Tracey Emin’s 1998 artwork My Bed, bought by Charles Saatchi for £150,000, in 2000, has been sold at auction by Christie’s in London for £2.54 million, the Guardian reports. The controversial work, which contributed to Emin’s 1999 Turner Prize nomination, was bought by Jay Jopling, Emin’s art dealer and founder of the White Cube gallery.
Emin, who was present at the auction, had said that she hoped that the work would be bought by a benefactor who would donate it to a museum and that it would be kept on public display. It is unclear what Jopling will do with the artwork. Proceeds from the sale will go to support the Saatchi Gallery‘s policy of free entry to exhibitions and free education programmes for schools.
Other artworks in the post-war and contemporary art sale included Roy Lichtenstein’s 1971 painting Mirror #8, which went for £1.7m, Andy Warhol’s Self Portrait (fright wig) which sold for £5.6m and Francis Bacon’s 1967 Study for Head of Lucian Freud, which went for £10.2m.
2 July 2014
