According to the official artnet Top 300, Banksy, the beloved anonymous British street artist, has received the most page visits of any artist listing on the site for six months in a row.
This hardly surprising, given his popularity and ability to generate headlines over the smallest incidents.
Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki unseated Andy Warhol for the number two slot in September. Araki, who was recently featured in a controversial faux-massage parlor gallery installation in New York, is just one of several unexpected names in the top ten artists searched, which also includes Joel-Peter Witkin (seventh) and Jock Sturges (eighth).
Nobuyoshi Araki, Bondage series (2008).
Photo: artnet.
What do those artists have in common? Here’s a hint: according to a 2012 study, 30 percent of all internet traffic comes from pornography.
Araki, Witkin, and Sturges, and even the better-known Helmut Netwon and Francesca Woodman (ranked sixth and tenth) are all photographers who often feature nudes in their work. In other words, they may be getting a boost from the scintillating nature of their imagery, rather than their market prowess.
Tracking the search habits of those searching for collecting, rather than recreational purposes, would likely paint a different picture. Indeed, when we limited the results to searches in the artnet Price Database (PDB), Araki and Newton dropped out the top ten entirely. So did Banksy, his celebrity edge effectively erased. Instead, more traditional blue chip artists get the most attention. (For 2014, Warhol, followed by Banksy, topped searches across all of artnet.)
Pablo Picasso, number four on the Top 300, snags the top spot among PDB searches, followed by Warhol and Joan Miró. Roy Lichtenstein, however, ranks high on both lists (fifth overall, and fourth on the PBD), while Damien Hirst and Salvador Dalí, barely outside the top 10 overall at 11th and 12th, respectively, are ranked ninth and tenth according to PDB results.
The fifth through eighth place PDB spots—Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, and Lucio Fontana—all rank much lower among overall searches, clocking in at 19th, 32nd, 21st, and 86th, respectively.
Another difference is that the PDB searches also seem more steady over time: though the order has shifted slightly, the names on the top ten list have remained constant since April. No less than 21 artist have appeared in the Top 300’s top ten over the last six months, including Sally Mann, who has dropped from 10th in June to 35 in September.
Here are the artists on the artnet Top 300:
- Banksy
- Nobuyoshi Araki
- Andy Warhol
- Pablo Picasso
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Helmut Newton
- Joel-Peter Witkin
- Jock Sturges
- Keith Haring
- Francesca Woodman
- Damien Hirst
- Salvador Dalí
- Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Fernando Botero
- Victor Vasarely
- Michael Dweck
- Wayne Thiebaud
- Nan Goldin
- Marc Chagall
- Joan Miró
- Gerhard Richter
- Andreas Gursky
- Shepard Fairey
- Sebastião Salgado
- Takashi Murakami
- Jim Dine
- Frank Stella
- David Hockney
- Diane Arbus
- Alex Katz
- Yayoi Kusama
- Alexander Calder
- Robert Mapplethorpe
- Jeff Koons
- Sally Mann
- Alec Monopoly
- Liu Bolin
- Tom Wesselmann
- Thomas Ruff
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Mr. Brainwash
- Wolfgang Tillmans
- Tahia Halim
- Jean Dubuffet
- Yoshitomo Nara
- Ed Ruscha
- Gregory Crewdson
- Andy Goldsworthy
- KAWS
- Nick Brandt
- Henri Matisse
- Francis Bacon
- Peter Doig
- Cy Twombly
- Sol LeWitt
- Chuck Close
- Maurice Utrillo
- Pierre Soulages
- Candida Höfer
- Cindy Sherman
- Anish Kapoor
- Raoul Dufy
- Robert Longo
- Anselm Kiefer
- Vik Muniz
- Emil Nolde
- Niki de Saint Phalle
- Georg Baselitz
- Niclas Castello
- Margaret Keane
- Friedensreich Hundertwasser
- Garry Gross
- John Baldessari
- William Kentridge
- Bridget Riley
- Tony Cragg
- Günther Uecker
- David Hamilton
- Harland Miller
- Sigmar Polke
- Julian Opie
- Tracey Emin
- David LaChapelle
- Sam Francis
- Daniel Richter
- Lucio Fontana
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Fernand Léger
- Bert Stern
- Josef Albers
- Karel Appel
- Man Ray
- Antoni Tàpies
- Grayson Perry
- Wolf Kahn
- Robert Motherwell
- Jasper Johns
- Herb Ritts
- Louise Bourgeois
- Markus Lüpertz
- Peter Max
- Robert Indiana
- Vernon Ward
- Christian Boltanski
- Hans Zatzka
- Ai Weiwei
- Egon Schiele
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Thomas Struth
- George Condo
- Heinz Mack
- Walton Ford
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- José Parlá
- Käthe Kollwitz
- Christopher Wool
- Kees van Dongen
- Imi Knoebel
- Mel Ramos
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
- Rufino Tamayo
- Richard Prince
- Raymond Pettibon
- Vivian Maier
- Swoon
- Irving Penn
- Maurice de Vlaminck
- Ushio Shinohara
- Massimo Vitali
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Dennis Sheehan
- Marina Abramovic
- RETNA
- Yves Klein
- Marie Laurencin
- Paul Klee
- Arman
- Julie Mehretu
- Jean Paul Riopelle
- Janet Fish
- Will McBride
- James Rizzi
- Kiki Smith
- William Eggleston
- Joseph Beuys
- Jackson Pollock
- Mike Kelley
- Agnes Martin
- Barbara Kruger
- David Lynch
- Piet Mondrian
- Grandma Moses
- Harding Meyer
- Richard Serra
- Otto Dix
- Stephan Balkenhol
- René Magritte
- Jenny Holzer
- Bahman Mohasses
- Pierre Molinier
- Kehinde Wiley
- Joan Mitchell
- Igor Mitoraj
- Louise Nevelson
- Georges Braque
- Willem de Kooning
- Max Ernst
- Hans Erni
- Julian Schnabel
- Sean Scully
- Hans Hartung
- A.R. Penck
- Yue Minjun
- George Grosz
- Lyonel Feininger
- Saul Leiter
- Richard Estes
- Zao Wou-Ki
- Brett Whiteley
- Neo Rauch
- Alberto Giacometti
- Royal Dux
- Günther Förg
- Andrew Wyeth
- Lucien Clergue
- Slim Aarons
- Lucian Freud
- Anton Pieck
- Kazuo Shiraga
- Lee Ufan
- Wifredo Lam
- James Rosenquist
- Jane Peterson
- Milo Manara
- Jesús Rafael Soto
- Milton Avery
- Bettina Rheims
- Albert Marquet
- Martin Parr
- Marilyn Minter
- Montague Dawson
- Jaume Plensa
- Riusuke Fukahori
- Anton Corbijn
- Christo and Jeanne-Claude
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Russell Young
- Richard Diebenkorn
- Deborah Butterfield
- Jean Prouvé
- Gustav Klimt
- Itzchak Tarkay
- Ernesto Neto
- Paul Signac
- Frank Gehry
- Thomas Hart Benton
- Manolo Valdés
- Irina Ionesco
- Marc Quinn
- Mu Boyan
- Elger Esser
- Roberto Fabelo
- Jonathan Meese
- Elizabeth Catlett
- Claude Monet
- Per Kirkeby
- Nam June Paik
- JonOne
- Hieronymus Bosch
- Axel Hütte
- Le Corbusier
- Franz West
- Mel Bochner
- Andres Serrano
- Chris Ofili
- Ben Shahn
- Pierre Bonnard
- Annie Leibovitz
- Charlotte Perriand
- William Klein
- Erwin Olaf
- Donald Sultan
- Eduardo Chillida
- Donald Baechler
- Bernar Venet
- Nicole Eisenman
- Romero Britto
- Beatriz Milhazes
- Shirin Neshat
- Walasse Ting
- Donald Judd
- Adrian Ghenie
- Richard Misrach
- Rainer Fetting
- Patrick Hughes
- Duane Michals
- Sean Henry
- Elizabeth Peyton
- Romare Bearden
- Cecilia Paredes
- Oscar Murillo
- Charles Fazzino
- Emmanuel Villanis
- Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova
- Marcel Dyf
- Franz Kline
- Bernard Dufour
- Erwin Wurm
- Jacques Adnet
- Edward Burtynsky
- Rembrandt van Rijn
- Invader
- Arnulf Rainer
- Otto Piene
- Peter Tunney
- Séraphine de Senlis
- Roberto Matta
- Marlene Dumas
- Alphonse Mucha
- M. C. Escher
- Georges Rouault
- Bernd Zimmer
- Jenny Saville
- Aristide Maillol
- Ettore Sottsass
- Martin Kippenberger
- John Chamberlain
- Claes Oldenburg
- William Wegman
- Mark Rothko
- Georgia Russell
- Mimmo Paladino
- Antony Gormley
- Andre de Dienes
- Adolph Gottlieb
- Erich Heckel
- Miquel Barceló
- Bill Henson
- LeRoy Neiman
- James Turrell