Trophy paintings by René Magritte and Ed Ruscha propelled Christie’s back-to-back auctions of 20th-century art to $486 million on Tuesday night in New York.

It was a shot of adrenaline that the art industry desperately needed after a two-year slump. The two paintings accounted for $189.5 million of the total, a reminder of just what a powerful elixir masterpieces are for the psychology of the market.

During the bidding for the two paintings, those who congregated in the James Christie salesroom of Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters (whose lease the company recently renewed until 2050) sat in nearly complete silence. You could hear a pin drop.

Rene Magritte, L’empire des Lumières (1954). Photo: Christie’s.

And the house delivered. It was quite a piece of auction theater, with dramatic music and a light show to match the palette of each painting to introduce them. As the hammer fell, the packed room erupted in applause.

Magritte’s L’empire des Lumières (1954) fetched $121.2 million after a bidding war that lasted just short of 10 minutes and surpassed the work’s presale target of $95 million. It was a new record for the Belgian artist as well as for any Surrealist painting at auction.

Then Ruscha’s Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964) sold for $68.3 million, establishing a new record for the Oklahoma-born, Los Angeles-based octogenarian. (Final prices include fees; estimates don’t.)

Ed Ruscha’s Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half (1964), which will be offered with an on-request estimate of around $50 million. Courtesy Christie’s

“Excellent sale,” investor Max Dolgicer said, leaving the auction house with a big smile on his face. “Fresh material. A lot of A+ plus paintings. Extraordinary price for Magritte. I thought the Ruscha would do better.”

It was easy to forget that a year ago the equivalent event at Christie’s totaled $640.8 million, or 24 percent more. Or that two years ago, Paul Allen’s collection, with its unprecedented number of masterpieces, resulted in the highest total ever recorded in a single auction: $1.5 billion.

“We deal with what we have,” Alex Rotter, chairman of Christie’s 20/21 Art departments, said after the auction. “We try to sell as well as we can. And we still try to exhilarate the market. Today it was achieved.”

In a market that “isn’t so easy to maneuver,” Rotter said that his team decided to pursue “the masterpiece” strategy. Specialists went after “the best” in various categories and put the house’s powerful marketing machine to work. It was a sound approach. Just consider that a single Magritte painting generated more in dollar terms than the 31-lot, $93-million evening sale at Sotheby’s a day earlier.

The Magritte, which went to Rotter’s client (an anonymous collector who needed currency conversion during the final minutes of bidding) was the star of Mica Ertegun’s collection. The interior designer died last year at 97, leaving behind a trove of modern art and design. Christie’s culled 19 paintings and sculptures into a standalone auction that totaled $157 million ($184 million with fees), with every lot selling. It had a presale low estimate of $139 million.

It was Magritte’s night. Six works by the artists were offered and all found buyers, with four landing on the top 10 list comprised of both sales.

“Magritte—superstar,” Christie’s chief executive Guillaume Cerutti whispered excitedly mid-sale, after yet another work by the Belgian Surrealist shattered its presale estimates.

Rene Magritte, L’empire des lumières (1956), a gouache on paper. Photo: Christie’s.

It was a 1956 gouache on paper offered in the various-owner evening sale that followed Mica Ertegun’s collection. Also titled L’empire des Lumières and estimated at $6 million to $8 million, it soared to $18.8 million, pursued by at least six hopefuls. The winner was Xin Li-Cohen, whose client lost out to Rotter on the big painting and wasn’t going to miss another chance.

Another small but spellbinding Magritte gouache, La Recharger de l’Absolu (1963), estimated at $3 million to $5 million, sparked a flurry of bidding and fetched $8.5 million. The second auction raised $253 million (or $302 million with fees) versus its low estimate of $265 million.

Christie’s success came at a price—mostly to consignors, who took third-party guarantees, effectively preselling their works, as well as to its own bottom line whenever it guaranteed lots before selling them off to third-party guarantors. For example, it guaranteed Ertegun’s collection and sold off all but one lot in the evening sale.

Unlike the Ertegun evening sale, the various-owners auction had plenty of casualties. Of its 55 scheduled lots, three works were withdrawn, presumably for lack of interest, and a dozen others failed to find buyers. That’s a sell-through rate of 76 percent by lot, not exactly the mark auction houses strive for. (Similarly, Sotheby’s sold 73 percent of the lots in its evening sale of Modern art the night before.)

René Magritte, La Recharger de l’Absolu. Courtesy: Christie’s

One unsold lot, de Kooning’s Abstraction (1948), had been consigned anonymously by the beleaguered investor Ron Perelman, with an estimate of $3 million to $5 million.

A group of three works anonymously consigned by Donald L. Bryant as “Ellsworth Kelly Across Decades: Property from a Private Collection” and guaranteed by Christie’s, also underperformed. One, Palm Relief (1958), barely cleared its low estimate of $600,000 (after fees were added); Blue Tablet (1962), estimated at $4 million to $6 million, initially failed to sell (and became one of the two reopened lots, hammering at $2 million); Two Curves (2012) hammered at $3.1 million, just over its $3 million low estimate.

Peter Brant, who is anonymously selling at least 11 works at Christie’s and Sotheby’s this week, saw his early Roy Lichtenstein, George Washington (1962), hammer at $5.8 million, falling short of an aspirational presale estimate of $7 million to $10 million. That may be just as well: the newsprint magnate still made a good return, having bought the pencil drawing for $940,750 in 2001, according to the Artnet Price Database.

Roy Lichtenstein, George Washington (1962). Courtesy: Christie’s.

So, is the market out of the woods?  The Christie’s and Sotheby’s sales are signaling that the rich will step up if given the opportunity to buy artworks considered best in class—but they remain selective and price-sensitive.

“The best works are still highly desirable, and the middle market is challenging,” private art dealer Neal Meltzer said. “It’s all about what comes up for sale.”