Christie's Contemporary sale lifts the gloom
October 15 2011

Picture: Christie's
Christie's comprehensively beat Sotheby's this week in the battle of the contemporary art sales. Where Sotheby's totalled only a below estimate £17.8m, Christie's came in with an above estimate £38m.
One of the star performers was a maquette by Anthony Gormley of The Angel of the North (above), which sold for £3.4m (inc. premium) against an estimate of £1.5m-£2m. As a guide to how fast the contemporary market can move, it was only in 2008 that Philip Mould's valuation of another Gormley maquette of The Angel made headlines as the first Antiques Roadshow item to beat £1m.
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