Kelly  Crow has the news that Christie’s is selling Roy Lichtenstein’s “Oh . . . Alright” with a third-party guarantee and a $40m estimate which confirms Josh Baer’s reporting:

“Ohh…Alright…” has never been auctioned off before, but it has been shown to collectors on the private marketplace, dealers say. Most notably, it was included in a not-for-sale show of the artist’s “Girls” series two years ago at New York’s Gagosian Gallery. Its familiarity within the marketplace could prove a turn-off to some longtime American collectors, who tend to chase harder after paintings that have been tucked away in a collection for decades. On the other hand, international collectors who are entering the Pop market now are gravitating to artists’ seminal works without paying as much attention to recent market shufflings.

At the market’s peak two years ago, Christie’s privately brokered the sale of another 1964 Lichtenstein redhead, “Happy Tears,” for roughly $35 million, up from the $7.1 million the auction house got for that same work six years earlier, according to Brett Gorvy, Christie’s international co-head of postwar and contemporary art.

Pop Goes the Art Market: A $40m Lichtenstein? (Wall Street Journal)