\"Benefits Supervisor Sleeping\" - sets new world record $33.6 million at auctionA fleshy, life-sized nude portrait by U.K. artist Lucien Freud fetched more than $30 million US at a Christie’s auction in New York Tuesday night and set a new record for the sale of a work by a living artist.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, Freud’s 1995 painting of a sleeping, naked woman, sold to an anonymous buyer for $33.6 million US (including the auction house commission).

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping soared above the past record holder, the $23.6 million US sale of the Jeff Koons’ sculpture Hanging Heart (Magenta and Gold) at Sotheby’s in New York in November 2007.

The top lot at the New York auction, which focused on postwar and contemporary art, was a 1952 Mark Rothko painting that sold for $50.4 million US. The evening also saw a Francis Bacon work, Studies for Self Portrait, cross the block for more than $28 million US.

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