Mark Bradford is one of the top 50 artists whose work sold for more than $1 million earlier this year in auctions. Image: Sotheby's
Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Gerhard Richter topped the list of the most popular artists at auction – those with an average of five $1 million-plus artworks sold per year between 2018 and 2022.
These five artists are responsible for 37 percent of total sales among the top 50 artists featured in the second report of ArtTactic’s Peak Performance series with auction house Sotheby’s. The report featured 50 artists who power the $1 million-plus art market for auctions during the first half of 2023.
The average number of bidders on $1 million-plus artworks by these top 50 remained the same in the first half of 2023 as it was in 2022, the report said.
To be included in the report, at least 25 artworks by each artist must have sold at auction for more than $1 million during 2018–22.
ArtTactic also introduced an artist Power Ranking in this report. This new metric that captures annual trends at auction by evaluating five distinct factors: market size, liquidity, price point, buyer confidence and momentum.
The analysis is based on auction data from auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips, gathered and evaluated by ArtTactic, and covers four main fine art collecting segments: Contemporary (including Post-War), Impressionist and Modern, Old Masters and Chinese works of art. It also includes unique analysis on bidder trends and demographics as well as private sales based on Sotheby’s proprietary data.
"We believe that this combination of public and private art market data will provide ... new insights and a more holistic view of the $1 million-plus market and the artists within it," said ArtTactic's Anders Petterson in the report. "We hope this will contribute to more awareness and understanding of the underlying dynamics of this important market."
Bidding activity in the first half of 2023 remains in line with last year.
The average number of bidders for $1 million-plus artworks by the top 50 artists remains the same as in 2022, showing that buyer interest in this top tier has remained stable, despite tougher economic conditions.
Changes in the level of bidding activity are a good indicator of interest and demand, and the artists with the biggest increase in the first six months of 2023 were David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, George Condo and René Magritte, per the report.
North American bidders were the most active at the top tier.
For the top five artists – Picasso, Monet, Warhol, Basquiat and Richter – bidding activity comes mainly from North America (43 percent) followed by Europe (35 percent) and Asia (17 percent).
The outlier is Richter, who mostly attracts European bidders (44 percent, with 29 percent from North America and 24 percent from Asia).
Overall, North America accounted for the largest share (37 percent) of bidders for the top 50 artists between 2018 and the first half of 2023, followed by Europe (31 percent) and Asia (27 percent).
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Asia accounted for the largest share (34 percent) of bidders, but this figure declined in 2021 and 2022, the report showed.
Western bidders drove interest in women artists.
Four women – Joan Mitchell, Yayoi Kusama, Cecily Brown and Helen Frankenthaler – have entered the top 50 ranking in terms of total sales of $1 million-plus artworks between 2018 and 2022.
Works by these women are predominantly bought by Western bidders.
The market activity for works by Joan Mitchell, for example, mostly comes from North America (78 percent) and Europe (14 percent), as it does for Cecily Brown (50 percent North America, 26 percent Europe) and Helen Frankenthaler (66 percent North America, 26 percent Europe).
Only Yayoi Kusama sees a majority of bidders from Asia (61 percent).
Post-War and Contemporary artists are the most popular as a new generation of buyers enters the market.
Most of the artists featured in the top 50 dashboards (60 percent) are from younger generations – 11 Post-War, 17 Contemporary and two Young Contemporary. The remaining 20 are Impressionist and Modern artists.
No Old Masters make the list.
Although this is likely due to the available supply of artworks, it could also reflect the increasing presence of the millennial generation (born during 1981–96) in the $1 million-plus market. Their share of bidding activity grew from 6 percent in 2018 to 30 percent in the first half of 2023 for works by the top 50 artists.
Five artists accounted for almost 80 percent of private sales.
Topping the list in terms of private sales value in the first half of 2023 were Alberto Giacometti, Claude Monet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol – accounting for 79.4 percent of sales. This is a significantly higher sales concentration compared with the period from 2019 to the first half of 2023, when these artists accounted for 44.7 percent of private sales.