From Andy Warhol to Zao Wou-Ki, Here Are the 100 Most-Searched Artists on artnet

Amid the expected names are several that will surprise you.

Andy Warhol in 1986. Photo: Francois LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

Who are the most-searched artists on artnet’s Price Database?

Every day, thousands of artnet users search for auction results for hundreds of artists. Their habits offer a sometimes surprising snapshot of shifting market interest and popularity.

The top names, of course, read like a blue-chip hall of fame. Unsurprisingly given his popularity, influence, market value, and remarkable productivity, Pablo Picasso occupies the top spot with a total of 686,882 searches. He is followed by Andy Warhol, with 588,373 searches. (All data is accurate as of September 2017.)

Boosted by a very lively print market, Marc Chagall comes in third. Only one sculptor (Alexander Calder) and two living artists (Gerhard Richter and Damien Hirst) managed to crack the top 10.

The list contains a notable absence of diversity in terms of the artists’ gender, race, and chosen medium. There are only seven women (Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman, Jeanne-Claude, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Louise Bourgeois). Georgia O’Keeffe, whose work is the most expensive by a female artist ever sold at auction, is noticeably absent from the list.

Meanwhile, the list contains only one African American artist (Jean-Michel Basquiat), six Asian artists (Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Zao Wou-Ki, Yoshitomo Nara, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Hiroshi Sugimoto), and two Latin American artists (Fernando Botero and Vic Muniz). Only nine artists work primarily in a medium other than painting.

But there are some surprises, too. The Hungarian-French Op artist Victor Vasarely (who comes in at number 36) and the French expressionist Bernard Buffet (37) are more frequently searched than Cy Twombly (38), Francis Bacon (39), and Cindy Sherman (40). The French cityscape painter Maurice Utrillo (75) also makes an unexpected appearance.

There are also notable omissions. Contemporary art auction superstars including Rudolf Stingel, Mark Grotjahn, Mark Bradford, and Peter Doig failed to make the list entirely.

See who made the cut below.

1. Pablo Picasso

2. Andy Warhol

3. Marc Chagall

4. Joan Miró

5. Roy Lichtenstein

6. Alexander Calder

7. Gerhard Richter

8. Salvador Dalí

9. Henri Matisse

10. Damien Hirst

11. Pierre-Auguste Renoir

12. Lucio Fontana

13. Jean-Michel Basquiat

14. Henry Moore

15. Fernand Léger

16. Jean Dubuffet

17. David Hockney

18. Keith Haring

19. Ed Ruscha

20. Claude Monet

21. Tom Wesselmann

22. Yayoi Kusama

23. Robert Rauschenberg

24. Alberto Giacometti

25. Sam Francis

26. Edgar Degas

27. Willem de Kooning

28. Richard Prince

29. Auguste Rodin

30. Frank Stella

31. Jeff Koons

32. Jasper Johns

33. Arman

34. Raoul Dufy

35. René Magritte

36. Victor Vasarely

37. Bernard Buffet

38. Cy Twombly

39. Francis Bacon

40. Cindy Sherman

41. Max Ernst

42. Georges Braque

43. Sol LeWitt

44. Camille Pissarro

45. Man Ray

46. Robert Motherwell

47. Karel Appel

48. Takashi Murakami

49. Fernando Botero

50. Kees van Dongen

51. Donald Judd

52. Sigmar Polke

53. Henri deToulouse-Lautrec

54. Zao Wou-Ki

55. Yves Klein

56. Jim Dine

57. Pierre Bonnard

58. Rembrandt van Rijn

59. Christopher Wool

60. Wassily Kandinsky

61. Amedeo Modigliani

62. Maurice de Vlaminck

63. Yoshitomo Nara

64. Robert Indiana

65. Banksy

66. Christo and Jeanne-Claude

67. Alighiero Boetti

68. Josef Albers

69. Vik Muniz

70. Antoni Tàpies

71. Joseph Beuys

72. Paul Klee

73. Jean (Hans) Arp

74. Alex Katz

75. Maurice Utrillo

76. Roberto Matta

77. Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita

78. George Condo

79. Hiroshi Sugimoto

80. Robert Mapplethorpe

81. Joan Mitchell

82. Wayne Thiebaud

83. Mark Rothko

84. Egon Schiele

85. Georg Baselitz

86. Andreas Gursky

87. Francis Picabia

88. Emil Nolde

89. Helen Frankenthaler

90. Ansel Adams

91. Irving Penn

92. Richard Diebenkorn

93. Paul Cézanne

94. Niki de Saint Phalle

95. Giorgio de Chirico

96. Paul Gauguin

97. Anselm Kiefer

98. Lucian Freud

99. Edvard Munch

100. Louise Bourgeois


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