What artists are artnet’s users most commonly searching for? Every month, we put the results of these searches under the microscope in order to analyze what drives artists’ rising and falling popularity.
As he had for the previous two months, controversial British photographer David Hamilton, known for his depictions of nude adolescent girls, topped the list. The 83-year-old artist was found dead at his Paris home in November, after four former models came forward and accused him of rape.
As in past months, the top 10 are dominated by popular street artists like KAWS and Banksy; edgy photographers including Nobuyoshi Araki, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jock Sturges; and household names like Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.
The most dramatic move on the list, which artnet tracks month to month, is a meteoric rise by German figurative sculptor Otto Schmidt-Hofer (1837–1925), at number 35. The artist came out of nowhere to claim the spot; he hasn’t been in the news and has had no dramatic auction sales recently, and his auction high, according to the artnet Price Database, is just above $26,000. That price was achieved in 2008.
This was a big month for little-known artists on the list. American sculptor Jack Dowd landed nearby at number 40 despite no previous appearances; Brooke Shields–obsessed American artist Garry Gross leapt from number 144 to 46; and French comic book artist Gotlib debuted at 70.
See the list of top artists for December below:
- David Hamilton
- Jock Sturges
- Banksy
- Andy Warhol
- Nobuyoshi Araki
- Pablo Picasso
- Diane Arbus
- KAWS
- Robert Mapplethorpe
- Helmut Newton
- Keith Haring
- Nan Goldin
- Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Alec Monopoly
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Marc Chagall
- Salvador Dalí
- Joel-Peter Witkin
- Victor Vasarely
- Yayoi Kusama
- David Hockney
- Francesca Woodman
- Sally Mann
- Fernando Botero
- Bernard Buffet
- Gerhard Richter
- Takashi Murakami
- Shepard Fairey
- Joan Miró
- Damien Hirst
- Jeff Koons
- Yoshitomo Nara
- Liu Bolin
- Sebastião Salgado
- Otto Schmidt-Hofer
- René Magritte
- Alexander Calder
- Anish Kapoor
- Tanja Playner
- Jack Dowd
- Andy Goldsworthy
- Wayne Thiebaud
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Grayson Perry
- Jim Dine
- Garry Gross
- Cy Twombly
- Konstantin Razumov
- Thomas Ruff
- Henri Matisse
- Tracey Emin
- Anselm Kiefer
- Alex Katz
- Wolfgang Tillmans
- Frank Stella
- Milo Manara
- Brainwash
- Peter Doig
- Philip-Lorca diCorcia
- Candida Höfer
- Otto Dix
- Vik Muniz
- George Condo
- Jackson Pollock
- Chuck Close
- David LaChapelle
- Andreas Gursky
- Pierre Soulages
- Emil Nolde
- Gotlib
- Niki de Saint Phalle
- Egon Schiele
- Francis Bacon
- Gregory Crewdson
- Irina Ionesco
- William Klein
- Robert Arneson
- Raoul Dufy
- Georg Baselitz
- John Baldessari
- Maurice Utrillo
- Tom Wesselmann
- Cindy Sherman
- Jean Dubuffet
- Ed Ruscha
- Marina Abramovic
- Harland Miller
- Barbara Kruger
- Peter Max
- Yves Klein
- George Grosz
- Daniel Richter
- Duane Michals
- Saul Leiter
- Jenny Holzer
- Rufino Tamayo
- Christian Boltanski
- Fernand Léger
- Robert Longo
- Herb Ritts
- Maurice de Vlaminck
- Karel Appel
- Bettina Rheims
- Kehinde Wiley
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Bert Stern
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Larry Clark
- Pierre et Gilles
- Bernd and Hilla Becher
- Antoni Tàpies
- Will McBride
- Sigmar Polke
- Man Ray
- Thomas Struth
- Peter Paul Rubens
- Grandma Moses
- Sam Francis
- Josef Albers
- William Kentridge
- Paul Klee
- Georg Emanuel Opitz
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Annette Messager
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Julian Opie
- David Lynch
- Peter Blake
- Bridget Riley
- Max Ernst
- Sol LeWitt
- Imi Knoebel
- Joseph Beuys
- Robert Indiana
- Alberto Giacometti
- Käthe Kollwitz
- Walasse Ting
- Richard Prince
- Jenny Saville
- Christopher Wool
- Margaret Keane
- Franz Frank
- Kees van Dongen
- Mel Ramos
- Agnes Martin
- Robert Motherwell
- Raymond Pettibon
- Marcel Dyf
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
- Gerda Wegener
- Louise Bourgeois
- Arman
- Lucio Fontana
- Raphael Soyer
- Graham Sutherland
- Albert Marquet
- Martin Parr
- Richard Estes
- Edward Burtynsky
- Joan Mitchell
- C. Escher
- Günther Uecker
- Brassaï
- RETNA
- Moïse Kisling
- Anton Pieck
- Harry Benson
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Kiki Smith
- Claude Monet
- Willem de Kooning
- Tony Cragg
- Gustav Klimt
- Jasper Johns
- Diego Rivera
- Nick Brandt
- Dennis Sheehan
- Swoon
- Ellen von Unwerth
- Jan Saudek
- Erwin Olaf
- Lucian Freud
- Aslan
- Jeremy Mann
- Ernesto Neto
- Francis Picabia
- Georges Braque
- Ronald Ventura
- Friedensreich Hundertwasser
- Kara Walker
- Sonia Delaunay
- Irving Penn
- Markus Lüpertz
- Wolf Kahn
- Edward Weston
- Adrian Ghenie
- Gio Ponti
- Hans Hartung
- William Eggleston
- Erwin Wurm
- Paul Jenkins
- Harding Meyer
- Richard Avedon
- Arnulf Rainer
- Serpieri
- Mark Ryden
- Robert Doisneau
- Julie Mehretu
- James Rosenquist
- Andres Serrano
- Michael Carson
- Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
- Wifredo Lam
- Andrew Wyeth
- Jonathan Meese
- Maurizio Cattelan
- Per Kirkeby
- Pierre Bonnard
- Zdzislaw Beksinski
- Yaacov Agam
- Vivian Maier
- Bernar Venet
- Auguste Rodin
- Fritz Aigner
- Zao Wou-Ki
- Shirin Neshat
- Manolo Valdés
- Le Corbusier
- Georges Rouault
- Annie Leibovitz
- Stanley Donwood
- Yue Minjun
- Duane Hanson
- Miquel Barceló
- James Rizzi
- Marilyn Minter
- Sean Scully
- Lee Ufan
- Lyonel Feininger
- Günther Förg
- René Gruau
- Donald Judd
- Peter Lindbergh
- Janet Fish
- Vernon Ward
- Jörg Immendorff
- John Cage
- Norman Rockwell
- Mark Rothko
- Jean Prouvé
- Milton Avery
- Richard Serra
- Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Guglielmo von Plüschow
- Roberto Matta
- Jean Paul Riopelle
- Pierre Alechinsky
- Patrick Hughes
- Vanessa Beecroft
- Eduardo Chillida
- Edgar Degas
- Erich Heckel
- Edvard Munch
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- Niclas Castello
- Sue Coe
- Ansel Adams
- André Kertész
- Richard Diebenkorn
- Peter Beard
- George Platt Lynes
- Lucien Clergue
- Julian Schnabel
- Heinrich Zille
- Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
- Stephan Balkenhol
- Alphonse Mucha
- Elizabeth Catlett
- Piet Mondrian
- Massimo Vitali
- Rodney Smith
- Ismail Gulgee
- Kazuo Shiraga
- Claude Lalanne
- Mel Bochner
- Cecily Brown
- Romero Britto
- William Christenberry
- Marie Laurencin
- Carmen Herrera
- Henri Fantin-Latour
- Max Liebermann
- Alice Neel
- Qi Baishi
- Albrecht Dürer
- Georges Mathieu
- Henry Moore
- Thomas Hart Benton
- Montague Dawson
- Charlotte Perriand