That figure was a record for the artist at auction, and well above the painting’s high $15 million estimate. Before the sale, many had speculated that it would set a record for a work by a living artist. (That record is held by Lucian Freud’s painting “Benefits Supervisor,” which sold for $33.6 million at Christie’s in New York two years ago.)  The Johns buyer was Richard Rossello, a dealer in American paintings based in Bryn Mawr, Pa., who could be seen with a cellphone glued to his ear during the bidding; whom he was buying for was not divulged.  Throughout the evening — the first of a week of postwar and contemporary art auctions — Americans dominated the buying, in contrast with last week’s sales of Impressionist and modern art, where Europeans, Asians and Middle Easterners were the big spenders. Officials at Christie’s estimated that 75 percent of the buyers were Americans.  Whether it was the magic of the Crichton name or the art that was on offer, Christie’s salesroom was overflowing with an all-star cast, including the superagent Michael Ovitz, the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, the hedge fund manager David Ganek and the newsprint magnate Peter Brant.  Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier, was there, too. “Gold was up today,” he noted as he was leaving. “No one wants paper money — they want art.”  “Flag” was one of 31 works being sold from the estate of Mr. Crichton, who died in November 2008. The writer met Mr. Johns in the early 1970s and bought “Flag” directly from him in 1974. That the painting had only one owner — and a big name besides — contributed to the high price.  Other works by Mr. Johns also brought high prices. William Acquavella, the Manhattan dealer, bought “Study for a Painting,” from the artist’s “Catenary” series (incorporating a cord suspended between two points). This 2002 painting, the largest of the series, was expected to sell for $3 million to $5 million. It went for $4.7 million, or $5.3 million including Christie’s fees. Mr. Acquavella said he bought it for his Upper East Side gallery.  Mr. Crichton got to know most of the artists he collected, including David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. Christie’s sale featured works by all of them. Another big seller was “Studio Painting,” one of Rauschenberg’s “Combines,” a term the artist coined for works in which he used castoff objects like rubber tires, flatware or furniture. This painting, executed in 1960-61, is made up of two canvases with a rope, a sandbag and a pulley. The work, which was estimated at $6 million to $9 million, was bought for $11 million by an unidentified telephone bidder.  Another work by Rauschenberg, “Trapeze,” a 1964 silk-screen painting that was expected to sell for $5 million to $7 million, was won by Larry Gagosian, the Manhattan dealer, who outbid a telephone bidder, paying $5.6 million, or $6.3 million with Christie’s fees.  Of the 79 works up for sale, only 5 failed to sell. The evening totaled $231.9 million, above the high $207.4 million estimate. (Final prices include the buyer’s commission to Christie’s: 25 percent of the first $50,000, 20 percent of the next $50,000 to $1 million, and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)  Once Christie’s won the brand-name Crichton collection, it was able to rope in other blue-chip property, among them several top Warhols. An old-fashioned bidding war broke out when “Silver Liz,” a classic 1963 image of Hollywood glamour, came up for sale. Five bidders wanted it, including Jon Colby, a Miami bidder standing by the door and raising his paddle. Christie’s expected it to bring $10 million to $15 million; Mr. Colby lost out to Dominique Levy, a Manhattan dealer who paid $18.3 million. “There will be others,” Mr. Colby said after the hammer fell.  And indeed there were. Mr. Colby took home “Holly Solomon,” a 1963 nine-image canvas of the late art dealer, for $5.4 million, a bargain since it had been estimated at $7 million to $12 million. Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday night will have yet more Warhols, including a 1986 self-portrait being sold by the fashion designer Tom Ford, which is expected to exceed its high $15 million estimate.  An eagerly anticipated retrospective of Yves Klein’s work opens later this month at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. That may explain why the San Francisco collectors Richard and Pamela Kramlich decided to sell “ANT 93, Le Buffle” (“The Buffalo”) from 1960-61, a painting from Klein’s “Anthropométrie” series. Made with one of the artist’s “living brushes,” in this case a curvaceous model coated in his signature blue and smeared on the canvas, creating the shape of a buffalo, the work sold to an anonymous bidder for $11 million, or $12.4 million with fees, and right at its high $12 million estimate.  After the sale, Brett Gorvy, a co-head of Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department, summed up the evening: “There were not simply the old guard but a lot of new bidders, too.”
One of Jasper Johnsâs seminal âFlagâ paintings, which had belonged to the writer Michael Crichton, became the star in the auction houseâs postwar and contemporary art auction.