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Richard Prince work sets record price at Los Angeles Modern Auctions


Los Angeles Modern Auctions is celebrating after a work by Richard Prince achieved the highest price in the company’s history.
Prince’s Bedtime Story, executed in 1988 as part of his seminal Monochromatic Jokes series, sold for $1.585 million.

The sale of Modern Art & Design also set new auction records for artists and designers Mary Corse, Fred Eversley, John Lautner, James Gill and Joe Brainard, on its way to a total of $5.1 million.

“Record-setting prices have convinced some important collectors to act locally instead of sending works to New York, which used to be the norm,” states Peter Loughrey, Director of Modern Design & Fine Art. “The Richard Prince sale underscores our growing strength in the field of contemporary art and demonstrates LAMA’s ability to offer West Coast collectors expanded opportunities to buy and sell.”

The auction offered works from the collection of director James Bridges and his partner actor Jack Larson, who had shared a home in the historic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed George Sturges House for decades.

Although the house itself failed to find a suitable buyer in the sale, many pieces from the couple’s extensive collection were snapped up for a combined total of $618,893. Notable lots included a rare, early painting by Alex Katz, entitled Here’s to You (1962), which brought $162,500, and Jasper Johns’ Skin with O’Hara poem (1965), which realized $28,750.

The auction also saw the sale of several floor lamps by the influential American architect John Lautner. A pair from the collection of Larson and Bridges, circa 1965, achieved $21,250; a second earlier example from 1939 realized $31,250; and another from the same year achieved $43,750, setting a new record for a Lautner piece at auction.

Further leading lots from the sale included an Alberto Giacometti floor lamp which sold for $125,000; the abstract 1987 work NN-19 by Nabil Nahas, which trebled its high estimate to sell for $150,000; the hanging sculpture Copper-Four Crosses by Mary Corse, which achieved an artist record of $100,000; and the Frank Stella work Double Gray Scramble, wihc almost doubled its top estimate to sell for $68,750.


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