Warhol paintings of Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando smash estimates to fetch $151MILLION after frenzied bidding ~ Music Pollution

Triple Elvis' sold for £52m - £12m more than it was expected to fetch
Warhol classic 'Four Marlons,' featuring Hollywood star sold for £44.1m
Record for a Warhol work was £66m for 'Silver Car Crash', sold last year

Andy Warhol's 'Triple Elvis' (left) and 'Four Marlons' are displayed during Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale, in New York. They sold for a combined total of £96m

Two iconic Andy Warhol paintings of Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando sold for more than $151 million (£96m) at auction in New York, shattering pre-sale estimates by several million dollars.

Pop-art legend Warhol's 'Triple Elvis' - a 1963 silkscreen depicting three images of the King of Rock and Roll posing as a gunslinging cowboy - sold for $81.9m (£52m) at the Christie's sale yesterday.

The striking seven-foot tall work, derived from a publicity still for the 1960 Don Siegel-directed Western 'Flaming Star,' had been estimated to fetch $60 million.
Andy Warhol's 'Triple Elvis' (left) and 'Four Marlons' are displayed during Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale, in New York. They sold for a combined total of £96m

The final sale price topped out at more than $20 million above the estimate after six minutes of frenzied bidding.

It was a similar story for the other Warhol classic, 'Four Marlons,' a giant set of four images of the legendary actor taken from his 1953 motorcycle gang classic 'The Wild One', and sold for $69.6m (£44.1m).

Andy Warhol's work broke records at the auction

Both of Wednesday's auction prices however were well short of the all-time record for a Warhol work set by 'Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster),' which fetched $105.4 (£66m) in November last year at Sotheby's.

A flurry of bids also greeted the sale of Cy Twombly's 'Untitled' from his blackboard series, which went under the hammer for the first time.

The painting - a series of energetic looping spirals resembling chalk scribblings on a school blackboard - sold for $69.6m (£44m), the highest amount ever paid for a work by the American, who died three years ago in Italy.

Several world records were set for masterpieces sold on Wednesday, including $30.4m (£19m) raised for 'Smash' by Ed Ruscha, regarded as one of the leading lights of the American pop-art movement.

American photographer Cindy Sherman, 60, also set a record with her 'Untitled Film Stills,' which fetched $6.8m (£4.3m).

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's 'White No. 28' earned $7.1m (£4.5m), smashing its estimate of between $1.5m and $2m.

Revered British artist Francis Bacon's 'Seated Figure' meanwhile sold for $44.96m (£28m), in the lower range of price estimates set between $40m and $60m.

A Bacon triptych - 'Three Studies of Lucian Freud' - sold for $142.4m (£90m) last year, the highest ever price for a work of art sold at auction, surpassing the previous best of $119.9m (£76m) raised for the fourth print of Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' set in May 2012.