Interesting contemporary artists. Artists of modern painting. Contemporary Russian Artists. Contemporary Art in Russia in the 21st Century

The art of modern painting is works created at the present time or in the recent past. A certain number of years will pass, and these paintings will become part of history. Paintings created in the period from the 60s of the last century to the present day reflect several areas of contemporary art that can be classified as postmodernism. In the times of Art Nouveau, the work of painters was more widely represented, and in the 70s of the twentieth century there was a change in the social orientation of the art of painting.

Actual art

Artists of modern painting represent, first of all, new trends in fine art. In cultural terminology, there is the concept of "contemporary art", which is somewhat related to the concept of "contemporary painting". By contemporary art, artists most often mean innovation, when the painter turns to ultra-modern topics, regardless of their orientation. The picture can be painted in and depict any industrial enterprise. Or on the canvas there is a landscape landscape with a wheat field, meadow, forest, but at the same time, a combine will certainly be drawn in the distance. The style of modern painting implies a social orientation of the picture. At the same time, landscapes by contemporary artists without social overtones are valued much higher.

Choice of direction

Since the end of the 1990s, contemporary artists have been abandoning production themes and transferring their work into the mainstream of pure fine art. There are masters of fine portraiture, landscape scenes, still lifes in the style of Flemish drawing. And gradually, in modern painting, genuine art began to appear, in no way inferior to the paintings created by outstanding artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and in some ways even superior to them. Today's masters of the brush are helped by a developed technical base, an abundance of new tools that allow them to fully reflect their plans on canvas. Thus, the artists of contemporary painting can create to the best of their ability. Of course, the quality of paints or brushes is important in the process of painting, but still the main thing is talent.

abstract expressionism

Modern artists adhere to painting methods that allow the use of non-geometric strokes applied in large numbers on a large canvas. Large brushes, sometimes paint brushes, are used. Such painting can hardly be called art in the classical sense of the word, however, abstraction is a continuation of surrealism, which appeared back in 1920 thanks to the ideas of Andre Breton and immediately found a lot of followers, such as Salvator Dali, Hans Hoffmann, Adolf Gottlieb. At the same time, contemporary artists understand expressionism in their own way. Today, this genre differs from its predecessor in the size of the paintings, which can reach three meters in length.

Pop Art

The counterbalance to abstractionism was the conceptual new avant-garde, which promotes aesthetic values. Modern artists have begun to include images of famous personalities such as Mao Zedong or Marilyn Monroe in their paintings. This art was called "pop art" - a popular, generally recognized trend in painting. Mass culture replaced abstractionism and gave rise to a special kind of aesthetics, which in a colorful, spectacular manner presented to the public what was on everyone’s lips, some recent events or images of well-known people in different life situations.

The founders and followers of pop art were Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, Peter Blake, Roy Lichtenstein.

Photorealism

Modern art is multifaceted, often a new direction appears in it, combining two or more types of fine art. Photorealism became such a form of self-expression of the artist. This direction in painting appeared in the USA in 1968. It was invented by avant-garde artist Louis Meisel, and the genre was introduced two years later at the Whitney Museum during the Twenty-Two Realists exhibition.

Painting in the style of photorealism is associated with photography, the movement of the object seems to be frozen in time. The photorealist artist collects his image, which will be captured in the picture, with the help of photographs. From a negative or a slide, the image is transferred to the canvas by projection or using a scale grid. Then a complete picture is created using painting technologies.

The heyday of photorealism came in the mid-70s, then there was a decline in popularity, and in the early 90s the genre was revived again. The venerable artists worked mainly in the USA, among them there were many sculptors who also created their works using image projection. The most famous masters of painting based on photorealism are Richard Estes, Charles Bellet, Thomas Blackwell, Robert Demekis, Donald Eddy, Duane Hanson.

Photorealist artists of the younger generation - Raffaella Spence, Roberto Bernardi, Chiara Albertoni, Tony Brunelli, Olivier Romano, Bertrand Meniel, Clive Head.

Modern artists of Russia

• Serge Fedulov (born 1958), native of Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Territory. Participated in several exhibitions in Latin America and Europe. His paintings are distinguished by realism and contrasting color combinations.
• Mikhail Golubev (b. 1981), graduated from the art class of the Omsk School of Painting. Currently lives in St. Petersburg. He is distinguished by an unusual manner of creativity, all his works are reflection paintings with deep philosophical overtones.
• Dmitry Annenkov (b. 1965) in Moscow. Graduated from the Stroganov Art Institute. Popular abroad, but prefers Russian exhibitions. Annenkov's art is realistic, the artist is a recognized master of still life.

Russian Impressionists

• Alexei Chernigin, Russian Impressionist painter (born 1975), is the son of the famous painter Alexander Chernigin. Studied painting and graphic design at the art school in Nizhny Novgorod. Graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod Architectural Institute with a degree in Design in Industry. Member of the Union of Artists of Russia since 1998. Since 2001, he has been a teacher at NGASU at the Department of Interior Design.
• Konstantin Lupanov, Krasnodar artist (b. 1977). Graduated from the Industrial Academy at the State University of Culture and Arts with a degree in monumental painting. Participant of many art exhibitions in and St. Petersburg. Distinguished by a rare style of oil painting with swirling strokes. Lupanov's paintings are completely devoid of contrasting combinations of colors, the images seem to flow one into another. The artist himself calls his works "a cheerful, irresponsible daub", but this statement contains a share of coquetry: the paintings are actually written quite professionally.

Russian artists painting in nude style

• Sergei Marshennikov (born 1971), one of the most famous contemporary Russian artists. Graduated from the Ufa College of Arts. His paintings are an example of blatant realism. The works give the impression of an artistic photograph, the composition is so accurate and every stroke is verified. The painter's wife Natalya most often acts as a model, and this helps him in creating a sensual picture.
• Vera Vasilievna Donskaya-Khilko (born 1964), granddaughter of the famous opera singer Lavrenty Dmitrievich Donskoy. The brightest representative of modern Russian painting. Draws in the style of the subject nude. In the creative palette of the artist, you can find beauties from the eastern harem and naked village girls on the river bank on the night of the Ivan Kupala holiday, a Russian bathhouse with hot women going out into the snow and swimming in the hole. The artist draws a lot and with talent.

Contemporary Russian artists and their work are of increasing interest to connoisseurs of fine arts all over the world.

Modern painting as a world art

Today, visual arts have taken forms that are different from those that were in demand in the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern artists of the world have turned to the avant-garde in a narrower interpretation, the canvases have acquired sophistication and become more meaningful. Society today needs a renewed art, the need extends to all types of creativity, including painting. Paintings by contemporary artists, if they are made at a sufficiently high level, are bought up, become the subject of bargaining or exchange. Some canvases are included in the lists of especially valuable works of art. Paintings from the past, painted by great painters, are still in demand, but contemporary artists are gaining more and more popularity. Oil, tempera, watercolor, and other paints help them in their creativity and successful implementation of their plans. Painters, as a rule, adhere to any one style. It can be landscape, portrait, battle scenes or another genre. Accordingly, for his work, the artist chooses a certain type of paint.

Contemporary artists of the world

The most famous modern artists differ in the manner of writing, their brush is recognizable, sometimes you don’t even need to look at the signature at the bottom of the canvas. Famous masters of modern painting - Philip Pearlstein, Alexander Isachev, Francis Bacon, Stanislav Plutenko, Peter Blake, Freud Lucien, Michael Parkes, Guy Johnson, Eric Fischl, Nikolai Blokhin, Vasily Shulzhenko.

) in her expressive sweeping works was able to preserve the transparency of the fog, the lightness of the sail, the smooth rocking of the ship on the waves.

Her paintings amaze with their depth, volume, saturation, and the texture is such that it is impossible to take your eyes off them.

Warm simplicity Valentina Gubareva

Primitive artist from Minsk Valentin Gubarev not chasing fame and just doing what he loves. His work is insanely popular abroad, but almost unfamiliar to his compatriots. In the mid-90s, the French fell in love with his everyday sketches and signed a contract with the artist for 16 years. The paintings, which, it would seem, should be understandable only to us, the bearers of the "modest charm of undeveloped socialism", were liked by the European public, and exhibitions began in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and other countries.

Sensual realism by Sergei Marshennikov

Sergei Marshennikov is 41 years old. He lives in St. Petersburg and creates in the best traditions of the classical Russian school of realistic portraiture. The heroines of his paintings are tender and defenseless in their half-naked women. Many of the most famous paintings depict the artist's muse and wife, Natalia.

The Myopic World of Philip Barlow

In the modern era of high-resolution images and the rise of hyperrealism, Philip Barlow's work immediately attracts attention. However, a certain effort is required from the viewer in order to force himself to look at blurry silhouettes and bright spots on the author's canvases. Probably, this is how people suffering from myopia see the world without glasses and contact lenses.

Sunny Bunnies by Laurent Parcelier

Painting by Laurent Parcelier is an amazing world in which there is neither sadness nor despondency. You will not find gloomy and rainy pictures in him. There is a lot of light, air and bright colors on his canvases, which the artist applies with characteristic recognizable strokes. This creates the feeling that the paintings are woven from thousands of sunbeams.

Urban Dynamics in the Works of Jeremy Mann

Oil on wood panels by American artist Jeremy Mann paints dynamic portraits of a modern metropolis. “Abstract forms, lines, contrast of light and dark spots - everything creates a picture that evokes the feeling that a person experiences in the crowd and turmoil of the city, but can also express the calmness that one finds when contemplating quiet beauty,” says the artist.

The Illusory World of Neil Simon

In the paintings of the British artist Neil Simone (Neil Simone) everything is not what it seems at first glance. “For me, the world around me is a series of fragile and ever-changing shapes, shadows and boundaries,” says Simon. And in his paintings everything is really illusory and interconnected. Borders are washed away, and stories flow into each other.

The love drama of Joseph Lorasso

Italian-born contemporary American artist Joseph Lorusso transfers to canvas scenes that he saw in the everyday life of ordinary people. Hugs and kisses, passionate impulses, moments of tenderness and desire fill his emotional pictures.

Village life of Dmitry Levin

Dmitry Levin is a recognized master of the Russian landscape, who has established himself as a talented representative of the Russian realistic school. The most important source of his art is his attachment to nature, which he loves tenderly and passionately and feels himself a part of.

Bright East Valery Blokhin

Pictured is a painting by the famous contemporary Italian artist Aurelio Bruni. He lives and works in Umbria. The artist paints in the style of hyperrealism and symbolism, organized 25 solo exhibitions, participated in 53 collective exhibitions, has 10 different awards and prizes.

The Road to York via Sledmir is a painting by renowned contemporary British artist David Hockney. On June 21, 2006, Hockney's Splash was sold for £2.6 million. His "Grand Canyon" painting, consisting of 60 small paintings that were combined to reproduce one huge painting, was bought by the National Gallery of Australia for $4.6 million. The painting "Housewife of Beverly Hills" sold for $ 7.9 million at Christie's, in New York. In 2016, his landscape "Waldgate Forest" was sold at Sotheby's for 9.4 million pounds. This price became a new record for David Hockney.

Pictured is a painting by the famous contemporary American artist Warren Chang. Thanks to the masterful transmission of light and muted tones, his paintings look very realistic, perfectly convey emotions and moods. Most of his paintings depict people engaged in their professional activities or daily activities. He also paints interior paintings. Warren Chang has many different titles and awards. Lives and works in Monterey, California.

The painting is an abstraction of the modern famous German artist Gerhard Richter, who is one of the richest artists in the world. The painting shown in this photo was sold in London at Sotheby's for $ 44.52 million (30.4 million).

Pictured is a painting by the famous contemporary French artist Martial Rice. In 1993, one of his works was bought by billionaire Francois Pinault. In 2011, Rice's painting "Last Year in Capri" was sold for $ 6.58 million at Christie's auction (at the highest price among all previously sold works by other living French artists). In 2013, he entered the Top 50 Most Expensive Living Artists.

Painting by the famous contemporary Canadian artist Albini Leblanc, master of miniature urban landscapes with a palette knife. The artist lives and works in Quebec. His work can be seen in art galleries in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Quebec. Albini Leblanc organized 15 solo exhibitions, participated in 7 collective exhibitions, has 8 different awards and prizes.

Pictured is a painting by the famous contemporary Japanese artist Tomoko Kashiki. The artist organized solo exhibitions in Singapore, France and Japan, participated in collective exhibitions in China, the USA, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, Great Britain, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. Her work can be seen in public collections at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; in one of the largest Japanese insurance companies - Dai-ichi Life Insurance Limited; at the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia; in Toyota Art Collection.

Painting "Coloring" by the famous contemporary Ukrainian artist Oleg Tistol. This painting was sold at Phillips for $53,900. According to Forbes, Oleg Tistol is one of the three most successful artists in Ukraine. He was born in Vradievka, Mykolaiv region, lives and works in Kiev, is a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine, participated in many exhibitions in Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Poland, USA, Iceland, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Great Britain, Denmark, Brazil, Germany , Norway, France and Italy. Oleg Tistol participated in the biennale: in 1994 - "September 17th", the 22nd Biennale in Sao Paulo; in 2001 - "The First Ukrainian Project", 49th Venice Biennale. His paintings are in collections: at the PinchukArtCentre, Kiev, Ukraine; in the Norton Dodge Collection, USA; at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; at the Christoph Merian Stiftung Foundation, in Basel, Switzerland; at the Ministry of Culture of Turkey, in Ankara; at the Museum of the History of Moscow, Russia.

Pictured is a painting by the famous contemporary Polish artist Wojciech Babski. The artist lives and works in Katowice. It is popular not only in Poland, but also abroad. Wojciech Babski received the following awards: 1st place in the nomination "The 2016 American Art Awards" in the category of pop art paintings; 1st place in the nomination "The 2016 American Art Awards" in the category of paintings commenting on politics; 3rd place in the nomination "The 2016 American Art Awards" in the category of acrylic paintings; 4th and 5th place in the nomination "The 2016 American Art Awards" in the category of expressionism.

The photo shows a painting by the famous contemporary Belarusian artist Anna Silivonchik. The artist was born in Gomel, today she lives and works in Minsk. Silivonchik Anna is a member of the Belarusian Union of Artists, was awarded the medal "Talent and Vocation" of the international alliance "Peacemaker", her works are in the National Museum of the Republic of Belarus, the Museum of Modern Art in Minsk, the Museum of Contemporary Russian Art in Jersey City (USA), funds Gomel Palace and Park Ensemble, Yelabuga State Museum-Reserve in Russia, private collections in Belarus, Russia, France, USA, Japan, Israel, Italy, Germany and Poland. In the period from 2001 to 2016, the artist organized many solo exhibitions in Belarus, Russia, Germany and Ukraine, and also participated in collective exhibitions in Belarus, USA, Russia, Estonia, Ukraine, Latvia, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany , Hungary, the Netherlands and Kazakhstan.

Painting by the famous contemporary Turkish artist Gurbuz Dogan Ekshioglu. The world famous Turkish cartoonist and graphic artist, originally from Ordu, has over 70 awards, about a third of which are international. Grbz Doan Ekiolu participated in many collective exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad, held more than 20 solo exhibitions, one of which was held in New York. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and has graced the covers of New Yorker and Forbes magazines.

Painting by the famous contemporary Egyptian artist Hossam Dirar. The artist was born, lives and works in Cairo. Hossam Dirar has had many solo exhibitions in countries such as Bahrain, UK, Slovakia, Italy, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Egypt. He also participated in collective exhibitions in Germany, Egypt and South Africa.

The photo shows a painting by the famous contemporary Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi "The Last Supper". This painting in October 2013 in Hong Kong at Sotheby's was sold for 23.3 million US dollars, setting a new record for contemporary Asian art. Earlier, in May 2008, when the sale of Asian contemporary art was held in Hong Kong at Christie's for the first time , his Painting #6 of the Mask series sold for HK$75,367,500. It was that year's world record for selling value among all artists.

Pictured is a painting by the famous contemporary Greek artist Nikos Giftakis. The artist was born, lives and works in Athens. He is very popular not only in Greece, he organized solo exhibitions and participated in many collective exhibitions in countries such as Switzerland, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Brazil, Russia and Greece.

Painting by famous contemporary Georgian artist David Popiashvili. The artist is originally from Tbilisi, is a member of the Union of Artists of Georgia, participated in exhibitions in France, Germany, Bulgaria, Russia and Georgia. Many of his works are in museums and private collections in Georgia and abroad.

The painting was painted by the famous contemporary UAE artist Abdul Qader Al-Rais. The artist is a founding member of the Emirates Fine Arts Society and is considered one of the pioneers of contemporary art in the Emirates. His work can be found in the Emirates Palace (the presidential hotel in Abu Dhabi), government offices and in the personal art collections of the royal family in Dubai. The artist participated in various collective exhibitions, and also organized solo exhibitions in different countries (Czech Republic, Lebanon, USA, Germany, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates), received many awards.

The photo shows a painting by the famous contemporary Dutch artist Tjalf Sparnaay. The artist is originally from the Netherlands, lives and works in the city of Hilversum, organized 14 solo exhibitions and participated in many collective exhibitions in different countries (USA, UK, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Canada, Austria and the Netherlands). His works are in private and public collections in many countries.

Painting by the famous contemporary Spanish artist Miguel Barcelo. In 2003 he received the Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts, one of the most important prizes in Spain. In 2004, he exhibited at the Louvre the watercolors he created to illustrate The Divine Comedy, becoming the first living contemporary artist to exhibit at the museum. The artist is in the top 30 richest artists in the world. His paintings are expensive. For example, this one, the photo of which is presented above, costs 244,398 USD.

The painting was painted by the famous contemporary Swiss artist Urs Fischer. The Zurich-born artist is in the top 50 richest artists in the world. He became famous for his provocative approach to art, but he obeys its laws; he opposes the presentation of art as a commercial commodity, although he sells his work at a high price, skillfully interacting with the art market and collectors.

Pictured is a painting by famous contemporary Israeli artist Orna Ben-Shoshan. She lives and works in the city of Raanana, has held many solo exhibitions and participated in collective exhibitions in countries such as the USA, Italy, Great Britain, Cyprus, France and Israel. Looking at the works of the artist, you will be fascinated by the amazing world where everything is possible. Take advantage of this to enrich your imagination, expand your horizons, and meet a rapidly growing talented artist.

The photo shows a painting by the famous contemporary Thai artist Direk Kingnock, a watercolorist originally from the town of Nakhon Ratchasima. Now he lives and works in the city of Khon Kaen. Already at the age of 9, Direk won the gold medal of the International Children's Art Competition in Japan. He has participated in exhibitions in Vietnam, China, Turkey, Italy, Russia, South Korea, Malaysia, Greece, Albania and Thailand.

Painting by famous contemporary Norwegian artist Christer Karlstad. He lives and works in Drammen, held solo exhibitions and participated in collective exhibitions in the USA, Sweden, Norway.

Pictured is a painting by Danish contemporary artist Jan Esmann. The artist was born, lives and works in Denmark, participated in exhibitions in such countries as: Germany, USA, Denmark.

The painting was painted by the famous contemporary Swedish artist Nisse Nydej Ottenhag. The artist, originally from the small town of Lilla Edet, has participated in many exhibitions in different countries (USA, France, Monaco, Namibia and Sweden).

The photo shows a painting by the famous contemporary Australian artist Elizabeth Barsham. She was born, lives and works in Tasmania and has many awards. Her work can often be found on magazine covers or as illustrations for articles. It is also often written about in the press. The artist took part in a large number of exhibitions and organized solo exhibitions in different countries (UK, Singapore, Italy, Australia).

The rating of the most expensive works by living artists is a construction that speaks about the role and place of the artist in the history of art much less than about age and health

The rules for compiling our rating are simple: firstly, only transactions with works by living authors are taken into account; secondly, only public auction sales are taken into account; and thirdly, the rule "one artist - one work" is observed (if two records belong to Jones in the rating of works, then only the most expensive one remains, and the rest are not taken into account). Ranking is carried out in terms of dollars (at the exchange rate on the date of sale).

1. JEFF KOONS Rabbit. 1986. $91.075 million

The longer you watch the auction career of Jeff Koons (1955), the more you become convinced that nothing is impossible for pop art. You can admire the Koons sculptures in the form of balloon toys, or you can consider them kitsch and bad taste - your right. One thing cannot be denied: Jeff Koons installations cost crazy money.

Jeff Koons began his journey to fame as the world's most successful living artist back in 2007, when his giant metal installation Hanging Heart was bought for $23.6 million at Sotheby's. The work was bought by the Larry Gagosian Gallery representing Koons (in the press wrote that it was in the interests of the Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk).The gallery acquired not just an installation, but, in fact, a work of jewelry art. Even though the work is not made of gold (stainless steel served as the material) and it is clearly larger in size than an ordinary pendant (a sculpture with a height 2.7 m weighs 1,600 kg), but it has a similar purpose. Over six and a half thousand hours were spent on the production of a composition with a heart covered with ten layers of paint. As a result, gigantic money was paid for the spectacular “decoration”.

Next was the sale of the Purple Balloon Flower for £12.92 million ($25.8 million) at Christie's London on June 30, 2008. Interestingly, seven years earlier, the previous owners of "Flower" bought the work for $1.1 million. It is easy to calculate that during this time its market price has increased by almost 25 times.

The downturn in the art market in 2008-2009 gave skeptics a reason to slander that the fashion for Koons has passed. But they were wrong: along with the art market, interest in the works of Koons was revived. Andy Warhol's successor to the throne of the King of Pop set his personal best in November 2012 with the sale of a multicolored Tulips sculpture from the Triumph series at Christie's for $33.7 million including commission.

But "Tulips" were "flowers" in the literal and figurative sense. Just a year later, in November 2013, the sale of the stainless steel balloon dog (orange) sculpture followed: the price of the hammer was as much as $58.4 million! A fabulous sum for a living artist. The work of a contemporary author was sold for the price of a Van Gogh or Picasso painting. Those were the berries...

With this result, Koons reigned at the top of the rankings of living artists for several years. In November 2018, he was briefly surpassed by David Hockney (see second place in our ranking). But just six months later, everything returned to normal: on May 15, 2019, in New York, at the auction of post-war and contemporary art, Christie’s put up for sale a textbook sculpture for Koons in 1986 - a silver “Rabbit” made of stainless steel, imitating a balloon of a similar shape.

In total, Koons created 3 such sculptures plus one author's copy. The auction included a copy of "Rabbit" number 2 - from the collection of the cult publisher Cy Newhouse, co-owner of the publishing house Conde Nast (magazines Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, GQ, etc.). Silver "Rabbit" was bought by the "father of glamor" Cy Newhouse in 1992 for an impressive amount by the standards of those years - $ 1 million. After 27 years in the struggle of 10 bidders, the price of the hammer of the sculpture was 80 times higher than the previous sale price. And with the Buyer's Premium commission, the final result was a record $91.075 million for all living artists.

2. DAVID HOKNEY Portrait of the artist. Pool with two figures. 1972. $90,312,500

David Hockney (1937) is one of the most important British artists of the 20th century. In 2011, David Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time in a survey of thousands of professional British painters and sculptors. At the same time, Hockney bypassed such masters as William Turner and Francis Bacon. His work, as a rule, is attributed to pop art, although in his early works he gravitated more towards expressionism in the spirit of Francis Bacon.

Born and raised David Hockney in England, Yorkshire. The mother of the future artist kept the family in puritanical strictness, and his father, a simple accountant who drew a little at an amateur level, encouraged his son to paint. In his early twenties, David moved to California, where he lived for a total of about three decades. He still has two workshops there. Hockney made the heroes of his works the local rich, their villas, swimming pools, lawns bathed in the California sun. One of his most famous works of the American period - the painting "Splash" - is an image of a sheaf of spray rising from the pool after a person jumped into the water. To depict this sheaf, "living" no more than two seconds, Hockney worked for two weeks. By the way, this painting was sold at Sotheby’s for $5.4 million in 2006 and for some time was considered his most expensive work.

Hockney (1937) is already in his eighties, but he still works and even invents new artistic techniques using technical innovations. Once he came up with the idea of ​​making huge collages from Polaroid pictures, printed his works on fax machines, and today the artist enthusiastically masters drawing on the iPad. The paintings drawn on the tablet take their rightful place at his exhibitions.

In 2005, Hockney finally returned from the States to England. Now he paints in the open air and in the studio huge (often consisting of several parts) landscapes of local forests and wastelands. According to Hockney, in his 30 years in California, he has become so unaccustomed to the simple change of seasons that it truly fascinates and fascinates him. Entire cycles of his recent works are devoted, for example, to the same landscape at different times of the year.

In 2018, Hockney's paintings broke the $10 million mark several times. And on November 15, 2018, a new absolute record for the work of a living artist was registered at Christie's - $ 90,312,500 for the painting "Portrait of the Artist (Pool with Two Figures)".

3. GERHARD RICHTER Abstract painting. 1986. $46.3 million

Living classic Gerhard Richter (1932) ranks second in our ranking. The German artist was the leader among living colleagues until the 58 millionth record of Jeff Koons struck. But it is unlikely that this circumstance can shake Richter's already iron authority on the art market. According to the results of 2012, the annual auction turnover of the German artist is second only to those of Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso.

For many years, nothing foreshadowed the success that has fallen on Richter now. For decades, the artist occupied a modest place in the contemporary art market and did not aspire to fame at all. We can say that fame overtook him by itself. The starting point is considered by many to be New York's MoMA Museum's purchase in 1995 of Richter's October 18, 1977 series. The American Museum paid $3 million for 15 grayscale paintings and soon began thinking about holding a full-fledged retrospective of the German artist. The grandiose exhibition opened six years later, in 2001, and since then interest in Richter's work has grown by leaps and bounds. From 2004 to 2008, the price of his paintings tripled. In 2010, Richter's works have already brought in $76.9 million, in 2011, according to the Artnet website, Richter's works at auction earned a total of $200 million, and in 2012 (according to Artprice) - $262.7 million - more than the work of any other living artist.

While, for example, with Jasper Johns, overwhelming success at auction accompanies mainly only early works, such a sharp division is not typical for Richter’s works: demand is equally stable for things from different creative periods, of which there were a great many in Richter’s career. Over the past sixty years, this artist has tried himself in almost all traditional painting genres - portrait, landscape, marina, nude, still life and, of course, abstraction.

The history of Richter's auction records began with a series of still lifes "Candles". 27 photorealistic images of candles in the early 1980s, at the time they were written, cost only 15,000 German marks ($5,800) per work. But still no one bought Candles at their first exhibition at the Max Hetzler Gallery in Stuttgart. Then the theme of the paintings was called old-fashioned; Today, "Candles" are considered works for all time. And they cost millions of dollars.

In February 2008 "Candle", written in 1983, was unexpectedly bought for £ 7.97 million ($16 million). This personal record stood for three and a half years. Then in October 2011 one more "Candle" (1982) went under the hammer at Christie's already for £ 10.46 million ($16.48 million). With this record, Gerhard Richter entered the top three most successful living artists for the first time, taking his place behind Jasper Johns and Jeff Koons.

Then the victorious procession of Richter's "Abstract Paintings" began. The artist paints similar works in a unique author's technique: he applies a mixture of simple paints on a light background, and then smears them on the canvas with a long scraper the size of a car bumper. This results in intricate color transitions, spots and stripes. Examining the surface of his "Abstract Paintings" is like excavations: on them traces of various "figures" look through the gaps of numerous colorful layers.

November 9, 2011 at the auction of modern and post-war art Sotheby's large-scale "Abstract painting (849-3)" 1997 went under the hammer for $20.8m (£13.2m). And six months later, May 8, 2012 at the auction of post-war and contemporary art Christie's in New York "Abstract painting (798-3)" 1993 went for a record $21.8 million(including commission). Five months later - again a record: "Abstract painting (809-4)" from the collection of rock musician Eric Clapton on October 12, 2012 at Sotheby's in London went under the hammer for £ 21.3 million ($34.2 million). The barrier of 30 million was taken by Richter with such ease, as if it were not about modern painting, but about masterpieces that are already a hundred years old - no less. Although in the case of Richter it seems that the inclusion in the pantheon of the "great" took place already during the life of the artist. German prices continue to rise.

Richter's next record belonged to a photorealistic work - a landscape "Cathedral Square, Milan (Domplatz, Mailand)" 1968. The work was sold for 37.1 million at Sotheby's auction May 14, 2013. The view of the most beautiful square was painted by a German artist in 1968 by order of Siemens Electro, especially for the company's Milan office. At the time of its writing, it was Richter's largest figurative work (nearly three by three meters in size).

The Cathedral Square record stood for almost two years, until February 10, 2015 didn't interrupt him "Abstract painting" ( 1986): hammer price reached £ 30.389 million ($46.3 million). The 300.5 × 250.5 cm Abstract Painting, put up for auction at Sotheby’s, is one of Richter’s first large-scale works in his special author’s technique of scraping off layers of paint. The last time in 1999, this "Abstract Painting" was bought at auction for $607 thousand (from this year until the current sale, the work was exhibited at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne). At the auction on February 10, 2015, a certain American client in auction steps of £2 million reached the hammer price of $46.3 million. That is, since 1999, the work has increased in price by more than 76 times!

4. Tsui Zhuzhuo "Great snow-capped mountains." 2013. $39.577 million

For a long time we did not closely follow the development of the situation in the Chinese art market, not wanting to overload our readers with an excessive amount of information about "not our" art. With the exception of the dissident Ai Weiwei, a not so expensive as a resonant artist, Chinese authors seemed to us too numerous and far from us to delve into what was going on in their market there. But the statistics, as they say, are a serious lady, and if we are talking about the most successful living authors in the world, then we cannot do without a story about the outstanding representatives of the contemporary art of the Middle Kingdom.

Let's start with a Chinese artist Cui Ruzhuo. The artist was born in 1944 in Beijing and lived in the USA from 1981 to 1996. After returning to China, he began teaching at the National Academy of Arts. Cui Ruzhuo reimagines the traditional Chinese ink painting style and creates huge scroll canvases that Chinese businessmen and officials love to present as gifts to each other. In the West, very little is known about him, although many must remember the story of the $3.7 million scroll that was mistakenly thrown away, mistaking it for trash, by the cleaners of a Hong Kong hotel. So, it was Cui Ruzhuo's scroll.

Cui Ruzhuo is in his 70s and the market for his work is thriving. Over 60 works by this artist have crossed the $1 million mark. However, his works have so far been successful only at Chinese auctions. Cui Ruzhuo's records are really impressive. First it "Landscape in the Snow" at Poly Auction in Hong Kong April 7, 2014 reached a hammer price of HK$184 million ( US$23.7 million).

Exactly one year later April 6, 2015 at a special Poly Auction in Hong Kong dedicated exclusively to the work of Cui Ruzhuo, a series "The Great Snowy Scenery of Mountainous Jiangnan"(Jiangnan is a historical region in China, occupying the right bank of the lower reaches of the Yangtze.) of eight ink-on-paper landscapes reached a hammer price of HK$236 million ( US$30.444 million).

A year later, history repeated itself again: at the solo auction of Cui Ruzhuo, held by Poly Auctions in Hong Kong April 4, 2016 polyptych in six parts "Great Snowcapped Mountains" 2013 hammer price (including auction house commission) reached HK$306 million (US$39.577 million). So far, this is an absolute record among Asian living artists.

According to art dealer Johnson Chan, who has been working with Chinese contemporary art for 30 years, there is an unconditional desire to raise prices for the works of this author, but all this is happening at a price level where experienced collectors are unlikely to want to buy something. “The Chinese want to raise the ratings of their artists by inflating prices for their work at major international auctions like the one organized by Poly in Hong Kong, but there is no doubt that these ratings are completely fabricated,” Johnson Chang comments on Cui Ruzhuo’s latest record.

This, of course, is only the opinion of one single dealer, and we have a real record recorded in all databases. So let's take him into account. Cui Ruzhuo himself, judging by his statements, is far from the modesty of Gerhard Richter when it comes to his auction success. It seems that this race for records is seriously captivating him. “I hope that in the next 5-10 years the prices for my works will surpass the prices for the works of Western masters like Picasso and Van Gogh. This is the Chinese dream,” says Cui Ruzhuo.

5 Jasper Johns Flag. 1983. $36 million

The third place in the ranking of living artists belongs to an American To Jasper Johns (1930). The current record price for Jones' work is $ 36 million. So much paid for his famous "Flag" at Christie's auction November 12, 2014.

A series of "flag" paintings, begun by Jones in the mid-1950s, immediately after the artist's return from the army, became one of the central ones in his work. Even in his youth, the artist was interested in the idea of ​​a readymade, the transformation of an everyday object into a work of art. However, Jones's flags were not real, they were painted in oil on canvas. Thus, a work of art acquired the properties of a thing from ordinary life, it was at the same time the image of the flag and the flag itself. A series of works with flags brought Jasper Johns worldwide fame. But no less popular are his abstract works. For many years, the list of the most expensive works, compiled according to the above rules, was headed by an abstract "False start". Until 2007, this very bright and decorative canvas, painted by Jones in 1959, was considered the owner of a practically inaccessible price for a living artist (albeit a lifetime classic) - $ 17 million. That's how much they paid for it in gold for the art market 1988.

Interestingly, the experience of Jasper Johns as a record holder was not continuous. In 1989, he was interrupted by the work of his colleague Willem de Kooning: the two-meter abstraction "Mixing" was sold at Sotheby's for $ 20.7 million. Jasper Johns had to move. But after 8 years, in 1997, de Kooning died, and " False start "Jones again took the first line of the auction rating of living artists for almost 10 years.

But in 2007 everything changed. The False Start record was first eclipsed by the work of the young and ambitious Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. Then there was a record sale for $ 33.6 million of the painting "The Sleeping Benefit Inspector" by Lusien Freud (now deceased, and therefore not participating in this rating). Then the records of Gerhard Richter began. In general, so far with a current record of 36 million, Jasper Johns, one of the masters of American post-war art, working at the intersection of neo-Dadaism, abstract expressionism and pop art, is in third place.

6. ED RUSHAY Smash. 1963. $30.4 million

The sudden success of the painting "Smash" by an American artist Edward Ruscha (b. 1937) at auction Christie's November 12, 2014 brought this author to the number of the most expensive living artists. The previous record price for the work of Ed Ruscha (often the name Ruscha is pronounced in Russian as "Rusha", but the correct pronunciation is Ruscha) was "only" $ 6.98 million: that's how much they paid for his canvas "Burning Gas Station" in 2007. Seven years later his Smash with an estimate of $15–20 million, it reached the price of a hammer $30.4 million. It is obvious that the market for the works of this author has reached a new level - it is not for nothing that Barack Obama adorns the White House with his works, and Larry Gagosian himself exhibits him in his galleries.

Ed Ruscha never aspired to post-war New York with its craze for abstract expressionism. Instead, for over 40 years, he sought inspiration in California, where he moved from Nebraska at the age of 18. The artist stood at the origins of a new trend in art, called pop art. Together with Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud and other popular culture singers, Edward Ruscha took part in the Pasadena Museum's New Image of Ordinary Things exhibition in 1962, which became the first museum exhibition of American pop art. However, Ed Ruscha himself does not like it when his work is attributed to pop art, conceptualism, or some other trend in art.

His unique style is called "text painting". From the late 1950s, Ed Ruscha began painting words. Just as for Warhol a can of soup became a work of art, for Ed Ruscha, ordinary words and phrases, taken either from a billboard or packaging in a supermarket, or from the credits of a movie (Hollywood was always at Ruscha’s side, and unlike many of his fellow artists, Rushey respected the "dream factory"). The words on his canvases acquire the properties of three-dimensional objects, these are real still lifes made of words. When looking at his canvases, the first thing that comes to mind is the visual and sound perception of the drawn word, and only after that - the semantic meaning. The latter, as a rule, cannot be unambiguously deciphered; the words and phrases chosen by Ruscha can be interpreted in different ways. The same bright yellow word "Smash" on a deep blue background can be perceived as an aggressive call to smash something or someone to smithereens; as a lone adjective taken out of context (part of some newspaper headline, for example), or simply as a single word caught in an urban stream of visual images. Ed Ruscha revels in this uncertainty. “I have always had a deep respect for strange, inexplicable things… Explanations, in a sense, kill a thing,” he said in an interview.

7. CHRISTOPHER WOOL Untitled (RIOT). 1990. $29.93 million

American artist Christopher Wool(1955) first broke into the ranking of living artists in 2013 - after the sale of the work "Apocalypse Now" for $ 26.5 million. This record immediately put him on a par with Jasper Johns and Gerhard Richter. The amount of this historic transaction - more than $ 20 million - surprised many, since before it the prices for the artist's works did not exceed $ 8 million. However, the rapid growth of the market for Christopher Wool's works was already evident by that time: the artist's track record included 48 auction transactions worth more than $ 1 million, and 22 of them (almost half) took place in 2013. Two years later, the number of works by Chris Wool, sold more than $ 1 million, reached 70, and a new personal record was not long in coming. At auction Sotheby's May 12, 2015 work "Untitled (RIOT)" was sold for $ 29.93 million including Buyer's Premium.

Christopher Wool is best known for his large-scale black lettering on white aluminum sheets. It is they who, as a rule, set records at auctions. These are all things from the late 1980s and early 1990s. As the legend goes, one evening Wool was walking around New York in the evening and suddenly saw graffiti in black letters on a new white truck - the words sex and luv. This sight impressed him so much that he immediately returned to the studio and wrote his own version with the same words. The year was 1987, and the artist's further search for words and phrases for his "literal" works reflect the contradictory spirit of this time. This is the call "sell the house, sell the car, sell the children", taken by Wool from the film "Apocalypse Now", and the word "FOOL" ("fool") in capital letters, and the word "RIOT" ("rebellion"), often found in newspaper headlines of the time.

Words and phrases Wool applied to aluminum sheets using stencils with alkyd or enamel paints, deliberately leaving streaks, stencil marks and other evidence of the creative process. The artist divided the words so that the viewer did not immediately understand the meaning. At first, you see only a cluster of letters, that is, you perceive the word as a visual object, and only then do you read and decipher the meaning of the phrase or word. Wool used a font that was in use by the US military after World War II, which enhances the impression of an order, a directive, a slogan. These "letter" works are perceived as part of the urban landscape, as illegal graffiti that has violated the cleanliness of the surface of some street object. This series of works by Christopher Wool is recognized as one of the peaks of linguistic abstraction, and therefore is highly valued by lovers of contemporary art.

8. PETER DOYG Rosedale. 1991. $28.81 million

British Peter Doig(1959), although he belongs to the generation of postmodernists Koons and Hirst, chose for himself a completely traditional genre of landscape, which for a long time was not in favor with advanced artists. With his work, Peter Doig revives the public's fading interest in figurative painting. His work is highly appreciated by both critics and non-specialists, and evidence of this is the rapid rise in prices for his works. If in the early 1990s his landscapes cost several thousand dollars, now the bill goes into the millions.

Doig's work is often referred to as magical realism. Based on real landscapes, he creates fantasy, mysterious and often gloomy images. The artist likes to depict objects abandoned by people: a dilapidated building built by Le Corbusier in the middle of a forest or an empty white canoe on the surface of a forest lake. In addition to nature and imagination, Doig is inspired by horror films, old postcards, photographs, amateur videos, and so on. Doig's paintings are colourful, intricate, decorative and not provocative. It's nice to own such a painting. The low productivity of the author also fuels the interest of collectors: the artist living in Trinidad creates no more than a dozen paintings a year.

In the early 2000s, individual landscapes by the artist were sold for several hundred thousand dollars. At the same time, Doig's work was included in the Saatchi Gallery, at the Biennale at the Whitney Museum and in the MoMA collection. In 2006, the auction bar of $1 million was overcome. And the following year, an unexpected breakthrough occurred: the work "White Canoe", offered at Sotheby's on February 7, 2007 with an estimate of $0.8-1.2 million, was five times higher than the preliminary estimate and was sold for £5.7 million ($11.3 million). At that time, it was a record price for the work of a living European artist.

In 2008, Doig held solo exhibitions at the Tate Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Multi-million dollar price tags for Doig's work have become the norm. Peter Doig's personal record has recently been updated several times a year - we only have time to change the picture and place of this artist in our ranking of living authors.

Peter Doig's most expensive work to date is the 1991 Rosedale snowscape. Interestingly, the record was set not at Sotheby's or Christie's, but at the Phillips contemporary art auction. This happened on May 18, 2017. A view of snow-covered Rosedale, one of Toronto's neighborhoods, was sold to a phone buyer for $28.81 million, up about $3 million from the previous record ($25.9 million for "Swallowed in the Mire"). The painting "Rosedale" took part in Doig's key exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1998, and in general this work was fresh for the market, and therefore the record price is well deserved.

9. FRANK STELLA Cape pines. 1959. $28 million

Frank Stella is a bright representative of post-painting abstraction and minimalism in art. At a certain stage, it is referred to as a hard edge painting style. At first, Stella contrasted the strict geometricity, ascetic monochrome and structuredness of his paintings with the spontaneity and randomness of the canvases of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock.

In the late 1950s, the artist was spotted by the famous gallery owner Leo Castelli and was awarded an exhibition for the first time. On it, he presented the so-called "Black Paintings" - canvases painted over with parallel black lines with thin gaps of unpainted canvas between them. Lines fold into geometric shapes, somewhat reminiscent of optical illusions, the very pictures that flicker, move, twist, create a feeling of deep space if you look at them for a long time. Stella continued the theme of parallel lines with thin dividing strips in his works on aluminum and copper. The colors, the pictorial basis and even the shape of the paintings changed (among others, works in the shape of the letters U, T, L stand out). But the main principle of his painting still consisted in the clarity of the contour, monumentality, simple form, monochrome. In the following decades, Stella moved away from such geometric painting towards smooth, natural forms and lines, and from monochromatic paintings to bright and varied color transitions. In the 1970s, Stella was captivated by the huge patterns used to paint ships. The artist used them for huge paintings with assemblage elements - he included pieces of steel pipes or wire mesh in his works.

In his early interviews, Frank Stella talks frankly about the meanings put into his work, or rather, about their absence: "What you see is what you see." The painting is an object in itself, not a reproduction of anything. "It's a flat surface with paint on it and nothing else," said Stella.

Well, signed by Frank Stella, this "surface with paint on it" could be worth millions of dollars today. For the first time in the ranking of living artists, Frank Stella got in 2015 with the sale of the Delaware Crossing (1961) for $ 13.69 million, including commission.

Four years later, on May 15, 2019, a new record was set by the early (1959) work “Cape of Pines”: the price of the hammer was over $28 million, including commission. This is one of 29 "black paintings" - the very ones with which Stella made his debut at his first exhibition in New York. Princeton University graduate Frank Stella was then 23 years old. He often did not have enough money for oil paint for artists. The young artist was moonlighting as a repair work, he really liked the pure colors of paint, and then the idea arose to work with this paint on canvas. With black enamel paint, Stella paints parallel stripes, leaving thin lines of unprimed canvas between them. Moreover, he writes without rulers, by eye, without a preliminary sketch. Stella never knew exactly how many black lines would appear in a particular painting. For example, in the painting “Cape of Pines”, there are 35 of them. The title of the work refers to the name of the cape in Massachusetts Bay - Point of pines. At the beginning of the 20th century, it had a large amusement park, and today it is one of the districts of the city of Revere.

10. YOSHITOMO NARA Knife behind the back. 2000. $24.95 million

Yoshitomo Nara (1959) is one of the key figures of Japanese neo-pop art. Japanese - because, despite global fame and many years of work abroad, his work is still distinguished by a pronounced national identity. Nara's favorite characters are girls and dogs in the style of Japanese manga and anime comics. The images he invented for many years have “gone to the people”: they are printed on T-shirts, souvenirs and various “merch” are made with them. Born in a poor family, far from the capital, he is not only loved for his talent, but also appreciated as a person who has made himself. The artist works quickly and expressively. It is known that some of his masterpieces were completed literally overnight. Paintings and sculptures by Yoshitomo Nara, as a rule, are very concise, and even sparing in expressive means, but always carry a strong emotional charge. Teenage girls at Nara often look at the viewer with an unkind squint. In their eyes - impudence, challenge and aggression. In the hands - then a knife, then a cigarette. There is an opinion that the depicted perversions of behavior are a reaction to the oppressive public morality, various taboos, and the principles of education adopted by the Japanese. Almost medieval severity and shame drive problems inside, create the ground for a delayed emotional explosion. "Knife behind the back" just capaciously reflects one of the main ideas of the artist. In this work there is a hating look of a girl, and a hand threateningly wound behind her back. Until 2019, Yoshitomo Nara's paintings and sculptures have already crossed the million, or even several million mark more than once. But twenty million - for the first time. Nara is one of the world's most famous Japanese-born artists. And now the most expensive of the living. On October 6, 2109, at Sotheby's in Hong Kong, he took this title from Takashi Murakami and noticeably outperformed the 90-year-old avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama (the maximum auction prices for her paintings are already approaching $ 9 million).

11. ZENG FANZHI The Last Supper. 2001. $23.3 million

At Sotheby's Hong Kong October 5, 2013 year scale canvas "The Last Supper" Beijing artist Zeng Fanzhi (1964) was sold for a record amount of 160 million Hong Kong dollars - $23.3 million USA. The final cost of Fanzhi's work, written, of course, under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci, turned out to be twice the preliminary estimate of about $10 million. Zeng Fanzhi's previous price record was $ 9.6 million paid at the Christie's Hong Kong auction in May 2008 for the work Mask Series. 1996 No. 6".

"The Last Supper" is the largest (2.2 × 4 meters) painting by Fanzhi in the "Masks" series, covering the period from 1994 to 2001. The cycle is dedicated to the evolution of Chinese society under the influence of economic reforms. The introduction of elements of a market economy by the PRC government led to urbanization and disunity of the Chinese. Fanzhi depicts the inhabitants of modern Chinese cities, who have to fight for a place in the sun. The well-known composition of the fresco by Leonardo in the reading of Fanzhi takes on a completely different meaning: the scene is transferred from Jerusalem to the classroom of a Chinese school with typical hieroglyphic boards on the walls. "Christ" and "apostles" have turned into pioneers with scarlet ties, and only "Judas" wears a gold tie - this is a metaphor for Western capitalism, penetrating and destroying the usual way of life in a socialist country.

The works of Zeng Fanzhi are stylistically close to European expressionism and are just as dramatic. But at the same time they are full of Chinese symbols and specifics. This versatility attracts both Chinese and Western collectors to the artist's work. A direct confirmation of this is the provenance of The Last Supper: the work was put up for auction by the famous collector of the Chinese avant-garde of the 1980s and early 1990s, the Belgian baron Guy Ullens.

12. ROBERT RAYMAN Bridge. 1980. $20.6 million

At auction Christie's May 13, 2015 abstract work "Bridge" 85 year old American artist Robert Ryman(Robert Ryman) was sold for $20.6 million taking into account the commission - twice as expensive as the lower estimate.

Robert Ryman(1930) did not immediately realize that he wanted to become an artist. At the age of 23, he moved to New York from Nashville, Tennessee, wanting to become a jazz saxophonist. In the meantime, he did not become a famous musician, he had to earn extra money as a security guard at MoMA, where he met Saul LeWitt and Dan Flavin. The first worked in the museum as a night secretary, and the second as a security guard and elevator operator. Inspired by the works of abstract expressionists he saw at MoMA - Rothko, De Kooning, Pollock and Newman - Robert Ryman took up painting himself in 1955.

Ryman is often referred to as a minimalist, but he prefers to be called a "realist" because he is not interested in creating illusions, he only demonstrates the qualities of the materials he uses. Most of his works are painted with paints of all possible shades of white (from grayish or yellowish to dazzling white) based on a laconic square shape. During his career, Robert Ryman tried many materials and techniques: he painted in oils, acrylics, casein, enamel, pastel, gouache, etc. on canvas, steel, plexiglass, aluminum, paper, corrugated cardboard, vinyl, wallpaper, etc. His friend, a professional restorer, Orrin Riley, advised him on the causticity of the materials he thought of using. As an artist once said, “I never have a question what write, the main thing - how write". It's all about the texture, the nature of the strokes, the border between the colorful surface and the edges of the base, as well as the relationship between the work and the wall. Since 1975, a special element of his work has been the fixtures, which Ryman designs himself and deliberately leaves them visible, emphasizing his work "as real as the walls on which they hang are real." Ryman prefers to give works "names" rather than "titles". The "name" is what helps to distinguish one work from another, and Ryman often names his works by paint brands, companies, etc., and the "title" claims some kind of allusions and deeply hidden meanings, the presence of which in his works the artist regularly denies. Nothing but material and technique matters.

13. Damien Hirst Sleepy spring. 2002. $19.2 million

English artist To Damien Hirst (1965) was destined to be the first to take the first place in this rating in a dispute with the living classic Jasper Johns. The already mentioned work "False Start" could remain an unsinkable leader for a long time if June 21, 2007 installation at that time 42-year-old Hirst "Sleepy Spring"(2002) was not sold at Sotheby's for £ 9.76 million, that is, for $19.2 million. The work, by the way, has a rather unusual format. On the one hand, this is a display cabinet with dummies of pills (6,136 pills), in fact, a classic installation. And on the other hand, this showcase is made flat (10 cm deep), taken into a frame and hung on the wall like a plasma panel, thus fully providing the comfort of possession inherent in paintings. In 2002, the installation's sister, Sleepy Winter, sold for $7.4 million, more than half the price. Someone "explained" the difference in price by the fact that the tablets are more faded in winter. But it is clear that this explanation is absolutely groundless, because the pricing mechanism for such things is no longer associated with their decorative effect.

In 2007, many recognized Hirst as the author of the most expensive work among living artists. The question, however, is from the category of "depending on how to count." The fact is that Hurst was sold for expensive pounds, and Jones for dollars that have now fallen in price, and even twenty years ago. But even if we count at face value, without taking into account 20-year inflation, then Hirst's work was more expensive in dollars, and Jones's in pounds. The situation was borderline, and everyone was free to decide who to consider the most expensive. But Hurst held out in first place not so long. In the same 2007, he was displaced from the first place by Koons with his "Hanging Heart".

Just on the eve of the global decline in prices for contemporary art, Hirst undertook an unprecedented undertaking for a young artist - a solo auction of his works, which took place on September 15, 2008 in London. The news of the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers bank announced the day before did not spoil the appetite of contemporary art lovers: of the 223 works offered by Sotheby’s, only five did not find new owners (one of the buyers, by the way, was Viktor Pinchuk). Work "Golden calf"- a huge effigy of a bull in formaldehyde, crowned with a golden disc, - brought £10.3m ($18.6m). This is Hurst's best result if measured in pounds (in the currency in which the deal was made). However, we are ranking in terms of dollars, so (may the Golden Calf forgive us) we will consider Hirst's best sale to be Sleepy Spring.

Since 2008, Hirst has not had sales of Sleepy Spring and Golden Calf. Fresh records of the 2010s - for the work of Richter, Jones, Fanzhi, Wool and Koons - moved Damien to the sixth line of our rating. But let's not make a categorical judgment about the decline of the Hirst era. According to analysts, Hurst as a "superstar" has already gone down in history, which means that they will buy it for a very long time; however, the greatest value in the future is predicted for works created in the most innovative period of his career, that is, in the 1990s.

14. Maurizio Cattelan Him. 2001. $17.19 million

Italian Maurizio Cattelan (1960) came to art after working as a security guard, cook, gardener and furniture designer. The self-taught author has become world famous for his ironic sculptures and installations. He's dropped a meteorite on the Pope, turned a customer's wife into a hunting trophy, ripped a hole in the floor of an Old Masters Museum, held up a giant middle finger to the stock exchange in Milan, brought a live donkey to the Frieze fair. In the near future, Cattelan promises to install a golden toilet at the Guggenheim Museum. In the end, Maurizio Cattelan's antics were widely recognized in the art world: he is invited to the Venice Biennale (the installation "Others" in 2011 - a flock of two thousand pigeons that look menacingly from all pipes and beams at the crowds of visitors passing below), arrange he has a retrospective at the New York Guggenheim Museum (November 2011) and, finally, big money is paid for his sculptures.

Since 2010, Maurizio Cattelan's most expensive work has been a wax sculpture of a man peering out of a hole in the floor, outwardly similar to the artist himself ("Untitled", 2001). This sculpture-installation, which exists in the amount of three copies plus the author's copy, was first shown at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. Then this mischievous character looked out of a hole in the floor of the hall with paintings by Dutch painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. Maurizio Cattellan in this work associates himself with a daring criminal invading the sacred space of the museum hall with paintings by great masters. Thus, he wants to deprive art of the halo of holiness that museum walls give it. The work, for the sake of exhibiting which every time you have to make holes in the floor, was sold for $ 7.922 million at Sotheby's.

The record stood until May 8, 2016, when Cattelan's even more provocative work Him, depicting a kneeling Hitler, went under the hammer for $17.189 million. The thing is strange. The name is strange. Character selection is risky. Like everything else with Cattelan. What does Him mean? "His" or "His infernal majesty"? It is clear that we are definitely not talking about chanting the image of the Fuhrer. In this work, Hitler appears rather in a helpless, pitiful form. And absurdly - the incarnation of Satan is made the size of a child, dressed in a schoolboy costume and kneeling with a humble expression on his face. For Cattelan, this image is an invitation to reflect on the nature of absolute evil and a way to get rid of fears. By the way, the “Him” sculpture is well known to the Western audience. Her brothers in the series have been exhibited more than 10 times in leading museums around the world, including the Pompidou Center and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.

15. MARC GROTJAN Untitled (S III Released to France Face 43.14). 2011. $16.8 million

On May 17, 2017, one of the most powerful paintings by Marc Grotjan ever put up for auction appeared at Christie's New York evening auction. The painting "Untitled (S III Released to France Face 43.14)" was put up by the Parisian collector Patrick Seguin with an estimate of $13-16 million, and since the sale of the lot was guaranteed by a third party, no one was particularly surprised by the establishment of a new personal auction record by the 49-year-old artist . The hammer's price of $14.75 million ($16.8 million with Buyer's Premium) surpassed Grotjan's previous auction record by more than $10 million, allowing him to enter the club of living artists whose work sells for eight figures. Seven-digit same results (sales more than $1 million, but not more than $10 million) in the auction piggy bank Mark Grotyan for about thirty.

Mark Grotjan (1968), in whose work experts see the influence of modernism, abstract minimalism, pop and op art, came to his corporate identity in the mid-1990s, after moving with his friend Brent Peterson to Los Angeles and opening a gallery there "Room 702". As the artist himself recalls, at that time he began to think about what came first for him in art. He was looking for the motive with which he could experiment. And I realized that he was always interested in line and color. Experiments in the spirit of rayonism and minimalism with linear perspective, numerous vanishing points and multi-colored abstract triangular shapes eventually brought Grotjan worldwide fame.

From abstract, colorful landscapes with multiple horizons and vanishing points, he ended up with triangular shapes reminiscent of butterfly wings. Paintings by Grotjan 2001–2007 They call it "Butterflies". Today, moving the vanishing point or using several vanishing points at once, spaced apart in space, is considered one of the artist's most powerful techniques.

The next large series of works was called "Faces"; in the abstract lines of this series one can guess the features of a human face, simplified to the state of a mask in the spirit of Matisse, Jawlensky or Brancusi. Speaking about the ultimate simplification and stylization of forms, about the compositional solution of paintings, when the scattered contours of the eyes and mouths seem to be looking at us from the forest thicket, the researchers note the connection of Grotjan's "Faces" with the art of the primitive tribes of Africa and Oceania, while the artist himself simply "likes the image eyes looking out from the jungle. I sometimes imagined the faces of baboons or monkeys. I cannot say that I was consciously or subconsciously influenced by primitive African art, rather, I was influenced by artists who were influenced by it. Picasso is the most obvious example."

The works of the "Faces" series are called brutal and elegant, pleasing to the eye and pleasing to the mind. Over time, the texture of these works also changes: to create the effect of internal space, the artist uses wide strokes of thick paint, even splashing in the style of Pollock, but the surface of the painting is leveled so that, upon closer examination, it seems completely flat. The auction-record-setting painting Untitled (S III Released to France Face 43.14) belongs to this celebrated series by Mark Grotjan.

16. TAKASHI MURAKAMI My lonely cowboy. $15.16 million

Japanese Takashi Murakami (1962) entered our rating with sculpture "My Lonely Cowboy", sold at Sotheby's in May 2008 for $ 15.16 million. With this sale, Takashi Murakami was long considered the most successful living Asian artist - until he was eclipsed by the sale of The Last Supper by Zeng Fanzhi.

Takashi Murakami works as an artist, sculptor, fashion designer and animator. Murakami wanted to take something really Japanese as the basis of his work, without Western or any other borrowings. In his student years, he was fascinated by the traditional Japanese art of nihonga, later it was replaced by the popular art of anime and manga. Thus was born the psychedelic Mr DOB, patterns of smiling flowers and bright, shiny fiberglass sculptures, as if they had just stepped out of the pages of Japanese comics. Some consider Murakami's art to be fast food and the embodiment of vulgarity, others call the artist the Japanese Andy Warhol - and in the ranks of the latter, as we see, there are many very rich people.

Murakami borrowed the name for his sculpture from Andy Warhol's The Lonely Cowboys (1968), which the Japanese, as he himself admitted, had never watched, but he really liked the combination of words. Murakami with one sculpture pleased fans of erotic Japanese comics and laughed at them. Increased in size, and besides, also three-dimensional, the anime hero turns into a fetish of mass culture. This artistic statement is quite in the spirit of classic Western pop art (remember Allen Jones' furniture set or Koons' Pink Panther), but with a national twist.

17. KAWS. Album KAWS. 2005. $14,784,505

KAWS is the pseudonym of American artist Brian Donelly from New Jersey. He is the youngest participant in our rating, born in 1974. Donelly started as an animator at Disney (drawing backgrounds for the cartoon "101 Dalmatians" and others). I have been interested in graffiti since I was young. At first, his signature design was a skull with "X"s in place of the eye sockets. The young writer's work has been loved by show business people and people from the fashion industry: he made the cover for the Kanye West album, released collaborations for Nike, Comme des Garçons and Uniqlo. Over time, KAWS has become a well-known figure in the contemporary art world. His signature Mickey Mouse figurine has found its way into museums, public spaces and private collections. Once KAWS released a limited edition vinyl toy with the My Plastic Heart brand, and they suddenly became the subject of high collector's interest. One of the passionate collectors of these "toys" is the founder of Black Star, rapper Timati: he almost completely collected the entire series of "Cavs Companions".

KAWS' work set a record for an artist's oeuvre - $14.7 million - at Sotheby's Hong Kong auction on April 1, 2019. It used to be in the collection of Japanese fashion designer Nigo. Meter canvas The KAWS Album is a homage to the cover of the famous The Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967. Only instead of people, it has Kimpsons - stylized characters from the Simpsons cartoon series with "X"s instead of eyes.

18. JIN SHAN Tajik bride. 1983. $13.89 million

Among the relatively young and contemporary Chinese artists, who all belong to the so-called “new wave” of the late 1980s in Chinese art, our rating quite unexpectedly included a representative of a completely different generation and a different school. Jin Shan (Jin Shangyi), who is now over 80, belongs to the bright representatives of the first generation of artists in communist China. The views of this group of artists were formed to a large extent under the influence of the closest communist ally - the USSR.

Official Soviet art, socialist realism, oil painting, which was still unusual for China (as opposed to traditional Chinese ink painting) were at the peak of popularity in the 1950s, and the Soviet artist Konstantin came to teach at Beijing Art University for three years (from 1954 to 1957). Methodievich Maksimov. Jin Shani, who at that time was the youngest in the group, got into his class. The artist always remembered his teacher with great warmth, saying that it was Maksimov who taught him to correctly understand and depict the model. K. M. Maksimov brought up a whole galaxy of Chinese realists, now classics.

In the work of Jin Shan one can feel the influence of both the Soviet "severe style" and the European school of painting. The artist devoted a lot of time to studying the heritage of the Renaissance and classicism, while he considered it necessary to preserve the Chinese spirit in his works. The painting "Tajik Bride", painted in 1983, is considered a universally recognized masterpiece, a new milestone in the work of Jin Shan. It was she who was put up at the China Guardian auction in November 2013 and sold several times more expensive than the estimate - for $ 13.89 million, including commission.

19. BANKSY The Decayed Parliament. 2008. $12.14 million

Wall paintings bearing the Banksy tag began to appear on the walls of cities (first in the UK and then around the world) in the late 1990s. His philosophical and at the same time sharp graffiti were devoted to the problems of the state's attack on the freedoms of citizens, crimes against the environment, irresponsible consumption, and the inhumanity of the illegal migration system. Over time, Banksy's wall "reproaches" gained unprecedented media popularity. In fact, he became one of the main spokesmen for public opinion condemning the hypocrisy of states and corporations, producing growing injustice in the capitalist system.

The significance of Banksy, the sense of the "nerve of time" and the accuracy of his metaphors were appreciated not only by the audience, but also by collectors. In the 2010s, hundreds of thousands or even more than a million dollars were given for his works. It got to the point that Banksy graffiti was broken down and stolen along with pieces of walls.

In an era of advanced digital surveillance, Banksy still manages to remain anonymous. There is a version that this is no longer one person, but a group of several artists, headed by a talented woman. That would explain a lot. And the outward dissimilarity of the writers caught in the lenses of the cameras of witnesses, and the impersonal stencil method of application (gives high speed and does not require the direct participation of the author), and the touching romanticism of the subjects of the paintings (balls, snowflakes, etc.). Be that as it may, the people from the Banksy project, including his assistants, know how to keep their mouths shut.

In 2019, the most expensive work of Banksy unexpectedly became a four-meter canvas Devolved Parliament (“degraded”, “decayed” or “delegated” Parliament). Chimpanzees arguing in the House of Commons seem to be mocking the audience in the year of the scandalous Brexit. It is surprising that the painting was painted 10 years before this historical turning point, and therefore someone considers it prophetic. At a Sotheby's auction on October 3, 2019, an unknown buyer bought the oil for $12,143,000 in a fierce bidding - six times the price of the preliminary estimate.

20. JOHN CURREN "Sweet and simple." 1999. $12.007 million

American artist John Curran (1962) known for his satirical figurative paintings on provocative sexual and social themes. Curren's work manages to combine the painting techniques of the old masters (especially Lucas Cranach the Elder and the mannerists) and fashion photography from glossy magazines. Achieving more grotesque, Karren often distorts the proportions of the human body, enlarges or reduces its individual parts, depicts heroes in broken, mannered poses.

Curren began in 1989 with portraits of girls redrawn from a school album; continued in the early 1990s with pictures of busty beauties inspired by photos from Cosmopolitan and Playboy; in 1992, portraits of wealthy elderly ladies appeared; and in 1994, Curren married sculptor Rachel Feinstein, who became his main muse and model for many years. By the late 1990s, Currin's technical prowess, combined with the kitsch and grotesqueness of his paintings, brought him popularity. In 2003, Larry Gagosian took over the promotion of the artist, and if such a dealer as Gagosian takes on the author, then success is guaranteed. In 2004, a John Curran retrospective was held at the Whitney Museum.

Around this time, his work began to sell for six figures. The current record for a painting by John Curran belongs to Sweet and Simple, sold on November 15, 2016 at Christie's for $12 million. now over 50, this is definitely a career breakthrough. His previous record in 2008 was $ 5.5 million (paid, by the way, for the same work "Cute and Simple").

21. BRICE MARDEN The Attended. 1996–1999 $10.917 million

Another living American abstract artist in our ranking is Bryce Marden (1938). Marden's works in the style of minimalism, and since the late 1980s - gestural painting, are distinguished by a unique author's, slightly muted palette. Color combinations in Marden's works are inspired by his travels around the world - Greece, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka. Among the authors who influenced the formation of Marden are Jackson Pollock (in the early 1960s Marden worked as a security guard at the Jewish Museum, where he personally observed Pollock's “drippings”), Alberto Giacometti (got acquainted with his work in Paris) and Robert Rauschenberg (some while Marden worked as his assistant). The first stage of Marden's work is devoted to classic minimalist canvases, consisting of colored rectangular blocks (horizontal or vertical). Unlike many other minimalists who sought the ideal quality of works, as if printed by a machine, and not drawn by a person, Marden retained traces of the artist's work, combining different materials (wax and oil paints). Since the mid-1980s, under the influence of oriental calligraphy, geometric abstraction has been replaced by meandering, meander-like lines, the background for which was the same monochrome color fields. One of these "meander" works - "The Attended" - was sold at Sotheby's auction in November 2013 for $ 10.917 million, including commission.

22. Pierre Soulages Peinture 186 x 143 cm, 23 December 1959. $10.6 million

23. ZHANG XIAOGANG Eternal love. $10.2 million

Another representative of Chinese contemporary art is a symbolist and surrealist Zhang Xiaogang (1958). At Sotheby's Hong Kong April 3, 2011, where the Chinese avant-garde from the collection of the Belgian baron Guy Ullens was sold, a triptych by Zhang Xiaogang "Eternal love" was sold for $ 10.2 million. At that time, it was a record not only for the artist, but for the entire Chinese contemporary art. It is said that Xiaogang's work was bought by the billionaire's wife Wang Wei, who is about to open her own museum.

Zhang Xiaogang, who is fond of mysticism and Eastern philosophy, wrote the story of "Eternal Love" in three parts - life, death and rebirth. This triptych was featured in the iconic 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Museum of Art. Also in 1989, student demonstrations were brutally suppressed in Tiananmen Square by the military. Following this tragic event, the screws began to tighten - the exhibition at the National Museum was dispersed, many artists emigrated. In response to socialist realism imposed from above, a direction of cynical realism arose, one of the main representatives of which was Zhang Xiaogang.

24. BRUCE NAUMAN Helpless Henry Moore. 1967. $9.9 million

American Bruce Nauman (1941), the winner of the main prize of the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), has long gone to his record. Nauman began his career in the sixties. Connoisseurs call him, along with Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, one of the most influential figures in the art of the second half of the twentieth century. However, the rich intellectuality and absolute non-decorativeness of some of his works obviously prevented his rapid recognition and success with the general public. Nauman often experiments with language, discovering unexpected meanings of familiar phrases. Words become the central characters of many of his works, including neon pseudo-signs and panels. Nauman himself calls himself a sculptor, although over the past forty years he has tried himself in completely different genres - sculpture, photography, video art, performances, graphics. In the early 1990s, Larry Gagosian uttered the prophetic words: "The real value of Naumann's work has yet to be realized." And so it happened: May 17, 2001 at Christie's by Naumann in 1967 "Helpless Henry Moore (rear view)"(Henry Moore Bound to Fail (Backview)) set a new record in the post-war art segment. A cast of Naumann's hands tied behind his back, made of plaster and wax, went under the hammer for $ 9.9 million in the collection of the French magnate Francois Pinault (according to other sources, the American Phyllis Wattis). The estimate of the work was only $2-3 million, so the result was a real surprise for everyone.

Prior to this legendary sale, only two of Naumann's works had crossed the million-dollar mark. And in his entire auction career so far, only six works, in addition to "Henry Moore ...", have gone for seven-figure sums, but their results still cannot be compared with nine million.

"Helpless Henry Moore" is one of Naumann's series of polemical works on the figure of Henry Moore (1898–1986), a British artist who was considered among the greatest sculptors of the 20th century in the sixties. Young authors, who found themselves in the shadow of a recognized master, then attacked him with fierce criticism. Naumann's work is a response to this criticism and at the same time a reflection on the topic of creativity. The title of the work becomes a pun, as it connects two meanings of the English word bound - bound (in the literal sense) and doomed to a certain fate.

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How much does contemporary art cost? Which of the living artists enjoy the greatest recognition, the measure of which is banknotes? Artnet answered this question by analyzing auction results from 2011 to 2015 and listing best selling contemporary artists. Alas, there were no creators from Russia on the list.

10. Ed Ruscha

In the 60s of the last century, Ed, along with now famous artists such as Andy Warhol and Jim Dine, took part in the historic event "Re-imaging ordinary objects." It was one of the first exhibitions in the emerging pop art style in America. To an unenlightened look, Rushei's paintings are most reminiscent of a stenciled inscription against the backdrop of landscapes or a cheerful splash of flowers. However, over 4 years of his creations were sold for a total amount of $129,030,255.

9. Richard Prince

Richard made a name for himself by re-photographing images from print ads, arranging them in random order and embellishing them with scathing slogans. Marlboro cowboys, celebrities, porn stars, nurses and biker girlfriends suffered at his hands. He also paints the hoods of cars. The public appreciated his work in $146,056,862- it was for this amount that several works of the artist were sold.

8. Yayoi Kusama

The mentally ill artist loves to cover surfaces with dots of paint - it's called "infinity nets". She managed to trademark both this polka dot and her own illness and is now the best-selling contemporary artist in the world ( $152,768,689).

7. Peter Doig

One of the representatives of traditional landscape painting. His work is invariably popular with the viewer, who is tired of the hyper-ironic postmodern, because after the inscriptions, collages of photographs and polka-dot chairs, it is so nice to stop your eyes on the tropical night landscape. For 4 years, paintings have been sold for $155,229,785.

6. Fan Zeng

Calligraphic lettering, transparent watercolor landscapes and portraits in traditional Chinese style are also selling well - $176,718,242 from 2011 to 2015.

5. Cui Ruzhou

This contemporary Chinese artist is famous for his ink paintings of flowers, birds and landscapes. However, ordinary people are unable to understand the mighty power of art - and in 2012, the cleaner of the Grand Hayatt hotel accidentally threw one of his works worth $ 3.7 million into the trash. Cui Ruzhou's work over the past 4 years has been sold for $223,551,382.

4. Zeng Fanji

Complex multi-colored works by another Chinese artist, where living beings and objects are either entangled in the web, or lost in the winter forest, as well as sinister pioneers with bloody hands from 2011 to 2015, were also sold well - for $267,949,220.

3. Christopher Wool

Christopher's trademark is huge white canvases with black lettering. Four of these letters, which form the word Riot ("rebellion"), were sold at Sotheby's for $29.9 million. And in just 4 years, the artist's works were sold in the amount of $323,997,854.

2. Jeff Koons

Former husband of porn star Cicciolina prefers to work in the neo-pop genre. He is especially famous for his steel sculptures imitating elongated balloon toys. For one of the works (steel orange dog) was paid at Christie's auction 58.4 million dollars. Jeff also plans to install a crane in front of the Los Angeles Museum of Art, on which he will hang a steam locomotive so that it puffs and emits clouds of smoke. From 2011 to 2015, Koons sold works worth a total of $379,778,439.

1. Gerard Richter

In the first place in the ranking of artists with the best-selling paintings is a master who does not even consider himself such. According to Gerard, for a long time he created something that was not related to art, composition, color, creativity, etc. Namely, he covered canvases with paint stains using scrapers and spatulas. One of these paintings, called "Abstract Image", most of all reminiscent of a watermelon that died in agony, was priced at Sotheby's for $43.6 million, and the artist's works for four years were sold for a modest amount of $1,165,527,419.