Warhol Goes for $71m in Record New York Art Sale

Sales records for post-war contemporary art continued to be smashed last night with works by Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst fetching prices wildly in excess of their estimates at a New York auction held by Christie's.

Christie's sale of contemporary and post-war art fetched a total sum of $385m (£195m) - fully $80m above the highest pre-sale estimates. Three quarters of the entries exceeded their high estimates, 65 lots sold for over $1m, and 26 artists broke their sales records.

The bewildering sums meant the Christie's sale became the second most lucrative auction of art in history, only capped by the auction last November by the same company and also in New York of impressionist and modern work, which fetched $492m.

The boom in interest in contemporary art, fueled by new investment from Russian and far eastern collectors, was reflected in the lavish sums fetched by last night's star items. Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) had been projected by Christie's to go for between $25m and $35m, but in the end received a top bid of almost twice that amount - selling at an all-time high for any Warhol of $71.7m.

That put it just behind the new historic record price for post-war art that was set by Tuesday night's sale of Mark Rothko's 1950 White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), a sumptuous canvas of blocks of pure color, which fetched $73m. The painting was included in a Sotheby's auction in New York of contemporary and postwar art, which brought in total bids of $255m, obliterating records held by all previous sales of its kind.

At last night's rival auction, new records were also set by the British artist Damien Hirst whose rise to pre-eminence as one of the world's most profitable artists continued with the sale of Lullaby Winter for $7.4m. The work, a rainbow-like arrangement of pharmaceutical pills set in a frame against a metallic background, had been expected to sell for less than half that amount.

Warhol created Green Car Crash, a silkscreen print on linen, in 1963 as part of his seminal Death and Disaster series. It shows repeated images of a mangled and burning car that has transformed a mundane suburban streetscape, and was based on a news photograph of an accident that appeared in Newsweek that same year.

Two other Warhol's sold last night, Lemon Marilyn from his famous series of Marilyn Monroe paintings, this one depicting her with lurid yellow hair and purple face, which reached $28m, and a self-portrait that fetched $8.2m.

The blockbuster sums traded this week in New York confirms the explosion of demand for top contemporary art from collectors who now span the globe, with money pouring into the main art markets of New York, Paris, London, Miami and Basel - particularly from Korea and the new rich of China and India