Living artists British vs. American

Every other Friday Artprice posts a theme-based auction ranking. This week’s ranking focuses on the 10 best auction results for living artists.

Although Post-War and Contemporary art sales have indeed recovered, the top end of the market has not returned to the pomp and excess of the euphoric 2007/2008 period. The correction that hit this segment of the market in 2009 was particularly difficult for major auction houses and artists alike. It is therefore no surprise that 9 of the 10 best auction results for living artists were generated between 2007 and 2008 (period of euphoric art prices), none in 2009 and just one in 2010. Although 2010 saw 30,300 auction results in the Post-War & Contemporary segment worldwide (a thousand more than in 2007-2008), the total revenue from these sales amounted to less than half that from the 2007-2008 period (€443 m vs. €975.2m).

Top 10 : the 10 best auction results for living artists.

Lucian Freud (1922)

Awarded the British Order of Merit in 1993, Lucian FREUD is the world’s most expensive living artist on the back of a $30m result that was generated on 13 May 2008 at Christie’s New York by his painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping. A month later, his Naked Portrait with Reflection fetched $20.9m at Christie’s in London. Ten years earlier the same work sold for just $4.2m (£2.5m) at Sotheby’s in London (09/12/1998).
In a general climate of euphoria, the grandson of Sigmund Freud first crossed the $10m threshold in 2007 with two works dated 1992, one of which – Ib and her Husband – fetched $17.2m at Christie’s in New York on 13 November of that year.
Since 2010, after a strong contraction of his prices during the crisis, Lucian Freud’s prices have recovered a little of their former standing with three 7-figure results including Self-portrait which fetched £2.9m ($4.6m) at Sotheby’s London on 10 February 2011.

Damien Hirst (1965)
Figure-head of the YBAs and winner of the 1995 Turner Prize, Damien HIRST was the second most expensive Contemporary artist with a result of over $17m in June 2007 for Lullaby Spring, a large metal pharmacy chest containing 6.136 individually painted pills. In 2008, Hirst organised his highly publicised one-man sale at Sotheby’s (Beautiful Inside my Heart Forever). The star lot, The Golden Calf (a large installation with a calf crowned by a golden disk… preserved in formalin) fetched $16.5m (£9.2m). The other impressive result at that sale was $15.2m (twice the pre-sale estimate) for The Kingdom (a tiger shark in an aquarium of formalin).
In 2010, Hirst fell to 93rd place in Artprice’s global ranking of artists by auction revenue (vs. 43rd in 2009).

Jasper Johns (1930)
The star lot of Christie’s 11 May 2010 sale, Jasper JOHNS’ Flag (from the collection belonging to Michael Crichton – author of Jurassic Park) demolished the American artist’s previous record. Never before offered to the public, the 1960 painting fetched $25.5m (against a pre-sale estimate of $10m – $15m) setting a new record $10m better than the $15.5m record set by his False Start 22 years ago (10 November 1988) at Sotheby’s New York.
Thanks to this excellent result, Jasper Johns’ price index rose 246% in 2010.

Jeff Koons (1955)
In 2007, Jeff KOONS – a former Wall Street trader – was the most expensive Contemporary artist with a result of $21m for his Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold) on 14 November at Sotheby’s New York. This 3-metre high red heart was so fresh off the Koons production line that its owner, Adam Lindemann had it sent straight from a warehouse without ever having exposed it.
The prices paid for this type of Koons work have varied by several million dollars. Seven months after the sale of Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold), Jeff Koons signed a new record Balloon Flower (Magenta) with a work from the Howard and Cindy Rachofsky Collection that fetched £11.5m ($22m) on 30 June 2008 at Christie’s in London. However, at Christie’s 10 November sale in 2010, a blue version of the Balloon Flower sold for only $15m, i.e. $8m less than in 2008.

So… despite the astonishing ascension of Contemporary Chinese artists like Zhang Xiogang, Zeng Fanzhi and Cai Guoqiang, the top ten is still dominating by two American artists (Johns and Koons) and two British artists (Freud and Hirst) who signed all of the best 10 auction results for living artists over the last decade.