All’s fair in love and art!

While late billionaire Leonard Lauder’s Gustav Klimt sold for $236.4 million , and that famed banana artist Maurizio Cattelan’s golden toilet swirled up $12.1 million, at a Sotheby’s sale this week — another art lot was more quietly snapped up by TV tycoon Ryan Murphy.

A collector in the room at Sotheby’s New York headquarters for the sale tells us they spotted producer Murphy placing the winning bid on Simone Leigh’s “Sphinx,” splashing out $889,000 on the sculpture.

The auction took place after the sale of Lauder’s collection.

“Sphinx” is a 2021 work in bronze and platinum leaf.

The artist’s work has been shown at the Guggenheim and the Tate.

Leigh’s work “elaborates on Black feminist thought, an intellectual tradition which values and centers the

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