Andy Warhol self-portraits, Malala painting sell at auction

What's a selfie worth? If they're from Andy Warhol, made with a silkscreen rather than a smartphone, the answer is millions.

A series of six of the eccentric American artist's self-portraits sold at auction Wednesday in New York for $30.1 million (all figures US).

Warhol made the vibrant images of himself wearing his famous "fright wig" in 1986 a year before his death and just over a quarter-century before the Oxford English Dictionary made the suddenly ubiquitous "selfie" its word of the year.

Warhol's trailblazing, if not technologically parallel, take led the bidding at Sotheby's contemporary art auction and capped a triumphant week for his work.

The artist's 1960s work Big Electric Chair, which shows an execution chamber against panels of blue, green and pink fetched $20.4 million at the same Sotheby's auction. His 12 Mona Lisas went for $11.4 million.

Two other works from Warhol's Death and Disaster series sold Tuesday at Christie's for a combined $100 million. Race Riot, 1964 a four-panel painting of unrest in Alabama went for $62.9 million at Christie's auction of postwar and contemporary works. His 1962 painting White Marilyn, completed shortly after Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe took her life, sold for $41 million.

In all, Sotheby's sold 67 pieces Wednesday for a total of $364.4 million. All prices included the buyer's premium.

Casino magnate Steve Wynn purchased Jeff Koons' stainless steel sculpture of the spinach-loving cartoon character Popeye for $28.2 million and will put it on display at his Wynn Las Vegas property in Nevada, Sotheby's said. Meanwhile, Koons' Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train, a stainless steel sculpture filled with bourbon, sold Tuesday for $33.8 million.

German painter Gerhard Richter'sBlau sold Wednesday for $28.7 million, about $9 million shy of his auction record set last year at Sotheby's.

Jean-Michel Basquiat's Undiscovered Genius of the Mississippi Delta sold Wednesday for $23.7 million.

Sale of Malala portrait benefits charity

Another high-profile sale on Wednesday was the painting of Malala Yousafzai by Jonathan Yeo, which Christie's sold for $102,500, including the buyer's premium.

Yeo painted Yousafzai in 2013 after she started attending a school in Birmingham, England, where she now lives. The sale proceeds will go to the Malala Fund charity. The fund said the money would in turn be given to Nigerian nonprofits that focus on education for women and girls in the wake of the kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls in that country.

The painting hung in the National Portrait Gallery in London last year for an exhibition of Yeo's portraits of well-known figures, including Sienna Miller, Kevin Spacey and Rupert Murdoch.

Malala was 15 when she was shot in 2012 as she travelled to her Pakistani school. President Barack Obama has called her the "bravest girl in the world."