The artist’s previous record, a $22 million sale of Game Changer, was set earlier this year at Christie's, in a mid-March sale with proceeds benefiting a UK charity.
This most recent $25.4 million sale occurred at Sotheby’s London as part of the day’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction. It all went down in ten minutes, with nine bidders—both in-person and on the phone—vying for the masterpiece. In the end, the partially destroyed art piece went to an anonymous collector represented by Nick Buckley Wood.
As Alex Branczik, Chairman of Modern & Contemporary Art, Sotheby's Asia, observed the night of the auction, “It is almost three years to the day since one of the most ingenious moments of performance art this century made auction history. It has been a whirlwind to follow the journey of this now legendary piece and to have it back in our midst, offering it tonight in the very room it was created by the artist.”