Tracey Emin's My Bed sold at auction for £2.2 million

 
Sold: Tracey Emin poses with My Bed (Picture: AP)
Alexandra Rucki1 July 2014

Tracey Emin’s Turner shortlisted My Bed artwork has sold at auction for £2.2 million.

The piece, which features an unmade bed and floor littered with vodka bottles, cigarette butts and condoms, went under the hammer at Christie’s in London tonight.

It was put up for sale by millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi and was expected to fetch between £800,000 to £1.2 million.

Emin was in the packed auction room as the work was sold to applause from the crowd.

The work. which is one of the most famous from the Young British Artists movement, was sold to support the Saatchi Gallery Foundation.

Saatchi originally paid £150,000 for the work, which Emin said was a depiction of her life after a traumatic break up.

Emin, 50, told the Standard she wanted the work to stay in Britain on public display, but feared no gallery here could afford it.

Other works sold in the Post War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction included Francis Bacon's Study For Head Of Luciano Freud, which sold for a hammer price of £10.2 million.

Christies said that with buyer's premium My Bed went for £2,546,500, which is a world record for the Margate artist at auction.

The auction house was unable to immediately reveal the buyer.

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