No, That’s Not a Law Firm.

Those are the Names that Carried the Christie’s Sale.

Christie’s Contemporary sale totals $171 million. Half of that figure came from four paintings by Bacon, Freud and Koons and $25 million Koons sculpture. The top ten lots account for 70% of the total sale value. Beneath the headlines, the big news was the record set for a Gilbert and George work: $3.7 million for To Her Majesty. Eight other record prices were set. One for a Jeff Koons painting and more significantly, $2.5 million for a Sayed Haider Raza picture as well as records for Yan-Pei Ming, Nicolas de Stael, Michael Andrews and Antonio Lopez.

By lot, the buying was 48% American, 42% European (including UK), 8% Asian and 2% from other regions.

There’s a new type of collector emerging at the highest end of the art market. This collector wants to own the very best and begins buying at the very top. The Art Newspaper thinks Roman Abramovich is one of these collectors. They’re reporting that he bought both the Bacon Triptych at Sotheby’s and Lucian Freud’s record-setting canvas at Christie’s. Nice trick. Whether this is true–or it makes sense to buy the two most expensive works rather than the two “best” works–is another question. We do know that other pictures at the top of the sale, were bought by “new” collectors who own very few works.