Personal Bests in the Recently Challenged Market
Many artists are soaring to new highs in recent years despite fewer transactions at the market’s upper end. Here are the names to watch. Save to My Ocula
In the face of a contracting market, there’s a healthy crop of artists who have seen a meteoric rise at auctions in recent years.
Ethiopian-born American painter Julie Mehretu is among them, according to the newly published report by Artprice ranking the top 500 contemporary artists by auction turnover from July 2023 to June 2024.
Mehretu rose from 64th to 5th place in a list topped by Jean-Michel Basquiat for a 14th year, with a turnover of 35.9 million (all prices USD) and 26 lots sold. (Basquiat brought in 240 million across 112 lots, with the highest grossing 46.4 million.)
The 53-year-old artist found new highs with the sale of Walkers With the Dawn and Morning (2008) for 10.7 million at Sotheby’s New York in November 2023.
Mehretu outperformed Damien Hirst (7th, 26.6 million) and Richard Prince (8th, 23 million), as well as contemporary women painters like Cecily Brown (14th, 19 million) and Jenny Saville (19th, 14.5 million). She set a new record for an artist of African heritage, exceeding 10 million.
Chinese painter Liu Ye also achieved a new record, rising from 21st to 6th place with a total of 31 million in sales across 21 lots—the highest of which grossed nearly 8 million. Liu Ye is represented by David Zwirner and saw 11 works hammer in the seven figures during the same period.
The late Italian painter Salvo (Salvatore Mangione) ranked ninth and also broke new highs with a turnover of 21 million and a record of 1.1 million across 248 lots sold. Its success the report attributes to recognition from artists like Nicolas Party and Jonathan Monk, along with tribute exhibitions at Gladstone New York and Perrotin Paris in 2023.
Other artists who achieved personal bests include Mark Tansey (13th, highest 11.8 million), Adrian Ghenie (15th, highest 5.4 million), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (18th, highest 13.6 million), Zhang Enli (20th, highest 2.9 million, and Jadé Fadojutimi (22nd, highest 1.98 million). —[O]
Main image: Adrian Ghenie, Dora Maar (2024). Oil on canvas. 140 x 100 cm. Courtesy the artist and Plan B Cluj, Berlin.
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