration. These pieces were vibrantly coloured and conservatively estimated, two factors that whet appetites.