Fueled by a handful of outstanding offerings, the contemporary art market maintained its upwardly momentum on Tuesday at Sotheby’s, racking up $293,587,000. Impressively, 44 of the 53 lots that sold hurdled the million dollar mark. Of those, five exceeded $20 million.

Four artist records were set, including for Barnett Newman’s magisterial, electric blue hued zip painting, “Onement VI” (1953), which sold to an anonymous telephone bidder for $43,845,000 (est. $30-40 million). It eclipsed the record set in November (2012) at Christie’s New York when “Onement V,” from the same iconic series, made $22.3 million.

This example is freighted with considerable history, including a Coca-Cola spill on the surface that required expert (though now largely invisible) restoration as well as a role in a complex tax evasion case and civil lawsuit in 2003 that involved at least two art world luminaries. The baggage couldn’t deter the masterpiece from making its mark.

Eleven of the 64 lots offered failed to find buyers, making for a decent buy-in rate of 13 percent by lot and 18 percent by value. The tally rates as Sotheby’s fifth biggest contemporary art evening sale and easily exceeded last May’s $266,591,000 result.

Still, the evening felt like a mild roller coaster as two of five works by Jeff Koons were bought in, most surprisingly, the one offered by mega-collector Peter Brant, “New Hoover Celebrity IV, New Hoover Convertible, New Shelton 5 Gallon Wet/Dry, New Shelton 10 Gallon Wet/Dry Double Decker” (est. $10-15 million). Brant bought the 1981-86 sculpture, which — logically — consists of the four titular vacuum cleaners, at Sotheby’s New York in April 1991 for $137,500.

But Koons’s earlier piece, “The New Jeff Koons” (1980), a fluorescent light box featuring the boy wonder himself posed with a box of crayolas and an Ethelbert drawing pad, sold for $9,405,000 (est. $2.5-3.5 million). Like the Newman, this Koons also carried an anonymous third-party financial guarantee. It sold to private dealer Phillipe Segalot.

Another guaranteed work, Yves Klein’s other-worldly sculpture, “eponge bleue sans titre, SE 168” (1959), formerly in the collection of New York gallery great Sidney Janis, sold to Sandy Rower, the head of the Alexander Calder Foundation, for $22,005,000 (est. on request).

Brant was also a buyer early on, nabbing Glenn Ligon’s dense and richly textured text painting, “Stranger #64” (2012), for $1,265,000 (est. $350-450,000). It was one of eight artist-donated works to benefit the new Whitney Museum of American Art’s downtown building, bringing that tally to $11.8 million, almost doubling the $6.6-million high estimate.

Another work of the Whitney sampler, John Currin’s pretty, 28-by-20-inch “Lydian” (2012), sold to the telephone for $2,965,000 (est. $500-700,000). The underbidders included Jose Mugrabi.

Back to the heavy hitters: though Newman’s 1953 painting was the AbEx-era star of the evening, Jackson Pollock’s gorgeously painted pre-drip “Blue Unconscious” (1946) proved an excellent buy at $20,885,000 (est. $20-30 million). At 84 by 56 inches, it rates as the largest of a small numbered series and was exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery in Pollock’s breakout solo there in February 1947. It last sold at auction at the old Parke-Bernet galleries, a forerunner of Sotheby’s stateside enterprise, in April 1965 for $45,000.

Less exciting, though fetching the exact same amount, was Clyfford Still’s later “PH-21” (1962) (est. $16-20 million).

The heady mix of American and European postwar masterworks culminated with a giant, photo-based Gerhard Richter painting, “Domplatz, Mailand” (1968), which sold to New York mega-collector Donald Bryant, Jr. for a record $37,125,000 (est. $30-50 million). This work ranks as the most expensive work by a living artist ever to sell at auction.

From a distance, Richter’s scene of the busy square by the Milan cathedral looks like crisp black and white, but as you move closer to the canvas, it dematerializes into a dizzying blur of abstract patterns. Bryant, who just last week at Sotheby’s nabbed a Picasso painted metal sculpture, “Sylvette” (1954) for $13.6 million, pumped his right arm in the air in victory as the auctioneer’s gavel slammed down. “I just love that picture,” he said, heading out of the salesroom, “and I feel very lucky. I expected it was going to be that much and I was ready to go to $40 million and no more.”

The 108-by-114-inch Richter last sold at Sotheby’s London in December 1998 for £2,201,500 ($3,650,306) and spent many years in relative obscurity in the lobby of a Pritzker family owned hotel in Chicago.

Another grand composition, Cy Twombly’s “Untitled (Bolsena)” (1969), composed in a graffitied mélange of oil-based house paint, lead pencil, and wax crayon on canvas, drew stiff bidding, selling for $15,397,000 (est. $10-15 million). It was another top lot insured with a third-party guarantee.

Unusually, the evening had its share of winning bidders who were actually in the room, as evidenced by the success of fashion magnate Giancarlo Giammetti, who bought Jean-Michel Basquiat’s suitably Roman-themed “Untitled (Julius Caesar on Gold” (1981), which made $6,885,000 (est. $7-8 million). The painting recently appeared in the huge Basquiat show at Gagosian in Chelsea.

Even with these kinds of magnum-sized numbers, some top-rated works failed, including the rare and top-notch Francis Bacon composition of his lover and muse, Peter Lacey, “Study for Portrait of P.L.” (1962), which crashed without a single hand raised (est. $30-40 million). The 78-by-57-inch canvas had one problem, according to Gerard Faggionato, the London dealer who is the co-representative of the Francis Bacon estate. “It’s very simple,” said Faggionato, “too high of an estimate. It’s not complicated and it didn’t attract any bids.” The dealer also said the painting had changed hands fairly recently at a high price, close to the over-reaching estimate.

“Still,” remarked New York dealer Roland Augustine later, “it was a very strong sale and it’s remarkable that the market continues this way. We’re pretty close to the top now, so I think it will plateau soon.”

That off-the-cuff prediction will be tested Wednesday evening at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary art sale.