This image was lost some time after publication.

A reader reports on last night's art auction at Christie's, where botoxed billionaires with paddles reigned supreme:

I attended the big "post-war and contemporary" modern art auction at Christie's last night, where, based on press reports, the evening's highlight came as an Edward Hopper painting sold for $14 million. Actual "highlights", though, were few and far between, save for the predictably well-streaked hair of New York and Europe's finest 40- and 50-year-old trophy wives. Judging from many a furtive glance at the matrons populating the galleries, it seems that fair hair and excessively trimmed bodies are one sure way to keep the attention of your middle-aged industry-magnate/art-aficionado husband.

For the most part, a number of works sold well under the estimates given in the lot-listing pamphlet. Some, in fact, were so under the estimate that the English-accented Chrystie's auctioneer 'passed' on the sales. Of note, though, the Lee Krasner piece that the NY Times featured in last Sunday's paper as an example of "undervalued art produced by females" sold for a fair amount higher than it's estimated worth, as though the people in attendance had been guilted by the paper of record into boosting its selling price.

Finally, though, near the end of the "show", we were eagerly awaiting the unveiling of Jeff Koons' "Red Butt (Close Up)" — which is just that, a very explicit photograph of a woman in red stockings having anal sex — until the auctioneer slyly announced, "Lot number 63, by Jeff Koons, will not be shown in the gallery tonight," to collective tittering, sparing the top one-percent wage earners from having to see such graphic butt-play.

But of course. That crowd prefers their assfucking while blindfolded.