May 14 2009 - Leading the Evening Sale was a group of 20 works from the collection of the renowned American philanthropist Betty Freeman which was 90% sold by lot and achieved a combined total of $31,606,500. One of the most important David Hockney works to come to the auction market, Beverly Hills Housewife, 1966-1967, achieved the evening’s top price of $7,922,500, and set a new world auction record for the artist. Typewriter Eraser, a work that epitomizes Claes Oldenburg's revolutionary approach to sculpture sold for $2,210,500 and set the second auction record of the night. The catalogue cover lot, Roy Lichtenstein’s Frolic, 1977, fetched $6,018,500, followed by a rare, early painting by Sam Francis from 1954 entitled Grey, which achieved $3,666,500. First exhibited in Dorothy Miller’s seminal 1954 MoMA show, Twelve Americans, the painting was acquired directly from Francis’s private collection by Mrs. Freeman, who enjoyed a long and close relationship with the artist. Douglas Wheeler’s Untitled, 1968 set a new world auction record for the artist, selling for $290,500. Rounding out the Freeman collection was Alexander Calder’s Gypsophila on Black Skirt, 1950, a coveted work that witnessed strong bidding, sold for $1,986,500

Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park No. 117, 1979, a consummate work for the artist, which luminously illustrates the best qualities of his most celebrated series of paintings, achieved $6,578,500, just shy of the artist’s auction record of $6.76 million. Through his use of bright and cool blues and yellows, the artist communicates the ephemeral quality of nature, capturing the sensation and radiance of the coastal environment in which this work was created.

Masterfully executed, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s totemic Mater, 1982, an electrifying, rare rendition of a female figure was acquired for $5,850,500. Painted during what many would describe as the apex of Basquiat’s tragically short yet undeniably brilliant career, this work exudes the energy of a young artist at the pinnacle of his creative output.