Super-rich help Christie's to record sales

By Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters) - Christie's International auction house recorded the largest half-year sales in art market history, boosted by demand from wealthy fund managers and entrepreneurs wanting pieces of modern art, it said on Friday.

Christie's, which has 14 salesrooms around the world including London, New York and Hong Kong, recorded global sales of 1.63 billion pounds (3.25 billion dollars) for the first six months of 2007, including buyers' premium -- a rise of 32 percent on last year's figure.

A total of 358 works of art sold for more than one million dollars, compared with 189 auctioned during the same period last year.

"Never before has interest in art and collectibles been so widespread," said Edward Dolman, chief executive officer at Christie's International.

"The market is being driven by a lot of new buyers including Wall Street hedge fund managers, guys in the City (of London) and Russian oligarchs as well as Middle Eastern and Asian businessmen," he added.

The most popular works were by post-war and contemporary artists, up 111 percent at 459 million pounds, and impressionist and modern artists, up 28 percent, at 435 million pounds.

Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko were most in demand with Warhol's "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)" attracting the a bid of 36 million pounds in New York.

Dolman said contemporary artists were popular because the new breed of collectors wanted something that "says more about them and the society they live in" rather than eighteenth-century values.

"They want something that has more relevance to them -- symbols of the modern world," he said.

London's share of Christie's sales jumped to 630 million pounds -- a fraction behind the traditionally dominant New York.