Who were the most searched artists in July on artnet? Analyzing the artists our users searched for provides interesting insights into up-to-date popularity and trends in the art market.
In July, a familiar pattern of erotic photographers and blue-chip artists emerged in the top 10. The number one slot, however, was taken by a woman. Driven by her survey exhibition at New York’s Met Breuer museum, American photographer Diane Arbus displaced Japanese erotic photographer Nobuyoshi Araki—who was relegated to third place—for the first time since April.
A visitor looks at the work of US photographer Diane Arbus at an exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, on September 24, 2012, the final day of the three-month-long retrospective. Courtesy of DAVID GANNON/AFP/GettyImages.
Ever-popular street artist Banksy took second place, while Andy Warhol took fourth. The controversial erotic photographer Jock Sturges—known for his risqué shots of adolescents—moved from eighth place to fifth. Meanwhile, Pablo Picasso dropped to seventh place, and Jean-Michel Basquiat took 10th place.
Outside of the top 10 things got more interesting. Scottish painter Peter Doig jumped 54 places to take the 25th spot as users took notice of the bizarre authentication lawsuit the artist is currently involved in.
Peter Doig Swamped (1990)
Photo: Christie’s
Another bizarre incident involving a pensioner who used a pen and “filled in” a crossword painting by the German Fluxus artist Arthur Köpcke propelled the artist to 49th place, after having been completely absent from the list for over five months.
US photographer Spencer Tunick made headlines in July for his latest naked photo projects, one in the English city of Hull and the other in Cleveland, on the occasion of the Republican National Convention. The publicity surrounding the unusual sight of 3,200 blue and green painted naked people lying in a city street drove a surge in popularity—and searches.
Volunteers, painted in blue to reflect the colours found in Marine paintings in Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery, participate in US artist Spencer Tunick’s ‘Sea of Hull’ installation in Kingston upon Hull. Photo by Jon Super/AFP courtesy of Getty Images.
Meanwhile, Katharina Grosse continued her rise through the ranks, jumping from 186th to 85th place after Gagosian Gallery announced it had added her to its star-studded roster.
After a show at Sean Kelly gallery boosted Antony Gormley to 203rd place in June, the British sculptor dropped back down to 255th place as the burst of interest in his work subsided. The same goes for Julian Schnabel, who had risen to 90th place after it emerged in May that he was ditching Gagosian to rejoin Pace gallery. As the press surrounding the switch dropped off, so did his position in the top 300 most searched artists list.
See the list of top artists below:
1. Diane Arbus
2. Banksy
3. Nobuyoshi Araki
4. Andy Warhol
5. Jock Sturges
6. Michael Dweck
7. Pablo Picasso
8. Nan Goldin
9. Helmut Newton
10. Jean-Michel Basquiat
11. Francesca Woodman
12. Marc Chagall
13. David Hockney
14. Tanja Playner
15. Robert Mapplethorpe
16. Damien Hirst
17. Salvador Dalí
18. Alec Monopoly
19. KAWS
20. Roy Lichtenstein
21. Keith Haring
22. Sue Coe
23. Andreas Gursky
24. Joan Miró
25. Peter Doig
26. Wayne Thiebaud
27. Fernando Botero
28. Joel-Peter Witkin
29. Victor Vasarely
30. Gerhard Richter
31. Yayoi Kusama
32. David Hamilton
33. Alexander Calder
34. Erik Dietman
35. Alex Katz
36. Bernard Dufour
37. Alexander Frenz
38. Bernard Buffet
39. Takashi Murakami
40. Jeff Koons
41. Bettina Rheims
42. Maurice Utrillo
43. Mr. Brainwash
44. Albert Marquet
45. Sebastião Salgado
46. Shepard Fairey
47. Jim Dine
48. Frank Stella
49. Arthur Köpcke
50. Sally Mann
51. Georg Baselitz
52. Thomas Ruff
53. Tom Wesselmann
54. Egon Schiele
55. Henri Matisse
56. Andy Goldsworthy
57. Ed Ruscha
58. Robert Rauschenberg
59. Chuck Close
60. Raoul Dufy
61. Milo Manara
62. Tracey Emin
63. Konstantin Razumov
64. Yoshitomo Nara
65. Christo and Jeanne-Claude
66. Peter Max
67. Francis Bacon
68. Wolfgang Tillmans
69. Fernand Léger
70. Emil Nolde
71. Spencer Tunick
72. Joseph Beuys
73. Liu Bolin
74. George Grosz
75. Niki de Saint Phalle
76. Pierre Soulages
77. Jean Prouvé
78. Anselm Kiefer
79. Paul Klee
80. Sol LeWitt
81. William Kentridge
82. Lucio Fontana
83. Günther Uecker
84. Nick Brandt
85. Katharina Grosse
86. Vik Muniz
87. Ernst Seidl
88. Anish Kapoor
89. Robert Longo
90. George Condo
91. Cindy Sherman
92. Harland Miller
93. Garry Gross
94. Bert Stern
95. Markus Lüpertz
96. Sam Francis
97. Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
98. Ellsworth Kelly
99. Pierre et Gilles
100. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
101. Otto Rudolf Schatz
102. Serpieri
103. Sigmar Polke
104. Antoni Tàpies
105. Candida Höfer
106. Philip-Lorca diCorcia
107. Julian Opie
108. Josef Albers
109. Jean Dubuffet
110. Grayson Perry
111. Gregory Crewdson
112. Ronald Ventura
113. Yue Minjun
114. Cy Twombly
115. Helen Frankenthaler
116. René Magritte
117. Margaret Keane
118. Bernd and Hilla Becher
119. Karel Appel
120. Robert Motherwell
121. Thomas Struth
122. Lucian Freud
123. Martin Parr
124. Richard Prince
125. Alberto Giacometti
126. Man Ray
127. Bridget Riley
128. Maurice de Vlaminck
129. Marina Abramovic
130. Wassily Kandinsky
131. Arman
132. David LaChapelle
133. Imi Knoebel
134. Kehinde Wiley
135. John Baldessari
136. Christopher Wool
137. William Eggleston
138. Milton Avery
139. Gustav Klimt
140. Hiroshi Sugimoto
141. Henry Moore
142. Andres Serrano
143. Julian Schnabel
144. Raymond Pettibon
145. Massimo Vitali
146. Will McBride
147. Grandma Moses
148. Saul Leiter
149. Slim Aarons
150. Käthe Kollwitz
151. Yves Klein
152. Lyonel Feininger
153. Otto Piene
154. Willem de Kooning
155. Jasper Johns
156. Andrew Wyeth
157. Mel Ramos
158. Rufino Tamayo
159. Francis Picabia
160. Patrick Hughes
161. Tony Cragg
162. Jenny Saville
163. Robert Indiana
164. Hans Zatzka
165. Friedensreich Hundertwasser
166. Otto Dix
167. Igor Mitoraj
168. Kees van Dongen
169. Adrian Ghenie
170. Max Ernst
171. Gerda Wegener
172. Henri Cartier-Bresson
173. Amedeo Modigliani
174. Herb Ritts
175. Peter Beard
176. Georges Braque
177. Wolf Kahn
178. Kiki Smith
179. Pierre Bonnard
180. Louise Bourgeois
181. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
182. Vernon Ward
183. RETNA
184. Per Kirkeby
185. Peter Blake
186. Erich Heckel
187. Hans Hartung
188. Agnes Martin
189. David Lynch
190. Auguste Rodin
191. Lucien Clergue
192. Richard Diebenkorn
193. James Rizzi
194. Le Corbusier
195. Romero Britto
196. Julie Mehretu
197. Claude Monet
198. Alphonse Mucha
199. Arnulf Rainer
200. Zao Wou-Ki
201. Manolo Valdés
202. Erwin Olaf
203. Hernando Ruiz Ocampo
204. Swoon
205. Georgia O’Keeffe
206. Jenny Holzer
207. Russell Young
208. Roberto Matta
209. Barbara Kruger
210. William Klein
211. Daniel Richter
212. Peter Paul Rubens
213. Katsushika Hokusai
214. Eduardo Chillida
215. Gio Ponti
216. Giorgio de Chirico
217. Rainer Fetting
218. André Derain
219. Itzchak Tarkay
220. Lee Ufan
221. Jeremy Mann
222. Jörg Immendorff
223. Joan Mitchell
224. Sean Scully
225. Manfred Deix
226. James Rosenquist
227. Stephan Balkenhol
228. Jackson Pollock
229. Neo Rauch
230. Christian Boltanski
231. Jonathan Meese
232. Niclas Castello
233. Thonet
234. Donald Judd
235. Günther Förg
236. Serge Poliakoff
237. Ettore Sottsass
238. Jacques Adnet
239. Diego Giacometti
240. René Gruau
241. Anton Pieck
242. Edward Weston
243. Harding Meyer
244. Heinz Mack
245. Miquel Barceló
246. Duane Michals
247. Oskar Kokoschka
248. Piet Mondrian
249. Edgar Degas
250. Richard Estes
251. Yaacov Agam
252. Shirin Neshat
253. Robert Doisneau
254. Jean Cocteau
255. Antony Gormley
256. Dennis Sheehan
257. Wifredo Lam
258. Erwin Wurm
259. Max Liebermann
260. Irving Penn
261. William Wegman
262. Bernar Venet
263. Walasse Ting
264. André Masson
265. Mary Bauermeister
266. Myles Birket Foster
267. Annie Leibovitz
268. Edvard Munch
269. Marie Laurencin
270. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
271. Marcel Dyf
272. Larry Clark
273. Ang Kiukok
274. Jean Tinguely
275. Franz Kline
276. Elger Esser
277. Ai Weiwei
278. Brice Marden
279. Kazuo Shiraga
280. Jean-Gabriel Domergue
281. Franz West
282. Demetre Chiparus
283. Richard Serra
284. Richard Avedon
285. Louise Nevelson
286. Albrecht Dürer
287. Aslan
288. Ernst Fuchs
289. Fritz Christ
290. Marino Marini
291. Jean Paul Riopelle
292. Aristide Maillol
293. Jonas Burgert
294. Mike Kelley
295. Marcel Duchamp
296. Paul McCarthy
297. Günter Blum
298. Dale Chihuly
299. Olafur Eliasson
300. Max Pechstein