Analysis
Hot Installations Drive Up June’s Top 300 Artist Searches
After the top 5 slots, things get more unexpected.
After the top 5 slots, things get more unexpected.
Henri Neuendorf ShareShare This Article
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.
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.
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.
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