Highlights of the Sotheby's of contemporary and postwar art auction

Sotheby's marked the rounding out of New York's major fall auctions by a sale that fetched 315.8 million -well over its high estimate of $270 million. It was the third-highest sale total achieved by its contemporary art dept. (Its peak is at $362 million evening sale in 2008.)

• The highlight was selling off a quartet of Clyfford Still paintings for an impressive $114 million, nearly twice their total asking price. Only 11 works by him have come up at auction over the last decade or so. Four bidders chased his rust, black & butter-colored abstract, ‘1949-A-No. 1’. A telephone bidder grabbed it for $61.6 million, well past its high estimate of $35 million. The price also eclipsed the artist's earlier auction record of $21.2 million.
  
  
• The same buyer paid $19.6 million for the painter's orange ‘PH-1033’, that evokes a freeze-frame fire. It was expected to fetch just up to $15 million.Still's ‘1947-Y-No. 2’ also fared well, going for a good $31.4 million, priced to fetch up to $20 million.
  
  
• The last of the group went for $1.2 million, slightly under its $1.5 million high estimate. The frenzy over the Stills helped apparently stoke the competitive fervor in Sotheby's York Avenue saleroom that included Brandon Davis, Miami collectors Don and Mera Rubell, among others.
  
  
• A telephone bidder paid more than $19.5 million for an emerald-green triptych by Francis Bacon, ‘Three Studies for a Self-Portrait’ that the British artist did in 1967. It was priced to sell for about $20 million. Two other Bacons came up for bid too: his ‘Elephant Fording a River’ (1952) went for $5.6 million, whereas the ‘Study for Portrait’ from 1979 got $4.3 million.
  
  
• Sotheby's sale amounted to a test of German artist Gerhard Richter's market. With not less than seven pieces on offer, he played a Warholian role in this particular sale in that bidders had a choice One of Richter's wall-sized works from 1997 sold for a record $20.8 million, well over its high estimate of $12 million.