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To the auctioneers at Christie’s, Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” is a mashup that combines “a Minimalist sheen with a naïve sense of play.”
To Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s dad, Robert, the sculpture is a very expensive gift to himself.
Koons’ “Rabbit” was sold Wednesday night for more than $91 million at Christie’s in New York, setting a record for the most expensive work by a living artist to be sold at auction. The 3-foot-tall silver bunny was one of 11 works offered from the collection of magazine publisher S.I. Newhouse, the longtime chief of Condé Nast who died in 2017.
“The work is considered the holy grail of Koons works among certain collecting circles, and the bunny’s allure was burnished by the fact that Newhouse was its longtime owner,” Artnet News writes. “It also received an extraordinary pre-sale display at Christie’s with a custom-built room that perched the rabbit on a pedestal surrounded by lighting mimicking a James Turrell installation.”
But the moment that Mnuchin’s representative nailed the winning bid was worth the price of admission alone. Check it out here, along with other memorable moments in art-auction history:
Watch the moment Jeff Koons’s ‘Rabbit’ sets a new #WorldAuctionRecord for a work by a living artist. https://t.co/3ZWvCzUDAN pic.twitter.com/ToKxCpzUK6
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) May 16, 2019