View of atmosphere at the Michael Dweck exhibition opening at Staley Wise Gallery on December 8, 2011 in New York City. Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images.
Every month thousands of users visit the artnet artist pages searching for information about their favorite artists. artnet News analyzed the results for the month of May to see what they reveal about the state of the art market, and what it says about today’s popular artists.
Those who made it to the top 10 are hardly surprising. They include three photographers known primarily for their depictions of female nudes, including the number one most-searched artist Nobuyoshi Araki, the Japanese photographer who revels in bondage imagery. Michael Dweck occupies the number two spot, and is known for his erotic Americana photography. New entrant Randall Slavin inched to the fourth slot after he made headlines in May for his nude photographs of Entourage actress Emmanuelle Chriqui.
The popular and mysterious British street artist Banksy took the number three spot, British pop artist David Spiller occupied number seven, and the popular American photographer Diane Arbus takes eighth place. She is the first woman to make the top 10 list this month. Meanwhile, popular blue-chip artists such as Andy Warhol (5th), Pablo Picasso (6th), Roy Lichtenstein (9th), and Jean-Michel Basquiat (10th) fill out the remaining spots.
A visitor looks at the work of Diane Arbus at an exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, on September 24, 2012. Courtesy of DAVID GANNON/AFP/GettyImages.
Outside the (somewhat predictable) top 10 some interesting trends emerged. Grayson Perry jumped from 77th to 18th place after making headlines for his latest not-so-subtle criticism of the British financial services industry, where he employed a new phallic ceramic artwork featuring banknotes and the face of the British finance minister George Osborne.
Grayson Perry’s Object in Foreground (2016). Photo: ©Grayson Perry and Victoria Miro Gallery, London.
After being absent from the list between December and April, French 18th century painter Hubert Robert likely experienced the jump to 174th place after the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC announced a major survey of his work, which opens on June 26th.
The record $17.2 million sale of Maurizio Cattelan‘s sculpture of a kneeling Adolph Hitler at Christie’s “Bound to Fail” curated sale may have propelled the Italian artist onto the list (after not even making it on the previous five months). The sale of the sculpture was apparently so inspiring that someone in Basel pulled a stunt and placed a copy of the figurine bearing the likeness of Donald Trump in the bar at the swanky hotel Les Trois Rois.
Maurizio Cattelan, Him (2001). Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
Elsewhere, Mark Bradford made the list (in 296th place) after having been excluded for five months. Searches increased after the painter was selected to represent the United States at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
François Morellet was extensively searched after dying at the age of 90 on May 11, rising to 136th place after having been absent from the list between December and April. And interest in Malian photographer Malick Sidibé spiked at 34th place following his death in April, but subsided again in May.
So, in sum, ruling the month of May for user searches were erotic photography, blue-chip artists, and major exhibition announcements, along with deaths, and high-priced auction lots.
See the list of top artists below:
1. Nobuyoshi Araki
2. Michael Dweck
3. Banksy
4. Randall Slavin
5. Andy Warhol
6. Pablo Picasso
7. David Spiller
8. Diane Arbus
9. Roy Lichtenstein
10. Jean-Michel Basquiat
11. Keith Haring
12. Nan Goldin
13. Jock Sturges
14. Robert Mapplethorpe
15. Marc Chagall
16. Helmut Newton
17. Salvador Dalí
18. Grayson Perry
19. Francesca Woodman
20. Fernando Botero
21. Joan Miró
22. Yayoi Kusama
23. KAWS
24. Victor Vasarely
25. David Hockney
26. Andy Goldsworthy
27. Liu Bolin
28. Wayne Thiebaud
29. Damien Hirst
30. Alexander Calder
31. Shepard Fairey
32. Gerhard Richter
33. Alec Monopoly
34. Takashi Murakami
35. Joel-Peter Witkin
36. Cindy Sherman
37. Bruno Richter
38. Mr. Brainwash
39. Frank Stella
40. Jim Dine
41. Albert Marquet
42. Thomas Ruff
43. Sally Mann
44. Jeff Koons
45. Tanja Playner
46. Bernard Buffet
47. Wolfgang Tillmans
48. Andreas Gursky
49. David Hamilton
50. Alex Katz
51. Sebastião Salgado
52. Christo and Jeanne-Claude
53. Tom Wesselmann
54. Robert Rauschenberg
55. Henri Matisse
56. Francis Bacon
57. Raoul Dufy
58. Niki de Saint Phalle
59. Milo Manara
60. Bettina Rheims
61. Tracey Emin
62. Anselm Kiefer
63. René Gruau
64. Paul Klee
65. Harland Miller
66. Sigmar Polke
67. Emil Nolde
68. Rufino Tamayo
69. Yoshitomo Nara
70. Vik Muniz
71. Fernand Léger
72. Giulio del Torre
73. Peter Max
74. Philip-Lorca diCorcia
75. Robert Longo
76. Ed Ruscha
77. Pierre Soulages
78. Chuck Close
79. William Kentridge
80. Peter Doig
81. Jean Dubuffet
82. Agnes Martin
83. Maurice Utrillo
84. Candida Höfer
85. Josef Albers
86. Konstantin Razumov
87. Kehinde Wiley
88. Georg Baselitz
89. René Magritte
90. Cy Twombly
91. Markus Lüpertz
92. Julian Opie
93. George Grosz
94. Bernd and Hilla Becher
95. Sam Francis
96. Ellsworth Kelly
97. David LaChapelle
98. Lucio Fontana
99. Sol LeWitt
100. Christian Boltanski
101. Tony Cragg
102. Yves Klein
103. Gerda Wegener
104. Joseph Beuys
105. Gregory Crewdson
106. Antoni Tàpies
107. Wassily Kandinsky
108. Swoon
109. Patrick Hughes
110. Egon Schiele
111. Günther Uecker
112. Peter Blake
113. Richard Prince
114. Anish Kapoor
115. Christopher Wool
116. George Condo
117. Thomas Struth
118. Duane Hanson
119. Karel Appel
120. Marina Abramovic
121. Grandma Moses
122. Julian Schnabel
123. Man Ray
124. Peter Beard
125. Bridget Riley
126. Arman
127. Niclas Castello
128. Friedensreich Hundertwasser
129. Robert Motherwell
130. Nick Brandt
131. Bert Stern
132. Lyonel Feininger
133. Raymond Pettibon
134. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
135. Robert Indiana
136. François Morellet
137. Louise Bourgeois
138. Willem de Kooning
139. Alberto Giacometti
140. Otto Dix
141. John Baldessari
142. Helen Frankenthaler
143. Hans Hartung
144. Erwin Wurm
145. Maurice de Vlaminck
146. Henri Cartier-Bresson
147. Claude Monet
148. Barbara Kruger
149. Wolf Kahn
150. Jasper Johns
151. Jean Prouvé
152. Duane Michals
153. Käthe Kollwitz
154. Garry Gross
155. RETNA
156. Jenny Saville
157. Kiki Smith
158. Adrian Ghenie
159. Margaret Keane
160. Max Ernst
161. Ettore Sottsass
162. Mel Ramos
163. Gustav Klimt
164. Saul Leiter
165. Irving Penn
166. Lucian Freud
167. Hiroshi Sugimoto
168. Kees van Dongen
169. Georges Braque
170. John Kacere
171. William Klein
172. Joan Mitchell
173. Shirin Neshat
174. Hubert Robert
175. Massimo Vitali
176. Leng Jun
177. Imi Knoebel
178. Francis Picabia
179. Ernesto Neto
180. James Rosenquist
181. Julie Mehretu
182. Will McBride
183. Miquel Barceló
184. Slim Aarons
185. Basil Blackshaw
186. Janet Fish
187. Deborah Butterfield
188. Milton Avery
189. Herb Ritts
190. Jenny Holzer
191. Andres Serrano
192. Maurizio Cattelan
193. Marisol Escobar
194. Beatriz Milhazes
195. Jackson Pollock
196. Isa Genzken
197. Jean Cocteau
198. Martin Parr
199. Richard Estes
200. Robert Doisneau
201. Igor Mitoraj
202. Kara Walker
203. Daniel Richter
204. Per Kirkeby
205. Yaacov Agam
206. Zao Wou-Ki
207. David Lynch
208. Hans Zatzka
209. Edward Weston
210. Günther Förg
211. Eduardo Chillida
212. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
213. Erwin Olaf
214. Le Corbusier
215. Marilyn Minter
216. Erich Heckel
217. Pierre Bonnard
218. Wifredo Lam
219. Roberto Matta
220. Vernon Ward
221. Donald Judd
222. Ai Weiwei
223. Kazuo Shiraga
224. Heinz Mack
225. Peter Paul Rubens
226. Jacques Adnet
227. Antony Gormley
228. Yue Minjun
229. Pierre et Gilles
230. Olafur Eliasson
231. Gabriel Orozco
232. Walton Ford
233. Ken Price
234. Arnulf Rainer
235. Jeremy Mann
236. Andrew Wyeth
237. James Rizzi
238. Piet Mondrian
239. Otto Piene
240. Daido Moriyama
241. Max Bill
242. Henry Moore
243. Harding Meyer
244. Paul Jenkins
245. Romero Britto
246. Jean Tinguely
247. Itzchak Tarkay
248. Lucien Clergue
249. Richard Serra
250. Malick Sidibé
251. Max Pechstein
252. Neo Rauch
253. Sean Scully
254. Amedeo Modigliani
255. Gio Ponti
256. Oskar Kokoschka
257. Richard Diebenkorn
258. Franz Kline
259. Mark Ryden
260. Stephan Balkenhol
261. Frida Kahlo
262. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
263. Cecilia Paredes
264. A.R. Penck
265. Charlotte Perriand
266. Annie Leibovitz
267. Brice Marden
268. Allen Jones
269. William Wegman
270. Thomas Hart Benton
271. Bill Henson
272. William Eggleston
273. Georges Rouault
274. Russell Young
275. Walasse Ting
276. Jesús Rafael Soto
277. Jean Paul Riopelle
278. Eric Fischl
279. Eugène Boudin
280. Lee Ufan
281. Giorgio de Chirico
282. Edgar Degas
283. Rosemarie Trockel
284. Marino Marini
285. Elger Esser
286. Joseph Kosuth
287. Elliott Erwitt
288. Gordon Parks
289. Elizabeth Catlett
290. Rainer Fetting
291. Jörg Immendorff
292. David Nash
293. Louis Majorelle
294. Marie Laurencin
295. Franz West
296. Mark Bradford
297. Philip Guston
298. Alvar Aalto
299. Max Le Verrier
300. Manolo Valdés