Summary The final sale price topped out at more than $20 million above the estimate after six minutes.
New York (AFP) - Two iconic Andy Warhol paintings of Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando sold for more than $151 million at auction in New York, shattering pre-sale estimates by several million dollars.
Pop-art legend Warhol s "Triple Elvis" -- a 1963 silkscreen depicting three images of the King of Rock and Roll posing as a gunslinging cowboy -- sold for $81.9 million at the Christie s sale on Wednesday.
The striking seven-foot tall work, derived from a publicity still for the 1960 Don Siegel-directed Western "Flaming Star," had been estimated to fetch $60 million.
The final sale price topped out at more than $20 million above the estimate after six minutes of frenzied bidding.
It was a similar story for the other Warhol classic sold Wednesday, "Four Marlons," a giant set of four images of the legendary actor taken from his 1953 motorcycle gang classic "The Wild One."
Both of Wednesday s auction prices however were well short of the all-time record for a Warhol work set by "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)," which fetched $105.4 million in November last year at Sotheby s.
A flurry of bids also greeted the sale of Cy Twombly s "Untitled" from his blackboard series, which went under the hammer for the first time.
The painting - a series of energetic looping spirals resembling chalk scribblings on a school blackboard -- sold for $69.6 million, the highest amount ever paid for a work by the American, who died three years ago in Italy.
Several world records were set for masterpieces sold on Wednesday, including $30.4 million raised for "Smash" by Ed Ruscha, regarded as one of the leading lights of the American pop-art movement.
American photographer Cindy Sherman, 60, also set a record with her "Untitled Film Stills," which fetched $6.8 million. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama s "White No. 28" earned $7.1 million, smashing its estimate of between $1.5 million and $2 million.
Revered British artist Francis Bacon s "Seated Figure" meanwhile sold for $44.96 million, in the lower range of price estimates set between $40 million and $60 million.
A Bacon triptych -- "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" -- sold for $142.4 million last year, the highest ever price for a work of art sold at auction, surpassing the previous best of $119.9 million raised for the fourth print of Edvard Munch s "The Scream" set in May 2012.
