Jackson Pollock's painting *Number 7A* (1948) sold for $181.2 million at Christie’s in New York, shattering the previous auction record for the Abstract Expressionist artist by nearly three times. The evening sales also set new auction records for Mark Rothko and Constantin Brâncuși, and realized over $1 billion in a single evening, only the second time in auction history that threshold has been crossed.
This sale underscores the enduring strength of the high-end art market, where trophy works by blue-chip artists continue to command astronomical prices. The record for Pollock, a cornerstone of American modernism, reaffirms the market's appetite for masterpieces from canonical mid-century artists, even amid broader economic uncertainty.