American artist Barnett Newman's abstract painting "Black Fire I" sold for $84.2 million at Christie's contemporary art sale on Tuesday, setting a new auction record for the artist and confirming the buoyancy of the global art market. The price, including buyer's premium, easily surpassed the previous record of $43.8 million set a year earlier for Newman's "Onement VI," and topped the $80.8 million a private Asian buyer paid at Tuesday's sale for Francis Bacon's "Three Studies for a Portrait of John Edwards". All but four of the 72 lots on offer were sold as the post-war and contemporary sale also broke records for works by American sculptor Alexander Calder, sculptor and artist Joseph Cornell and several others. true Apart from the two top lots, four more fetched over $50 million, with deep-pocketed collectors from around the globe vying for the most coveted works of art. "These are incredible statistics," B