A portrait featuring a topless Bea Arthur, the late actress who starred in TV's "Golden Girls," sold for nearly $2 million at Christie's in New York on Wednesday, according to a report from the San Jose Mercury News.
The painting, done in 1991 by artist John Currin, was part of a 72 item auction that pulled in a record $495 million in total. Currin, writes the Los Angeles Times, is known for his scandalous work, often painting famous women in "various states of undress."
"It's historically significant — it's radical to sexualize someone people think of as asexual," said a spokesperson for Christie's of the Arthur portrait.
Other famed artists whose works hit the block included Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein ,Urs Fischer, Cy Twombly, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Willem de Kooning, Sam Francis, Frank Stella and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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