Hot Installations Drive Up June’s Top 300 Artist Searches

After the top 5 slots, things get more unexpected.

Katharina Grosse with her work "Rockaway!" Courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Who were the most searched artists in June on artnet? The results of what thousands of artnet users search for offers unique insights into the art market and what drives up popularity.

In comparison to May, there was little change in the five most searched artists. Japanese erotic photographer Nobuyoshi Araki took the top spot once again for the third month straight. Banksy climbed one spot from third to second, while photographer Michael Dweck fell from second to third. Meanwhile Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso came in fourth and fifth, respectively.

Alec Monopoly Photo: courtesy of the artist.

Alec Monopoly. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

After the top five, things get more interesting. Street artist Alec Monopoly climbed a whopping 26 places to seventh, his popularity driven by some positive press in the fashion magazine Vogue. Controversial photographer Jock Sturges—known primarily for his contentious nude images of adolescents—moved from 13th to eight place. German impressionist Ernst Kolbe took ninth place after having been absent from the top 300 for the past five months, and Keith Haring climbed one place to 10th.

Having made headlines for his nude photographs of Entourage actress Emmanuelle Chriqui, and thus taking fourth place in May, Randall Slavin plummeted to 158th place as the interest around the images and the photographer quickly faded.

Christo's Floating Piers. Photo courtesy of Hilda Hoy

Christo’s Floating Piers. Photo courtesy of Hilda Hoy.

Searches for Christo and Jeanne-Claude also increased after the success of Christo’s Floating Piers in Italy. Although the artist climbed a modest three places from 52nd to 49th place, the trend is pointing upwards: in April, the artist was down at 180th.

Elsewhere, users’ searches for Jonathan Meese propelled the German performance artist and painter to 171st place after a two-month absence from the top 300. The outspoken artist attracted press in his native country for (another) verbal tirade against the organizers of the Bayreuth opera festival who fired him as creative director of the Wagner opera Parsifal in 2014.

Katharina Grosse, "Rockaway!" Courtesy of Sarah Cascone.

Katharina Grosse, “Rockaway!” Courtesy of Sarah Cascone.

Meese’s compatriot Katharina Grosse’s recent project in the Rockaways—where she transformed Fort Tilden’s dilapidated aquatics building into a brightly colored artwork—saw the buzz around the installation launching her to 186th place as artnet users searched for her work.

See the list of top artists below:

1. Nobuyoshi Araki

2. Banksy

3. Michael Dweck

4. Andy Warhol

5. Pablo Picasso

6. Diane Arbus

7. Alec Monopoly

8. Jock Sturges

9. Ernst Kolbe

10. Keith Haring

11. Nan Goldin

12. Helmut Newton

13. Jean-Michel Basquiat

14. Roy Lichtenstein

15. Marc Chagall

16. Fernando Botero

17. Francesca Woodman

18. Robert Mapplethorpe

19. KAWS

20. David Hockney

21. Joan Miró

22. Gerhard Richter

23. Wayne Thiebaud

24. Salvador Dalí

25. Damien Hirst

26. Yayoi Kusama

27. Victor Vasarely

28. Alexander Calder

29. Shepard Fairey

30. Takashi Murakami

31. Andreas Gursky

32. Tanja Playner

33. Mr. Brainwash

34. Thomas Ruff

35. Wolfgang Tillmans

36. Andy Goldsworthy

37. Joel-Peter Witkin

38. David Hamilton

39. Bernard Buffet

40. Georg Baselitz

41. Jim Dine

42. Alex Katz

43. George Morrison

44. Frank Stella

45. Sally Mann

46. Bettina Rheims

47. Jeff Koons

48. Sebastião Salgado

49. Christo and Jeanne-Claude

50. Robert Rauschenberg

51. Cindy Sherman

52. Konstantin Razumov

53. Albert Marquet

54. Tom Wesselmann

55. Fernand Léger

56. Henri Matisse

57. Maurice Utrillo

58. Milo Manara

59. Emil Nolde

60. Niki de Saint Phalle

61. Raoul Dufy

62. Robert Longo

63. Anselm Kiefer

64. Francis Bacon

65. Liu Bolin

66. Mary Bauermeister

67. Peter Max

68. Yoshitomo Nara

69. Paul Klee

70. Tracey Emin

71. Harland Miller

72. Markus Lüpertz

73. Pierre Soulages

74. Joseph Beuys

75. George Condo

76. Jean Prouvé

77. Egon Schiele

78. Sigmar Polke

79. Peter Doig

80. Ed Ruscha

81. Manfred Deix

82. Thomas Struth

83. Sam Francis

84. Jean Dubuffet

85. George Grosz

86. Günther Uecker

87. Bert Stern

88. Tony Cragg

89. Anish Kapoor

90. Julian Schnabel

91. Julian Opie

92. Käthe Kollwitz

93. Grayson Perry

94. Bernd and Hilla Becher

95. Sol LeWitt

96. William Kentridge

97. Lucian Freud

98. Garry Gross

99. René Magritte

100. Antoni Tàpies

101. Willem de Kooning

102. Wassily Kandinsky

103. Lucio Fontana

104. Candida Höfer

105. Arman

106. Vik Muniz

107. Cy Twombly

108. Adrian Ghenie

109. Yves Klein

110. John Baldessari

111. Otto Dix

112. Robert Indiana

113. Karel Appel

114. Josef Albers

115. Chuck Close

116. Philip-Lorca diCorcia

117. Hans Hartung

118. Ellsworth Kelly

119. Man Ray

120. David LaChapelle

121. Robert Motherwell

122. Richard Prince

123. Lyonel Feininger

124. Alberto Giacometti

125. Giorgio de Chirico

126. Kiki Smith

127. William Eggleston

128. Friedensreich Hundertwasser

129. Gregory Crewdson

130. Raymond Pettibon

131. Christopher Wool

132. Christian Boltanski

133. Kees van Dongen

134. Gustav Klimt

135. Georges Braque

136. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

137. Zao Wou-Ki

138. Helen Frankenthaler

139. Gio Ponti

140. Henri Cartier-Bresson

141. Nick Brandt

142. Bridget Riley

143. Imi Knoebel

144. Pierre et Gilles

145. Louise Bourgeois

146. Niclas Castello

147. Rufino Tamayo

148. Slim Aarons

149. Donald Judd

150. Pierre Bonnard

151. Eduardo Chillida

152. André Derain

153. Jasper Johns

154. Gerda Wegener

155. Peter Blake

156. Hiroshi Sugimoto

157. Max Ernst

158. Randall Slavin

159. Igor Mitoraj

160. Marina Abramovic

161. Grandma Moses

162. Günther Förg

163. Mel Ramos

164. Charlotte Perriand

165. Roberto Matta

166. Arnulf Rainer

167. Herb Ritts

168. Erwin Wurm

169. William Klein

170. Edward Weston

171. Jonathan Meese

172. Jenny Saville

173. Jean Paul Riopelle

174. Robert Combas

175. Margaret Keane

176. Erich Heckel

177. Piet Mondrian

178. Irving Penn

179. Will McBride

180. Peter Paul Rubens

181. Jean Tinguely

182. Joan Mitchell

183. Jackson Pollock

184. Manolo Valdés

185. Serpieri

186. Katharina Grosse

187. Francis Picabia

188. Martin Parr

189. Stephan Balkenhol

190. Per Kirkeby

191. Swoon

192. Miquel Barceló

193. Oskar Kokoschka

194. RETNA

195. Daniel Richter

196. Barbara Kruger

197. Ai Weiwei

198. Amedeo Modigliani

199. Heinz Mack

200. Yue Minjun

201. Massimo Vitali

202. René Gruau

203. Antony Gormley

204. Erwin Olaf

205. Kehinde Wiley

206. Claude Monet

207. Georges Rouault

208. Otto Piene

209. Robert Doisneau

210. James Rosenquist

211. Duane Hanson

212. Saul Leiter

213. M.C. Escher

214. Ettore Sottsass

215. James Rizzi

216. Katsushika Hokusai

217. Kazuo Shiraga

218. Ben Nicholson

219. Jenny Holzer

220. Auguste Rodin

221. Wolf Kahn

222. Milton Avery

223. Jean Cocteau

224. Wifredo Lam

225. Leonora Carrington

226. Lucien Clergue

227. Hans Zatzka

228. Duane Michals

229. Vernon Ward

230. Julie Mehretu

231. Alphonse Mucha

232. Jeremy Mann

233. Andrew Wyeth

234. Jacques Adnet

235. Hubert Robert

236. Stephen Wilkes

237. Henry Moore

238. Serge Poliakoff

239. Muhammad Ali

240. Shirin Neshat

241. David Spiller

242. Walasse Ting

243. Peter Beard

244. Max Pechstein

245. Richard Estes

246. Ronald Ventura

247. Mark Bradford

248. Stanley Donwood

249. Jesús Rafael Soto

250. Marino Marini

251. Max Bill

252. Le Corbusier

253. Agnes Martin

254. Olafur Eliasson

255. Yaacov Agam

256. Patrick Hughes

257. Lee Ufan

258. Eric Fischl

259. Edgar Degas

260. Alvar Aalto

261. Annie Leibovitz

262. Richard Serra

263. Russell Young

264. Sean Scully

265. Karl Hofer

266. Montague Dawson

267. Franz West

268. Allen Jones

269. Peter Lik

270. Bernar Venet

271. Dieter Roth

272. Brice Marden

273. Paul Delvaux

274. Itzchak Tarkay

275. Marie Laurencin

276. Richard Diebenkorn

277. Andres Serrano

278. Elger Esser

279. Ernst Fuchs

280. Jörg Immendorff

281. Franz Kline

282. Paul Gauguin

283. Romero Britto

284. Rainer Fetting

285. Diego Giacometti

286. David Lynch

287. Harding Meyer

288. Elliott Erwitt

289. Aristide Maillol

290. William Wegman

291. Richard Avedon

292. Paul Cézanne

293. Albrecht Dürer

294. André Masson

295. Max Liebermann

296. Heinrich Zille

297. Neo Rauch

298. Jean-Jacques Sempé

299. Marcel Dyf

300. Thonet

 

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