Bacon Breaks Record as Art Market Sizzles

Artist's 1976 masterpiece sells for $86M at red-hot Sotheby's sale
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 15, 2008 3:30 AM CDT
Bacon Breaks Record as Art Market Sizzles
A Sotheby's employee is pictured in front Francis Bacon's "Triptych, 1976" which last night broke the record for the most expensive piece of contemporary art ever sold.   (Getty Images)

A 1976 triptych painting by Francis Bacon became the most expensive piece of contemporary art ever sold when it went for $86.2 million at auction last night, Reuters reports. Seventeen other artists also set records at the sale, boosting Sotheby's to the best night in its 300-year history and quashing predictions that the economic slowdown would douse the red-hot market for postwar art. (More Francis Bacon stories.)

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