Art is constantly evolving, like the whole world around us. Contemporary artists of the 21st century and their paintings are not at all like those that existed in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance. New names, materials, genres, ways of expressing talents appear. In this ranking, we will meet ten innovative artists of our time.

10. Pedro Campos.In tenth place is the Spaniard, whose brush can easily compete with a camera, he writes such realistic canvases. For the most part, he creates still lifes, but the amazing admiration is not so much the themes of his paintings as the masterful embodiment. Textures, highlights, depth, perspective, volume - all this Pedro Campos subdued with his brush, so that reality, and not fiction, looked at the viewer from the canvas. No embellishment, no romanticism, only reality, this is the meaning of the genre of photorealism. By the way, the artist acquired his attention to detail and meticulousness at the work of a restorer.

9. Richard Estes.Another fan of the genre of photorealism - Richard Estes - began with ordinary painting, but later moved on to drawing cityscapes. Today's artists and their creations do not need to adapt to anyone, and this is great, everyone can express themselves the way they want in what they want. As in the case of Pedro Campos, the works of this master can easily be confused with photographs, the city from them is so similar to the real one. You rarely see people in Estes's paintings, but almost always there are reflections, glare, parallel lines and a perfect, ideal composition. Thus, he does not just sketch the cityscape, but finds perfection in it and tries to show it.

8. Kevin Sloane.There are incredibly many contemporary artists of the 21st century and their paintings, but not all of them are worth attention. American Kevin Sloan stands, because his works seem to move the viewer to another dimension, a world full of allegories, hidden meanings, metaphorical mysteries. The artist loves to paint animals, because, in his opinion, he thus gets more freedom than with people to convey history. Sloane has been creating his "trick reality" with oil for almost 40 years. Very often, watches appear on the canvases: either an elephant or an octopus are looking at them, this image can be interpreted as passing time or as the limitation of life. Each of Sloane's paintings is amazing, you want to figure out what the author wanted to convey to her.

7. Laurent Parsellier.This painter belongs to those contemporary artists of the 21st century, whose paintings were recognized early, during their studies. Laurent's talent manifested itself in the published albums under the general title "Strange World". He paints in oils, his manner is light, tends to realism. A characteristic feature of the artist's works is the abundance of light that seems to pour from the canvases. As a rule, he depicts landscapes, some recognizable places. All works are unusually light and airy, filled with sun, freshness, breath.

6. Jeremy Mann.A native of San Francisco, he loved his city, most often he portrayed it in paintings. Contemporary artists of the 21st century can find inspiration for their paintings anywhere: in the rain, wet sidewalk, neon signs, city lights. Jeremy Mann infuses simple landscapes with mood, history, experiments with techniques and color choices. Mann's main material is oil.

5. Hans Rudolf Giger.In fifth place is the inimitable, unique Hans Giger, the creator of the Alien from the film of the same name. Today's artists and their works are diverse, but each is genius in its own way. This gloomy Swiss does not paint nature and animals, he is more interested in “biomechanical” painting, in which he excelled. Some people compare the artist with Bosch in the gloominess and fantasticness of his canvases. Although Giger's paintings emanate something otherworldly, dangerous, you cannot refuse him in technique, skill: he is attentive to details, correctly selects shades, thinks over everything to the smallest detail.

4. Will Barnett.This artist has his own unique author's style, therefore his works are readily accepted by the great museums of the world: the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Vatican Museum. Contemporary artists of the 21st century and their works, in order to be recognized, must stand out in some way from the rest of the mass. And Will Barnett can do it. His works are graphic and contrasting, he often depicts cats, birds, women. At first glance, Barnett's paintings are simple, but upon further examination, you realize that their genius lies precisely in this simplicity.

3. Neil Simon.This is one of the contemporary artists of the 21st century, whose works are not as simple as they seem at first glance. It is as if the boundaries between the plots and works of Neil Simon have been washed away, they flow from one to the other, entice the viewer with them, and drag them into the artist's illusory world. Simon's creations are characterized by bright, saturated colors, which gives them energy and strength, and evokes an emotional response. The master loves to play with perspective, size of objects, unusual combinations and unexpected shapes. In the artist's works there is a lot of geometry, which is combined with natural landscapes, as if bursting inside, but not destroying, but harmoniously complementing.

2. Igor Morski.Today's 21st century artist and his paintings are often compared to the great genius Salvador Dali. The works of the Polish master are unpredictable, mysterious, exciting, evoke a strong emotional response, and in places are insane. Like any other surrealist, he does not seek to show reality as it is, but shows the facets that we will never see in life. Most often, the main character of Morski's works is a man with all his fears, passions, flaws. Also, the metaphors of this surrealist's work often refer to power. Of course, this is not the artist whose work you hang over the bed, but the one whose exhibition you should definitely go to.

1. Yayoi Kusama... So, in the first place in our rating is a Japanese artist who has achieved incredible success around the world, despite the fact that she has some mental illness. The main feature of the artist is polka dots. She covers everything she sees with circles of various shapes and sizes, calling all this networks of infinity. Kusama's interactive exhibitions and installations are a success, because sometimes everyone wants (even if he does not admit it) to be inside the psychedelic world of hallucinations, childish spontaneity, fantasies and colorful circles. Among contemporary artists of the 21st century and their paintings, Yayoi Kusama is the best-selling.

"Landscape Birch grove road" 120x100
Palette knife, oil, canvas
Konstantin Loris-Melikov

Art of the 21st century
— omnivorous,
cynical, ironic, sarcastic, democratic - they call the sunset of a great era.

Postmodernists find themselves in a situation where everything has been said before them. And they just have to use what they have created, mix styles, create, if not new, but recognizable art ...

the brightest directions:

1. Neorealism;


2. Minimal art;


3. Postmodern;


4. Hyperrealism;


5. Installation;


6. Environment;


7. Video art;


8. Graffiti;


9. Transavant-garde;


10. Body art;


11. Stackism;


12. Neoplasticism;


13. Street art;


14. Mail art;


15. No art.

1. NEOREALISM.
It is the art of post-war Italy that fought post-war pessimism.

The new front of art has united
abstractionists and realists and existed for only 4 years. But from
they left him famous artists: Gabrielle Muki, Renato Guttuso, Ernesto
Treccani. They vividly and expressively portrayed workers and peasants.

Similar directions have appeared in other
countries, but the brightest school is the school of neorealism, which
appeared in America through the efforts of the monumentalist Diego Rivera.

Watch: Renato Guttuso

frescoes by Diego Rivera - Presidential Palace (Mexico City, Mexico).

Fragment of Diego Rivera's fresco for the Prado Hotel in Mexico City "A Sunday Dream in Alameda Park", 1948

2. MINIMUM REF.
This is the direction of avant-garde.
Uses simple forms and excludes any association.

Karl Аndre, 1964

This direction appeared in the United States at the end
60s. Minimalists called their direct predecessors Marcel Duchamp
(ready-made), Pita Mondrian (neoplasticism) and Kazimir Malevich
(Suprematism), they called its black square the first work
minimal art.

Extremely simple and geometrically
correct compositions - plastic boxes, metal bars,
cones - were made at industrial enterprises according to the sketches of artists.

Look:

Works by Donald Judd, Karl
Andre, Sola Levita - Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), Museum
contemporary art (New York, USA), Metropolitan Museum (New York,
USA).

3. POST-MODERN. This is a long list of unrealistic directions of the late 20th century.

Vanchegi Mutu. Collage "Genitals of an adult woman", 2005

Cyclicity is characteristic of art, but
postmodernity became the first example of "denial of negation". At the beginning
modernism rejected the classics and then postmodernism rejected modernism as
he had previously rejected the classics. Postmodernists returned to those forms and
styles that were before modernism, but at a higher level.

Postmodernism is a product of the era
the latest technology. Therefore his characteristic feature Is a confusion
styles, images, different eras and subcultures. The main thing for the postmodernists
quotation has become, clever juggling of quotations.

View: Tate Gallery (London,
Great Britain), National Museum of Modern Art Pompidou Center
(Paris, France), Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA).

HYPERREALISM. Art that imitates photography.

Chuck Close. Robert, 1974

This art is also called Superrealism,
Photorealism, Radical Realism or Cold Realism. It appeared
direction in America in the 60s and 10 years later spread to
Europe.

Hyperrealism, photorealism, Don Eddy,

The artists of this direction are exactly
copy the world as we see it in the photo. In the works of artists
a kind of irony over the technogen is read. Artists depict mainly
plots from the life of a modern metropolis.

Richard Estes love to depict the reflections of the metropolis in shop windows, on the hood of a car or on a cafe counter

Look:

works of Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Richard Estes - Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), Brooklyn Museum (USA).

5. INSTALLATION.
This is a composition in the gallery, which can be created from anything, the main thing is that there is a subtext and idea.

Fountain (Duchamp)

Most likely it would not be
directions, if not for the iconic Duchamp urinal. Major world names
installers: Dine, Rauschenberg, Boyes, Kunnelis and Kabakov.

“Jim Dine. From the collection of the Center Pompidou "

The main thing in the installation is the subtext itself and the space where artists collide banal objects.

Look:
Tate Modern (London, UK), Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA).

6. ENVIRONMENT.

It is the art of creating a 3D composition that emulates the real environment.

As a trend in the art of Environmental
appeared in the 20s of the 20th century. I was ahead of my time by several
decades, a Dadaist artist, when he presented to the public his
the work "Merz-building" - a three-dimensional structure of different objects and
materials, not suitable for anything but contemplation.

Edward Kienholz

History as a planter

Half a century later, this genre has become
work and succeeded Edward Kienholz and George Siegel. Into his work
they certainly brought in a shocking element of delusional fantasy.

Look:
works by Edward Kienholz and George Siegel
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Stockholm, Sweden).

7. VIDEOART.

This trend emerged in the last third of the 20th century thanks to the advent of portable video cameras.

This is another attempt to bring art back to
reality, but now with the help of video and computer technology.
American Nam June Pike filmed a video of the Pope's passage through the streets
New York and became the first video artist.

Nam June Paik's experiments influenced
television, music videos (he stood at the base of the MTV channel),
computer effects in cinema. Works by June Pike, Bill Viola did it
direction of art as a field for experimentation. They put
the beginning of "video sculptures", "video installations" and "video operas".

Look:
video art ranging from psychedelic to social
(popular in China, Chen-che-yen on Youtube.com)

8. GRAFFITI.

The inscriptions and drawings on the walls of the houses carry a bold message.

First appeared in the 70s in the North
America. Gallery owners of one of the districts were involved in their appearance.
Manhattan. They became patrons of the creativity of those who lived next door to them.
puerto Ricans and Jamaicans. Graffiti combines urban elements
subculture and ethnicity.

pop art genius Keith Haring

Names from Graffiti History: Keith Hering,
Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Matom, Kenny Scharf. Scandalous famous person
- graffiti artist from Britain Banksy. There are postcards with his works in all
british souvenir shops

Look:
Graffiti Museum (New York, USA), by Banksy - at banksy.co.uk.

9. TRANSAVANTGARDE.
One of the trends in postmodern painting. Combines the past, new painting and expressiveness.

The work of a transavant-gardist Alexander Roitburd

The author of the term transavant-garde -
contemporary critic Bonito Oliva. With this term, he defined creativity
5 of his compatriots - Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Francesco
Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicolo de Maria. Their creativity is characterized by:
combination of classical styles, lack of attachment to national
school, setting for aesthetic pleasure and dynamics.

Francesco Clemente in Schiern (Frankfurt)

Watch: Peggy Museum Collection
Guggenheim (Venice, Italy), Museum of Contemporary Art at Palazzo
(Venice, Italy), Gallery of Contemporary Art (Milan, Italy)

10. BODY ART.

One of the directions of actionism. The body acts as a canvas.

Body art is one of the manifestations of the 70s punk culture.
Directly associated with the then emerging fashion for tattoos and nudism.

Living pictures are created right in front of
viewers, recorded on video and then broadcast in the gallery. Bruce
Nauman depicting a Duchamp urinal in the gallery. Duo Gilbert and
George is a living sculpture. They portrayed the type of the average Englishman.

Watch: for example, on the Orlan artist's website orlan.eu.

11. STAKISM.

British art association of figurative painting. Opposed the conceptualists.

The first exhibition was in London in 2007,
as a protest against the Tate Gallery. According to one version, they protested in
connection with the purchase of a gallery of works by artists bypassing the law Noise
in the press drew attention to the Stackists. There are now in the world
more than 120 artists. Their motto is: an artist who does not paint is not an artist.

Billy Childish. Edge of the Forest "

The term Stackism was coined by Thomson.
Artist Tracy Emin exclaimed to her boyfriend Billy
Childish: your painting is stuck, stuck, stuck! (English Stuck!
Stuck! Stack!)

Look:
on the stuckist website stuckism.com.
Works by Charlie Thomson and Billy Childish at the Tate Gallery (London, UK).

12. NEOPLASTICISM.
Abstract art. Intersection of perpendicular lines of 3 colors.

The ideologist of the direction is the Dutchman Pete

Mondrian. He considered the world illusory, so the artist's task is to cleanse
painting from sensual forms (figurative) in the name of aesthetic
(abstract) forms.

The artist suggested to do this
as laconically as possible using 3 colors - blue, red and
yellow. They filled in the places between the perpendicular lines.

Pete Mondrian. Red, yellow, blue and black

Neoplasticism still inspires designers, architects and industrial graphics.

Look:
works by Piet Mondrian and Theo Vanna of Duesburg at the Municipal Museum in The Hague.

13. STREET ART.

Art for which the city is an exhibition or a canvas

The goal of a street artist is to instantly involve a passer-by in a dialogue with the help of his installation, sculpture, poster or stencil.

Here is a selection of paintings that are still little known, but very talented artists... All the guys from Russia and our contemporaries. Watch, read and enjoy.

Guys, I write here all the time about quite famous and accomplished personalities. Of course, it would be much more interesting for me to write about those artists about whom no one knows yet, but what to do - you can write about anything in the VKontakte public, and you can write to a blog only what people are looking for in Yandex and Google, otherwise no one will go there except you. But for a change and pleasure, I nevertheless decided to make a selection "Little-known contemporary artists of Russia and their paintings."

• What else is interesting? (links to other articles).
• Pictures of Marchuk - one of the most famous contemporary Ukrainian artists
• The legendary dean of the faculty of graphics of the famous "Repinka".

Some of these guys are still at the very beginning of their journey, while others are already relatively successful and are successfully selling their works on VKontakte or on marketplaces like a fair of masters and are even known in narrow circles, but they all have one thing in common - they are still not known to the general public. But unknown does not mean lack of talent, so I think it will be interesting for you to take a look. I decided to include here not only the actual draftsmen, but also several sculptors.

Little-known contemporary artists of Russia and their paintings. Illustrators and painters.

Little known artists. Colored surreal art nouveau in the paintings of Maria Susarenko.

I learned about this artist not so long ago and almost immediately fell in love with her paintings. Partly because she is very close to me in spirit as an artist, partly because of my admiration for technology and a riot of imagination. Maria Susarenko is a sweet girl from St. Petersburg and a graduate of the famous St. A.L. Stieglitz. Maria Susarenko's paintings are a riotous mixture of modernity and surrealism. They look very bright and decorative.

Pictures of little-known artists. Works by Maria Susarenko

Amazing detail!

Little known artists. Subbotina Dasha.

Uralga's eternal motive is cats.
Funny weirdo. Such a brooch and I would wear.

MOAR - https://vk.com/shamancats

Little-known contemporary artists of Russia. Sculptors.

Let there are not pictures, but decorations, but they are so charming and loving that I could not resist. After all, a sculptor is also an artist. Yes, an artist can be a painter, graphic artist, illustrator or sculptor (your captain is obvious). Here are two girls whose jewelry would not have put to shame Rene Lalique himself.

Little known artists. Grimoire of a black chicken.

The workshop "Grimoire La poule noire", which means "Grimoire of the Black Chicken" (your captain is obvious), is hosted by Lera Prokopets. Lera is a miniaturist sculptor and just a gorgeous lady. She works primarily with polymer clay and stones. Lera creates stunning pieces of jewelry in what I would call Gothic Art Nouveau. Such, slightly witch-like, dark, but graceful beauty. Well, of course, because this is the "grimoire of the black chicken."

Little known artists. Original art nouveau jewelry. Photo from the workshop "Grimoire of the Black Chicken".

Hecate, Greek goddess of the night.
Morphine. Thin:) Whether demons, or vampires with their tongue out - one of Lera's favorite motives.

The rating of the most expensive works of living artists is a construction that speaks about the role and place of the artist in the history of art much less than about age and health.

The rules for compiling our rating are simple: firstly, only transactions with works by living authors are taken into account; second, only public auction sales are counted; and thirdly, the rule "one artist - one work" is observed (if in the rating of works two records belong to Jones, then only the most expensive remains, and the rest are not taken into account). Ranking is carried out in terms of dollars (at the exchange rate on the date of sale).

1. JEFF KOONS Rabbit. 1986. $ 91,075 million

The longer you watch Jeff Koons' (1955) auction career, the more you become convinced that nothing is impossible for pop art. You can admire Koons sculptures in the form of toys made of balloons, or you can consider them kitsch and tasteless - your right. One thing cannot be denied: Jeff Koons' installations cost crazy money.

Jeff Koons began his journey to fame as the world's most successful living artist back in 2007, when his giant metal installation "Hanging Heart" was bought for $ 23.6 million at the Sotheby's auction. The work was bought by the Larry Gagosian gallery representing Koons (in the press wrote that it was in the interests of the Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk.) The gallery acquired not just an installation, but, in fact, a piece of jewelry art.Even though the work was not made of gold (the material was stainless steel) and the size is clearly larger than an ordinary pendant ( 2.7 m and weighs 1,600 kg), but it has a similar purpose.It took over six and a half thousand hours to produce the composition with a heart covered with ten layers of paint. As a result, huge sums of money were paid for the spectacular "decoration".

Then there was the sale of the Purple Balloon Flower for £ 12.92 million ($ 25.8 million) at Christie’s London auction on June 30, 2008. Interestingly, seven years earlier, the previous owners of "Tsvetka" purchased the work for $ 1.1 million. It is easy to calculate that during this time its market price has increased almost 25 times.

The recession in the art market of 2008-2009 gave skeptics a reason to gossip that the fashion for Koons was over. But they were wrong: along with the art market, interest in Koons' works was revived. Andy Warhol's successor to the throne of the King of Pop Art renewed his personal best in November 2012 with the sale at Christie’s of a multi-colored sculpture “Tulips” from the “Celebration” series for $ 33.7 million, including commission.

But "Tulips" were "flowers" in the literal and figurative sense. Just a year later, in November 2013, the sale of the stainless steel sculpture "Balloon Dog (Orange)" followed: the price of the hammer was as much as $ 58.4 million! A fabulous sum for a living artist. The work of a contemporary artist was sold for the price of a painting by Van Gogh or Picasso. These were already berries ...

With this result, Koons reigned at the top of the ranking of living artists for several years. In November 2018, he was briefly surpassed by David Hockney (see the second line of our rating). But just six months later, everything returned to normal: on May 15, 2019 in New York, at the auction of post-war and contemporary art, Christie’s put up for sale a textbook sculpture for Koons of 1986 - a silvery "Rabbit" made of stainless steel, imitating a balloon of a similar shape.

In total, Koons created 3 such sculptures plus one author's copy. The auction got a copy of "Rabbit" at number 2 - from the collection of the cult publisher Cy Newhouse, co-owner of the publishing house Conde Nast (magazines Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamor, GQ, etc.). The silver "Rabbit" was bought by the "father of glamor" Sai Newhouse in 1992 for an impressive sum by the standards of those years - 1 million dollars. After 27 years in a 10 bidder struggle, the sculpture hammer was 80 times the previous selling price. And taking into account the Buyer's Premium commission, the final result amounted to a record $ 91.075 million for all living artists.

2. DAVID HOCKNEY Portrait of the artist. Swimming pool with two figures. 1972. $ 90,312,500

David Hockney (1937) is one of the most important British painters of the 20th century. In 2011, David Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time in a survey of thousands of professional British painters and sculptors. At the same time, Hockney bypassed such masters as William Turner and Francis Bacon. His work is usually attributed to pop art, although in his early works he gravitated more towards expressionism in the spirit of Francis Bacon.

David Hockney was born and raised in England, in Yorkshire. The mother of the future artist kept the family in puritanical severity, and his father, a simple accountant who painted a little at an amateur level, encouraged his son to paint. In his twenties, David left for California, where he lived for a total of about three decades. He still has two workshops there. Hockney made the heroes of his works the local rich, their villas, swimming pools, lawns drenched in the Californian sun. One of his most famous works of the American period - the painting "Splash" - is an image of a sheaf of spray that rose from a pool after a person jumped into the water. To depict this sheaf, "living" no more than two seconds, Hockney worked for two weeks. By the way, in 2006 this painting was sold at Sotheby’s for $ 5.4 million and for some time was considered his most expensive work.

Hockney (1937) is already in his eighties, but he still works and even invents new artistic techniques using technical innovations. Once he came up with the idea of \u200b\u200bmaking huge collages from Polaroid photographs, he printed his works on fax machines, and today the artist is enthusiastically mastering drawing on the iPad. Pictures drawn on a tablet take a worthy place in his exhibitions.

In 2005, Hockney finally returned from the States to England. Now he paints in the open air and in the studio huge (often consisting of several parts) landscapes of local forests and wastelands. According to Hockney, over the 30 years spent in California, he has become so unaccustomed to the simple change of seasons that she truly admires and bewitches him. Entire cycles of his recent work are devoted, for example, to the same landscape at different times of the year.

In 2018, prices for Hockney's paintings hit the $ 10 million mark several times. And on November 15, 2018, Christie’s registered a new absolute record for the work of a living artist - $ 90,312,500 for the painting "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)".

3. GERHARD RICHTER Abstract painting. 1986. $ 46.3 million

Living classic Gerhard Richter (1932) ranks second in our ranking. The German artist was the leader among living colleagues until Jeff Koons' 58 millionth record hit. But this circumstance can hardly shake the already iron authority of Richter in the art market. At the end of 2012, the annual auction turnover of the German artist is second only to those of Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso.

For many years, nothing boded the success that has befallen Richter now. For decades, the artist occupied a modest place in the market of contemporary art and did not at all strive for fame. We can say that the glory overtook him herself. Many consider the purchase of the series of works by Richter "October 18, 1977" by the New York Museum MoMA in 1995 as a starting point. The American Museum paid $ 3 million for 15 paintings in gray tones and soon thought about holding a full-fledged retrospective of the German artist. The grandiose exhibition opened six years later, in 2001, and since then interest in Richter's work has grown by leaps and bounds. From 2004 to 2008, the prices for his paintings have tripled. In 2010, Richter's works have already brought in $ 76.9 million, in 2011, according to the website Artnet, Richter's works at auctions in total earned $ 200 million, and in 2012 (according to Artprice) - $ 262.7 million - more than the work of any other living artist.

While, for example, Jasper Johns' overwhelming success in the auction is mainly accompanied by only early works, such a sharp division is not typical for Richter's works: demand is equally stable for things from different creative periods, of which there were a great many in Richter's career. Over the past sixty years, this artist has tried himself in almost all traditional painting genres - portrait, landscape, marina, nude, still life and, of course, abstraction.

The history of Richter's auction records began with a series of still lifes "Candles". 27 photorealistic images of candles in the early 1980s, at the time of their writing, cost only 15,000 deutsche marks ($ 5,800) per work. But still no one bought "Candles" at their first exhibition at the Max Hetzler Gallery in Stuttgart. Then the theme of the paintings was called old-fashioned; today "Candles" are considered works of all time. And they cost millions of dollars.

In February 2008, "Candle", written in 1983, was unexpectedly bought for £ 7.97 million ($ 16 million)... This personal record lasted three and a half years. Then in October 2011 another one "Candle" (1982) went under the hammer at Christie's for £ 10.46 million ($ 16.48 million)... With this record, Gerhard Richter for the first time entered the top three most successful living artists, taking his place behind Jasper Johns and Jeff Koons.

Then the victorious march of "Abstract Pictures" by Richter began. The artist writes such works in a unique author's technique: he applies a mixture of simple paints to a light background, and then, using a long scraper the size of a car bumper, smears them on the canvas. This produces intricate color transitions, spots and stripes. Examination of the surface of his "Abstract Paintings" is like excavations: on them traces of various "figures" show through the breaks of numerous layers of paint.

November 9, 2011 at the auction of modern and post-war art Sotheby's large-scale "Abstract painting (849-3)" 1997 went under the hammer for $ 20.8 million (£ 13.2 million)... And six months later, May 8, 2012 at the auction of post-war and contemporary art Christie’s in New York "Abstract painting (798-3)" 1993 went for record $ 21.8 million (including commission). Five months later - again the record: "Abstract painting (809-4)" from the collection of rock musician Eric Clapton on October 12, 2012 at the Sotheby's auction in London went under the hammer for £ 21.3 million ($ 34.2 million)... The 30 million barrier was taken by Richter with such ease, as if we were not talking about modern painting, but about masterpieces that are no less than a hundred years old. Although in the case of Richter, it seems that the inclusion of the "greats" in the pantheon took place during the artist's lifetime. Prices for the work of the German continue to rise.

Richter's next record belonged to photorealistic work - landscape "Cathedral Square, Milan (Domplatz, Mailand)" 1968. The work was sold for 37.1 million at Sotheby's auction May 14, 2013... The view of the most beautiful square was painted german artist in 1968 by order of Siemens Electro, especially for the Milan office of the company. At the time of its writing, it was Richter's largest figurative work (almost three by three meters).

The "Cathedral Square" record lasted almost two years, until February 10, 2015 did not interrupt him "Abstract painting" (1986): hammer price reaches £ 30.389 million ($ 46.3 million)... The "Abstract Painting" 300.5 × 250.5 cm, put up for auction at Sotheby's, is one of Richter's first large-scale works in his special author's technique of scraping off layers of paint. The last time in 1999, this "Abstract Painting" was bought at auction for $ 607 thousand (from this year until the current sale, the work was exhibited at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne). At the auction on February 10, 2015, a certain American client, by auction steps of £ 2 million, reached the hammer price of $ 46.3 million. That is, since 1999, the price of the work has increased more than 76 times!

4. TSUI ZHUZHO "Great snow-capped mountains." 2013. $ 39,577 million

For a long time, we did not closely follow the development of the situation in the Chinese art market, not wanting to overload our readers with an excessive amount of information about "not our" art. With the exception of the dissident Ai Weiwei, who is not even so expensive as a resonant artist, Chinese authors seemed to us too numerous and far from us to delve into what was happening there on the market. But the statistics, as they say, is a serious lady, and if we are talking about the most successful living authors in the world, then we cannot do without a story about the outstanding representatives of contemporary art of the Celestial Empire.

Let's start with a Chinese artist Cui Ruzhuo... The artist was born in 1944 in Beijing, from 1981 to 1996 he lived in the United States. After returning to China, he began teaching at the National Academy of Arts. Cui Ruzhuo reinterprets traditional Chinese ink painting and creates huge canvases-scrolls that Chinese businessmen and officials are so fond of giving each other as gifts. In the West, very little is known about him, although many must remember the story of the $ 3.7 million scroll, which was mistakenly thrown out, mistaken by the cleaners of a Hong Kong hotel. So - it was Cui Ruzhuo's scroll.

Cui Ruzhuo is in his 70s, and his art market is booming. Over 60 works by this artist have crossed the $ 1 million mark. However, his works are still only successful at Chinese auctions. Cui Ruzhuo's records are truly impressive. First it "Landscape in the Snow" at the Poly Auction in Hong Kong April 7, 2014 reached a hammer price of HK $ 184 million ( US $ 23.7 million).

Exactly one year later, April 6, 2015at a special Poly Auction in Hong Kong dedicated exclusively to Cui Ruzhuo's works, series "The Great Snowy Landscape of Jiangnan Mountain"(Jiangnan - a historical region in China, occupying the right bank of the lower Yangtze) of eight landscapes in ink on paper reached the hammer price of HK $ 236 million ( US $ 30.444 million).

A year later, history repeated itself: at Cui Ruzhuo's solo auction at Poly Auctions in Hong Kong April 4, 2016 six-part polyptych "Great snow-capped mountains" 2013 hit hammer price (including auction house commission) HK $ 306 million (US $ 39.577 million). So far, this is an absolute record among Asian living artists.

Art dealer Johnson Chan, who has been working with Chinese contemporary art for 30 years, believes that there is an unconditional desire to raise prices for the works of this author, but all this is happening at a price level where experienced collectors are unlikely to want to buy something. “The Chinese want to raise the ratings of their artists by inflating the prices of their work at major international auctions like the one organized by Poly in Hong Kong, but there is no doubt that these ratings are completely fabricated,” comments Johnson Chan on Cui Rujo's latest record.

This, of course, is only the opinion of one individual dealer, but we have a real record recorded in all databases. So we will reckon with him. Cui Ruzhuo himself, judging by his statements, is far from Gerhard Richter's modesty when it comes to his auction success. It seems that this race for records seriously fascinates him. “I hope that in the next 5-10 years the prices for my works will exceed the prices for the works of Western masters like Picasso and Van Gogh. This is a Chinese dream, ”says Cui Ruzhuo.

5. JASPER JONES Flag. 1983. $ 36 million

The third place in the ranking of living artists belongs to an American Jasper Johns (1930)... Current record price for Jones' work - $ 36 million... So much paid for his famous "Flag" at the Christie "s November 12, 2014.

The series of paintings "flags", begun by Jones in the mid-1950s, immediately after the artist's return from the army, became one of the central in his work. In his youth, the artist was interested in the idea of \u200b\u200breadymade, the transformation of an everyday object into a work of art. However, Jones' flags were not real, they were painted in oil on canvas. Thus, a work of art acquired the properties of a thing from ordinary life, it was at the same time both the image of the flag and the flag itself. A series of works with flags brought Jasper Jones worldwide fame. But his abstract works are no less popular. For many years, the list of the most expensive works, compiled according to the above rules, was headed by its abstract "False start"... Until 2007, this very bright and decorative canvas, painted by Jones in 1959, was considered the owner of a price almost inaccessible for a living artist (albeit a lifetime classic) - $ 17 million... That much was paid for it in gold for the art market 1988 year.

Interestingly, Jasper Johns's record as a record holder was not continuous. In 1989 he was interrupted by the work of a colleague in the workshop Willem de Kooning: a two-meter abstraction "Mixing" was sold at Sotheby's for $ 20.7 million. Jasper Johns had to move. But 8 years later, in 1997, de Kooning died, and " False start "Jones again took the first line of the auction rating of living artists for almost 10 years.

But in 2007, everything changed. The False Start record was first eclipsed by the work of young and ambitious Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. Then there was a record sale for $ 33.6 million of the painting "Sleeping Allowance Inspector" by Lucien Freud (now deceased, and therefore not participating in this rating). Then Gerhard Richter's records began. In general, so far, with a current record of 36 million, Jasper Jones, one of the masters of American post-war art, who works at the junction of neo-Dadaism, abstract expressionism and pop art, is in an honorable third place.

6. ED RUSHEI Smash. 1963. $ 30.4 million

The sudden success of the painting "Smash" by the American artist Edward Ruscha (b. 1937) at the auction Christie's November 12, 2014 brought this author to the list of the most expensive living artists. The previous record price for the work of Ed Ruscha (often the surname Ruscha is pronounced in Russian as "Rusha", but the correct pronunciation is Rusha) was "only" $ 6.98 million: this is how much was paid for his canvas "Burning Gas Station" in 2007. Seven years later "Smash" with an estimate of $ 15-20 million reached the price of a hammer $ 30.4 million... Obviously, the market for this author's works has reached a new level - it is not for nothing that Barack Obama decorates the White House with his works, and Larry Gagosian himself exhibits it in his galleries.

Ed Ruscha never aspired to post-war New York with its craze for abstract expressionism. Instead, for over 40 years, he sought inspiration in California, where he moved from Nebraska at the age of 18. The artist stood at the origins of a new trend in art, called pop art. Along with Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wayne Thibault and other pop culture singers, Edward Ruscha took part in 1962 in the Pasadena Museum, The New Image of Common Things, which became the first museum display of American pop art. However, Ed Ruscha himself does not like it when his work is classified as pop art, conceptualism, or some other trend in art.

His unique style is called “text painting”. From the late 1950s, Ed Ruscha began drawing words. Just as the soup can became a work of art for Warhol, for Ed Ruscha it became ordinary words and phrases taken by him either from a billboard or packaging in a supermarket, or from the credits of a movie (Hollywood was always at Rusha's side, and unlike many of his fellow artists Ruscha respected the “dream factory”). The words on his canvases acquire the properties of three-dimensional objects, these are real still lifes from words. When looking at his canvases, the first thing that comes to mind is the visual and sound perception of the drawn word, and only after that - the semantic meaning. The latter, as a rule, does not lend itself to unambiguous decoding; the words and phrases Rushey chose can be interpreted in different ways. The same bright yellow word "Smash" against a deep blue background can be perceived as an aggressive call to smash something or someone to smithereens; as a lonely adjective taken out of context (part of a newspaper headline, for example), or simply as a separate word caught in the urban flow of visual images. Ed Ruschai relishes this uncertainty. “I have always deeply respected strange, inexplicable things ... Explanations, in a sense, kill things,” he said in an interview.

7. CHRISTOPHER WOOL Untitled (RIOT). 1990. $ 29.93 million

American artist Christopher Wool (1955) first burst into the rating of living artists in 2013 - after the sale of the work "Apocalypse Now" for $ 26.5 million. This record immediately put him on a par with Jasper Johns and Gerhard Richter. The amount of this historic transaction - more than $ 20 million - surprised many, since before it prices for the artist's works did not exceed $ 8 million. However, the rapid growth of the market for Christopher Wool's works by that time was already evident: the artist's track record included 48 auction transactions for amounts over $ 1 million, of which 22 (almost half) took place in 2013. Two years later, the number of works by Chris Wool, sold for more than $ 1 million, reached 70, and a new personal record was not long in coming. At the auction Sotheby’s May 12, 2015 work "Untitled (RIOT)" was sold for $ 29.93 million taking into account Buyer’s Premium.

Christopher Wool is best known for his extensive work of black lettering on white aluminum sheets. They are the ones who, as a rule, set records at auctions. These are all things of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Legend has it that once Wool was walking in New York in the evening and suddenly saw graffiti on a new white truck in black letters - the words sex and luv. This sight impressed him so much that he immediately returned to the workshop and wrote his version with the same words. It was 1987, and the artist's further searches for words and phrases for his “letter” works reflect the contradictory spirit of that time. This is the call "sell the house, sell the car, sell the children", taken by Wool from the movie "Apocalypse Now", and the word "FOOL" ("fool") in capital letters, and the word "RIOT" ("rebellion"), often found in newspaper headlines of the time.

Wool stenciled words and phrases with alkyd or enamel paints on aluminum sheets, deliberately leaving streaks, stencil marks and other evidence of the creative process. The artist divided the words so that the viewer did not immediately understand the meaning. At first, you see only a cluster of letters, that is, you perceive the word as a visual object, and only then you read in and decipher the meaning of a phrase or word. Wool used the typeface used by the American military after World War II, which reinforces the impression of an order, directive, slogan. These “letter” works are perceived as part of the urban landscape, as illegal graffiti that violated the cleanliness of the surface of some street object. This series of works by Christopher Wool is recognized as one of the heights of linguistic abstraction, and therefore is so highly appreciated by lovers of contemporary art.

8. PETER DOIG Rosedale. 1991. $ 28.81 million

Briton Peter Doig(1959), although he belongs to the generation of postmodernists Koons and Hirst, chose for himself a completely traditional landscape genre, which for a long time was not in favor with leading artists. With his work, Peter Doig revives the public interest in figurative painting that had died out. His work is highly regarded by both critics and non-specialists, and the evidence of this is the rapid rise in prices for his works. If in the early 1990s his landscapes cost several thousand dollars, now the bill goes to the millions.

Doig's work is often referred to as magical realism. Based on real-life landscapes, he creates fantasy, mysterious and often gloomy images. The artist loves to depict objects abandoned by people: a dilapidated building built by Le Corbusier in the middle of a forest or an empty white canoe on the surface of a forest lake. In addition to nature and imagination, Doig is inspired by horror films, old postcards, photographs, amateur videos and more. Doig's paintings are colorful, complex, decorative and not provocative. It's nice to own such a painting. Collectors' interest is also fueled by the author's low productivity: the artist living in Trinidad creates no more than a dozen paintings a year.

In the early 2000s, some of the artist's landscapes sold for several hundred thousand dollars. At the same time, Doig's works were included in the Saatchi Gallery, at the Biennale at the Whitney Museum and in the MoMA collection. In 2006, the auction bar of $ 1 million was exceeded. And the next year there was an unexpected breakthrough: the work "White Canoe", proposed at Sotheby's on February 7, 2007 with an estimate of $ 0.8-1.2 million, five times exceeded the preliminary estimate and was sold for £ 5.7 million ($ 11.3 million). At that time, it was a record price for the works of a living European artist.

In 2008 passed solo exhibitions Doyga at the Tate Gallery and at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Multimillion-dollar price tags for Doig's work have become the norm. The personal record of Peter Doig has recently begun to be updated several times a year - we only have time to change the picture and place of this artist in our rating of living authors.

Peter Doig's most expensive work to date is the 1991 “Rosedale” snow landscape. Interestingly, the record was set not at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, but at the auction of contemporary art at the Phillips auction house. This happened on May 18, 2017. A view of the snow-covered Rosedale, one of the Toronto boroughs, was sold to a telephone buyer for $ 28.81 million. This is about 3 million higher than the previous record ($ 25.9 million for the work "Swamped"). Rosedale took part in Doig's key exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1998, and in general this work was fresh for the market, and therefore the record price is well deserved.

9. FRANK STELLA Cape of pines. 1959. $ 28 million

Frank Stella is a prominent representative of post-painting abstraction and minimalism in art. At a certain stage, it is referred to as a hard edge painting. At first, Stella contrasted the strict geometric, ascetic monochrome and structuredness of his paintings with the spontaneity and chaos of paintings by abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock.

In the late 1950s, the artist was noticed by the renowned gallery owner Leo Castelli and was awarded an exhibition for the first time. On it, he presented the so-called "Black Pictures" - canvases painted over with parallel black lines with thin gaps of unpainted canvas between them. The lines are folded into geometric shapes, somewhat reminiscent of optical illusions, the very pictures that flicker, move, twist, create a feeling of deep space if you look at them for a long time. Stella continued the theme of parallel lines with thin dividing stripes in his works on aluminum and copper. The colors, the pictorial basis and even the form of the paintings changed (among others, works in the form of the letters U, T, L stand out). But the main principle of his painting still consisted in the clarity of the outline, monumentality, simple form, monochrome. In the following decades, Stella moved away from such geometric painting towards flowing, natural forms and lines, and from monochromatic paintings to bright and varied color transitions. In the 1970s, Stella was captivated by the huge patterns used to paint ships. The artist used them for huge paintings with elements of assemblage - he included pieces of steel pipes or wire mesh in his work.

In his early interviews, Frank Stella frankly talks about the meanings put into his work, or rather, about their absence: "What you see is what you see." The picture is itself an object, not a reproduction of anything. “It's a flat surface with paint on it and nothing else,” Stella said.

Well, signed by Frank Stella, this "paint on it" surface could be worth millions of dollars today. For the first time in the rating of living artists, Frank Stella got in 2015 with the sale of the work "Delaware Crossing" (1961) for $ 13.69 million, taking into account the commission.

Four years later, on May 15, 2019, a new record was set by the early (1959) work "Cape of Pines": the price of the hammer was over $ 28 million, including the commission. This is one of 29 "black paintings" - the very ones with which Stella debuted at his first exhibition in New York. Princeton University graduate Frank Stella was 23 at the time. He often did not have enough money for oil paint for artists. The young artist was moonlighting as repair work, he really liked the pure colors of the paint, and then the idea arose to work with this paint on canvas. With black enamel paint, Stella paints parallel stripes, leaving fine lines of an unprimed canvas between them. And he writes without rulers, by eye, without a preliminary sketch. Stella never knew how many black lines would appear in a particular painting. For example, in the painting "Cape of Pines" there were 35 of them. The title of the work refers to the name of a cape in Massachusetts Bay - Point of pines. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a large amusement park, and today it is one of the districts of the city of Revere.

10. YOSHITOMO NARA Knife behind the back. 2000. $ 24.95 million

Yoshitomo Nara (1959) is one of the key figures in Japanese neo-pop art. Japanese - because, despite the global fame and many years of work abroad, his work is still distinguished by a pronounced national identity. Nara's favorite characters are girls and dogs in the style of Japanese comics manga and anime. The images he invented for many years have gone to the people: they are printed on T-shirts, souvenirs and various “merch” are made with them. Born into a poor family, far from the capital, he is not only loved for his talent, but also appreciated as a person who has made himself. The artist works quickly and expressively. It is known that some of his masterpieces were completed literally overnight. The paintings and sculptures of Yoshitomo Nara, as a rule, are very laconic, or even stingy in expressive means, but they always carry a strong emotional charge. Nara's teenage girls often look at the viewer with an unkind squint. In their eyes - impudence, challenge and aggression. In the hands - a knife, then a cigarette. It is believed that the depicted perversions of behavior are a reaction to oppressive public morality, various taboos, and the principles of education adopted by the Japanese. Almost medieval severity and shame drive problems inside, create the basis for a delayed emotional explosion. "The Knife Behind the Back" just capaciously reflects one of the main ideas of the artist. In this work, there is both a hating look from a girl and a hand that is threateningly wrapped behind her back. Until 2019, Yoshitomo Nara's paintings and sculptures had more than once taken the million or even several million mark. But twenty million for the first time. Nara is one of the most famous Japanese artists in the world. And now the most expensive living person. On October 6, 2109, at Sotheby's in Hong Kong, he took this title from Takashi Murakami and noticeably bypassed the 90-year-old avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama (the maximum auction prices for her paintings are already approaching $ 9 million).

11. Zeng FANZHI The Last Supper. 2001. $ 23.3 million

At Sotheby's Hong Kong auction October 5, 2013 large-scale canvas "The Last Supper" Beijing artist Zeng Fanzhi (1964) sold for a record HK $ 160 million - $ 23.3 million USA. The final cost of the work of Fanzhi, written, of course, under the influence of the work of Leonardo da Vinci, turned out to be twice the preliminary estimate of about $ 10 million. Zeng Fanzhi's previous price record was $ 9.6 millionpaid at Christie’s Hong Kong auction in May 2008 for the work “Mask series. 1996. No. 6 ".

The Last Supper is the largest (2.2 × 4 meters) painting by Fanzhi in the Masks series covering the period from 1994 to 2001. The cycle is devoted to the evolution of Chinese society under the influence of economic reforms. The introduction by the PRC government of elements of a market economy led to urbanization and disunity of the Chinese. Fanzhi depicts the inhabitants of modern Chinese cities who have to fight for a place in the sun. The well-known composition of Leonardo's fresco as read by Fanzhi acquires a completely different meaning: the scene of action was transferred from Jerusalem to classroom Chinese school with typical boards of hieroglyphs on the walls. “Christ” and “apostles” have become pioneers with scarlet ties, and only “Judas” wears a gold tie - this is a metaphor for Western capitalism, penetrating and destroying the usual way of life in a socialist country.

Zeng Fanzhi's works are stylistically close to European Expressionism and are just as dramatic. But at the same time, they are full of Chinese symbols and specifics. This versatility attracts both Chinese and Western collectors to the artist's work. A direct confirmation of this is the provenance of The Last Supper: the work was put up for auction by the famous collector of the Chinese avant-garde of the 1980s - early 1990s - the Belgian Baron Guy Ullens.

12. ROBERT RYMAN Bridge. 1980. $ 20.6 million

At the auction Christie's May 13, 2015 abstract work "Bridge" 85 year old American artist Robert Ryman (Robert Ryman) was sold for $ 20.6 milliontaking into account the commission - twice as expensive as the lower estimate.

Robert Ryman (1930) did not immediately realize that he wanted to become an artist. At the age of 23, he moved to New York from Nashville, Tennessee, with the desire to become a jazz saxophonist. Until he became a famous musician, he had to work as a security guard at MoMA, where he met Saul LeWitt and Dan Flavin. The first worked in the museum as a night secretary, and the second as a security guard and elevator operator. Impressed by the works of abstract expressionists he saw at MoMA - Rothko, De Kooning, Pollock and Newman - Robert Ryman took up painting in 1955.

Rayman is often referred to as a minimalist, but he prefers to be called a "realist" because he is not interested in creating illusions, he only demonstrates the quality of the materials he uses. Most of his works are painted in all possible shades of white (from grayish or yellowish - to dazzling white) based on a laconic square shape. During his career, Robert Ryman tried many materials and techniques: he painted in oils, acrylics, casein, enamel, pastels, gouache, etc. on canvas, steel, plexiglass, aluminum, paper, corrugated board, vinyl, wallpaper, etc. His friend, professional restorer, Orrin Riley, advised him on the causticity of the materials he thought to use. As the artist once said, “I never have a question, what write, the main thing is as write". It's all about the texture, the nature of the strokes, the border between the paint surface and the edges of the base, as well as the ratio of work and wall. Since 1975, fixtures have become a special feature of his work, which Ryman designs himself and purposely leaves them visible, emphasizing his work "as real as the walls on which they hang." Ryman prefers to give works "names" rather than "titles". The "name" is what helps to distinguish one work from another, and Ryman often names his works by paint brands, companies, etc., and the "name" claims to some kind of allusions and deeply hidden meanings, the presence of which in his works, the artist regularly denies. Nothing but material and technique matters.

13. DAMIEN HURST Sleepy spring. 2002. $ 19.2 million

English artist Damien Hirst (1965) was destined to be the first to swing at the first place of this rating in a dispute with the living classic Jasper Johns. The already mentioned work "False Start" could remain an unsinkable leader for a long time, if June 21, 2007 installation at the time of 42-year-old Hirst "Sleepy Spring" (2002) was not sold at Sotheby's for £ 9.76 million, that is, for $ 19.2 million... The work, by the way, has a rather unusual format. On the one hand, this is a display cabinet with dummies of pills (6,136 pills), in fact, a classic installation. On the other hand, this showcase is made flat (10 cm deep), enclosed in a frame and hung on the wall like a plasma panel, thus fully providing the comfort of ownership typical of paintings. In 2002, the installation's sister, Sleepy Winter, sold for $ 7.4 million, more than half the price. Someone "explained" the difference in price by the fact that in winter the tablets are faded. But it is clear that this explanation is absolutely groundless, because the pricing mechanism for such things is no longer associated with their decorativeness.

In 2007, many recognized Hirst as the author of the most expensive work among living artists. The question, however, is from the category "depending on how you count." The fact is that Hirst was sold for expensive pounds, and Jones for the now cheaper dollars, and even twenty years ago. But even if we count at face value, excluding 20-year inflation, then in dollars Hirst's work was more expensive, and in pounds - Jones. The situation was borderline, and everyone was free to decide who was the most expensive. But Hirst held out in first place not so long. In the same 2007 he was removed from the first place by Koons with his "Hanging Heart".

Just on the eve of the global decline in prices for contemporary art, Hirst undertook an unprecedented undertaking for a young artist - a solo auction of his works, which took place on September 15, 2008 in London. The news of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers bank announced on the eve did not spoil the appetite of lovers of contemporary art: of the 223 works offered by Sotheby’s, only five did not find new owners (one of the buyers, by the way, was Victor Pinchuk). Composition "Golden calf" - a huge stuffed bull in formaldehyde, topped with a gold disk, - brought as much £ 10.3 million ($ 18.6 million)... This is Hirst's best result when calculated in pounds (in the currency in which the transaction was carried out). However, we are ranking in terms of dollars, therefore (may the Golden Calf forgive us), we will still consider the Sleepy Spring as the best sale for Hirst.

Since 2008, Hirst had no sales of the level of "Sleepy Spring" and "Golden Calf". Fresh records of the 2010s - for works by Richter, Jones, Fanzhi, Wool and Koons - moved Damien to the sixth line of our rating. But let's not make a categorical judgment about the end of the Hirst era. According to analysts, Hirst as a "superstar" has already gone down in history, which means that it will be bought for a very long time; however, the greatest value in the future is predicted for works created in the most innovative period of his career, that is, in the 1990s.

14. MAURIZIO CATTELAN Him. 2001. $ 17.19 million

Italian Maurizio Cattelan (1960) came to art after working as a security guard, cook, gardener and furniture designer. The self-taught author has become world famous for his ironic sculptures and installations. He brought down a meteorite on the Pope, turned the customer's wife into a hunting trophy, drilled a hole in the floor in a museum of old masters, showed a giant middle finger to the stock exchange in Milan, brought a live donkey to the Frieze fair. In the near future, Cattelan promises to install a gold toilet at the Guggenheim Museum. Ultimately, Maurizio Cattelan's antics were widely recognized in the art world: he was invited to the Venice Biennale (the installation "Others" in 2011 - a flock of two thousand pigeons who look menacingly from all pipes and beams at the crowds of visitors passing below), arrange him a retrospective at New York's Guggenheim Museum (November 2011) and finally gets paid big bucks for his sculptures.

Since 2010, the most expensive work of Maurizio Cattelan has been a wax sculpture of a man looking out of a hole in the floor and looking like the artist himself (Untitled, 2001). This sculpture-installation, which exists in three copies plus the author's copy, was first shown at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. Then this mischievous character looked out of a hole in the floor of the hall with paintings by Dutch painters of the 18th - 19th centuries. Maurizio Cattellan in this work associates himself with a daring criminal invading the sacred space of the museum hall with the paintings of the great masters. Thus, he wants to deprive art of the aura of holiness that museum walls give it. The work, for the sake of exhibiting each time you have to poke holes in the floor, was sold for $ 7.922 million at Sotheby's.

The record lasted until May 8, 2016, when Cattelan's even more provocative work "Him", depicting Hitler on his knees, went under the hammer for $ 17.189 million. Strange thing. The name is strange. Character selection is risky. Like everyone else at Cattelan. What does Him mean? "His" or "His infernal majesty"? It is clear that we are definitely not talking about praising the image of the Fuhrer. In this work, Hitler appears rather in a helpless, pitiful form. And absurd - the incarnation of Satan is made as tall as a child, dressed in a schoolboy costume and kneeling with a humble expression on his face. For Cattelan, this image is an invitation to reflect on the nature of absolute evil and a way to get rid of fears. By the way, the sculpture “Him” is well known to the Western audience. Her brothers in the series have been exhibited more than 10 times in leading museums in the world, including the Pompidou Center and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.

15. MARK GROTIAN Untitled (S III Released to France Face 43.14). 2011. $ 16.8 million

On May 17, 2017, one of the most powerful paintings by Mark Grotian ever put up for auction appeared at Christie’s evening auction in New York. The painting "Untitled (S III Released to France Face 43.14)" was exhibited by Parisian collector Patrick Seguin with an estimate of $ 13-16 million, and since the sale of the lot was guaranteed by a third party, no one was particularly surprised to establish a new personal auction record for the 49-year-old artist ... The hammer price of $ 14.75 million (including Buyer's Premium $ 16.8 million) surpassed Grotian's previous auction record by more than $ 10 million. This allowed him to enter the club of living artists, whose works are sold for eight-figure sums. Seven-figure results (sales are more than $ 1 million, but not more than $ 10 million) in the auction piggy bank of Mark Grotian are already about thirty.

Mark Grotian (1968), in whose work experts see the influence of modernism, abstract minimalism, pop and op art, came to his corporate style in the mid-1990s, after moving with his friend Brent Peterson to Los Angeles and opening a gallery there "Room 702". As the artist himself recalls, at that time he began to think about what was in the first place in art for him. He was looking for a motive with which to experiment. And I realized that he was always interested in line and color. Experiments in the spirit of rayonism and minimalism with a linear perspective, numerous vanishing points and multicolored abstract triangular shapes eventually brought Grotian world fame.

From abstract colorful landscapes with multiple horizons and vanishing points of perspective, he eventually came to triangular shapes, reminiscent of butterfly wings. Grotian's paintings 2001-2007 that's what they call - "Butterflies". Today, moving the vanishing point or using several vanishing points at once spaced apart in space is considered one of the most powerful techniques of the artist.

The next large series of works was named "Faces"; in the abstract lines of this series, the features of a human face are guessed, simplified to a state of a mask in the spirit of Matisse, Jawlensky or Brancusi. Speaking about the extreme simplification and stylization of forms, about the compositional solution of paintings, when the scattered contours of the eyes and mouths seem to look at us from a forest thicket, the researchers note the connection between Grotian's “Faces” and the art of the primitive tribes of Africa and Oceania, while the artist himself simply “likes the image eyes looking out of the jungle. I sometimes imagined the faces of baboons or monkeys. I cannot say that consciously or subconsciously I was influenced by primitive African art, rather, I was influenced by the artists who were under its influence. Picasso is the most obvious example. "

The works of the "Faces" series are called brutal and elegant, pleasing to the eye and pleasing to the mind. Over time, the texture of these works also changes: to create the effect of the interior space, the artist uses wide strokes of thick paint, even a spray in the Pollock style, however, the surface of the painting is leveled so that upon closer examination it seems absolutely flat. The auction record-setting painting "Untitled (S III Released to France Face 43.14)" refers precisely to this illustrious series by Mark Grotian.

16. TAKASHI MURAKAMI My lonely cowboy. $ 15.16 million

Japanese Takashi Murakami (1962) included in our rating with a sculpture "My Lonely Cowboy"sold at Sotheby's in May 2008 for $ 15.16 million... With this sale, Takashi Murakami has long been considered the most successful living Asian artist - until he was eclipsed by the sale of Zeng Fanzhi's The Last Supper.

Takashi Murakami works as an artist, sculptor, clothing designer and animator. Murakami wanted to take something really Japanese as the basis of his work, without Western and any other borrowings. In his student years, he was fascinated by the traditional Japanese painting of nihonga, later it was replaced by the popular art of anime and manga. This is how the psychedelic Mr DOB was born, smiling flower patterns and bright, shiny fiberglass sculptures that seemed to have just stepped out of the pages of Japanese comics. Some consider Murakami's art to be fast food and the embodiment of vulgarity, others call the artist the Japanese Andy Warhol - and in the ranks of the latter, as we can see, there are many very rich people.

Murakami borrowed the name for his sculpture from Andy Warhol's film Lonely Cowboys (1968), which the Japanese, as he himself admitted, never watched, but he really liked the combination of words. Murakami with one sculpture and pleased fans of erotic Japanese comics, and laughed at them. Enlarged in size, and besides, it is also three-dimensional, the anime hero turns into a fetish of mass culture. This artistic expression is quite in the spirit of classic Western pop art (remember the Allen Jones furniture set or Koons' Pink Panther), but with a national twist.

17. KAWS. Album KAWS. 2005. $ 14 784 505

KAWS is the pseudonym for American artist Brian Donnelly from New Jersey. He is the youngest member of our rating, born in 1974. Donnelly started out as an animator at Disney (drew backgrounds for the 101 Dalmatians cartoon, etc.). From his youth he was fond of graffiti. At first, his signature design was a skull with "x" in place of the eye sockets. The works of the young writer were loved by show business people and people from the fashion industry: he made the cover for Kanye West's album, released collaborations for Nike, Comme des Garçons and Uniqlo. Over time, KAWS has become a well-known figure in the contemporary art world. His signature Mickey Mouse figurine has taken root in museums, public spaces and private collections. KAWS once launched a limited edition vinyl toy with the My Plastic Heart brand, and they suddenly became a subject of high collectible interest. One of the passionate collectors of these "toys" is the founder of Black Star, rapper Timati: he almost completely collected the entire series of "Cavs Companions".

KAWS 'work set a $ 14.7 million record for an artist at Sotheby's Hong Kong on April 1, 2019. She used to be in the collection of Japanese fashion designer Nigo. The long canvas The KAWS Album is a homage to the cover of The Beatles' famous 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Only instead of people, Kimpsons are drawn on it - stylized characters from the animated series The Simpsons with Xs instead of eyes.

18. JIN SHANI Tajik bride. 1983. $ 13.89 million

Among the relatively young and contemporary Chinese artists, who all as one belong to the so-called "new wave" of the late 1980s in Chinese art, a representative of a completely different generation and a different school suddenly got into our rating. Jin Shangyi, now in his 80s, is one of the brightest representatives of the first generation of artists in communist China. The views of this group of artists were formed to a large extent under the influence of the closest communist ally - the USSR.

Official Soviet art, socialist realism, unusual even then for China oil painting (as opposed to traditional Chinese ink painting) in the 1950s were at the peak of popularity, and the Soviet artist Konstantin Methodievich Maksimov came to the Beijing Art University for three years (from 1954 to 1957) to teach. Jin Shani, who at that time was the youngest in the group, got into his class. The artist always recalled his teacher with great warmth, saying that it was Maksimov who taught him to correctly understand and depict the model. KM Maksimov educated a whole galaxy of Chinese realists, now classics.

The influence of both the Soviet "austere style" and the European school of painting is felt in Jin Shani's work. The artist devoted a lot of time to studying the heritage of the Renaissance and classicism, while he considered it necessary to preserve the Chinese spirit in his works. The painting "Tajik Bride", painted in 1983, is considered a generally recognized masterpiece, a new milestone in Jin Shani's work. It was put up at the China Guardian auction in November 2013 and sold several times more expensive than the estimate - for $ 13.89 million, taking into account the commission.

19. BANKSY Decayed parliament. 2008. $ 12.14 million

Wall murals tagged with Banksy began to appear on city walls (first in the UK and then around the world) in the late 1990s. His philosophical and at the same time sharp graffiti were devoted to the problems of the state's offensive on the freedoms of citizens, crimes against the environment, irresponsible consumption, and the inhumanity of the illegal migration system. Over time, Banksy's wall "rebukes" gained unprecedented media popularity. In fact, he became one of the main spokesmen for public opinion, condemning the hypocrisy of states and corporations, producing growing injustice in the capitalist system.

Banksy's value, sense of the "nerve of time" and the accuracy of its metaphors were appreciated not only by viewers, but also by collectors. In the 2010s, hundreds of thousands, or even more than a million dollars, were given for his works. It got to the point that Banksy's graffiti was broken down and stolen along with pieces of the walls.

In an era of advanced digital surveillance, Banksy still manages to remain anonymous. There is a version that this is no longer one person, but a group of several artists, headed by a talented woman. That would explain a lot. And the external dissimilarity of the writers caught in the lenses of the cameras of witnesses, and the impersonal stencil method of application (it gives high speed and does not require the direct participation of the author), and the touching romanticism of the plots of the paintings (balls, snowflakes, etc.). Be that as it may, the people of the Banksy project, including his assistants, know how to hold their tongues tightly.

In 2019, Banksy's most expensive work unexpectedly became the four-meter canvas Devolved Parliament (“degraded”, “decomposed” or “delegated” parliament). Chimpanzees arguing in the House of Commons seem to mock viewers in the year of the scandalous Brexit. It's amazing that the painting was painted 10 years before this historical turning point, and therefore someone considers it prophetic. At a Sotheby’s auction on October 3, 2019, during a fierce bargaining, an unknown buyer bought the oil for $ 12,143,000 - six times more than the preliminary estimate.

20. JOHN CARREN "Nice and simple". 1999. $ 12.007 million

American artist John Curran (1962)known for his satirical figurative paintings of provocative sexual and social themes... Curren's works manage to combine the techniques of painting by old masters (especially Lucas Cranach the Elder and the Mannerists) and fashion photography from glossy magazines. Striving for greater grotesque, Curren often distorts the proportions of the human body, increases or decreases its individual parts, depicts the characters in broken, mannered poses.

Curren started in 1989 with portraits of girls, redrawn from a school album; continued in the early 1990s with pictures of busty beauties inspired by photos from Cosmopolitan and Playboy; in 1992, portraits of wealthy elderly women appeared; and in 1994, Curren married the sculptor Rachel Feinstein, who became his main muse and model for many years. By the late 1990s, Curren's technical prowess, combined with the kitsch and grotesque of his paintings, brought him popularity. In 2003, Larry Gagosian took on the promotion of the artist, and if such a dealer as Gagosian takes on the author, then success is guaranteed. In 2004, a retrospective of John Curren took place at the Whitney Museum.

It was around this time that it began selling for six figures. The current record for painting by John Curren belongs to the work "Nice and Simple", sold on November 15, 2016 at Christie's for $ 12 million. A painting with two nudes barely overcame the lower estimate of $ 12-18 million. And yet, for John Curren, who now over 50, this is definitely a career breakthrough. His previous record in 2008 was $ 5.5 million (paid, by the way, for the same work "Nice and Simple").

21. BRICE MARDEN The Attended. 1996-1999. $ 10.917 million

Another living American abstract artist in our ranking is Bryce Marden (1938). Marden's works in the style of minimalism, and since the late 1980s - gestural painting, are distinguished by a unique author's, slightly muted palette. The color combinations in Marden's works are inspired by his travels around the world - Greece, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka. Among the authors who influenced the formation of Marden were Jackson Pollock (in the early 1960s, Marden worked as a security guard at the Jewish Museum, where he personally observed Pollock's "dripping"), Alberto Giacometti (got acquainted with his works in Paris) and Robert Rauschenberg (some while Marden worked as his assistant). The first stage of Marden's work is devoted to classic minimalist canvases, consisting of colored rectangular blocks (horizontal or vertical). Unlike many other minimalists, who achieved the ideal quality of works, as if printed by a machine, and not drawn by a person, Marden preserved traces of the artist's work, combined different materials (wax and oil paints). Since the mid-1980s, under the influence of oriental calligraphy, geometric abstraction has been replaced by meandering, meander-like lines, for which the same monochrome color fields served as a background. One of these "meander" works - "The Attended" - at the Sotheby's auction in November 2013 was sold for $ 10.917 million, including commission.

22. Pierre Soulages Peinture 186 x 143 cm, 23 décembre 1959. $ 10.6 million

23. ZHANG XIAOGANG Eternal love. $ 10.2 million

Another representative of Chinese contemporary art - symbolist and surrealist Zhang Xiaogang (1958)... At Sotheby's Hong Kong auction April 3, 2011where the Chinese avant-garde from the collection of the Belgian Baron Guy Ullens was sold, the triptych of Zhang Xiaogang "Eternal love" was sold for $ 10.2 million... At that time, it was a record not only for the artist, but also for the entire Chinese contemporary art. It is said that Xiaogang's work was bought by the billionaire's wife Wang Wei, who is about to open her own museum.

Zhang Xiaogang, fond of mysticism and Eastern philosophy, wrote the story of "Eternal Love" in three parts - life, death and rebirth. This triptych was featured in the 1989 cult exhibition "China / Avant-garde" at the National Art Museum. In the same 1989, student demonstrations were brutally suppressed by the military in Tiananmen Square. Following this tragic event, the tightening of the screws began - the exhibition at the National Museum was dispersed, many artists emigrated. In response to socialist realism imposed from above, a direction of cynical realism emerged, one of the main representatives of which was Zhang Xiaogang.

24. BRUCE NAUMAN Helpless Henry Moore. 1967. $ 9.9 million

American Bruce Nauman (1941), winner of the main prize of the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), has long walked towards his record. Nauman began his career in the sixties. Connoisseurs call him, along with Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, one of the most influential figures in the art of the second half of the twentieth century. However, the rich intellectuality and the absolute nondecoration of some of his works obviously hindered his quick recognition and success with the general public. Naumann often experiments with language, discovering unexpected meanings of familiar phrases. Words become central characters in many of his works, including pseudo neon signs and panels. Nauman himself calls himself a sculptor, although over the past forty years he has tried himself in completely different genres - sculpture, photography, video art, performances, graphics. In the early nineties, Larry Gagosian uttered prophetic words: "The real value of Nauman's work is still to be realized." And so it happened: May 17, 2001 at Christie's work by Naumann 1967 "Helpless Henry Moore (back view)" (Henry Moore Bound to Fail (Backview)) set a new record in the post-war art segment. A cast of Naumann's hands tied behind his back made of plaster and wax went under the hammer for $ 9.9 million to the collection of the French tycoon Francois Pinault (according to other sources, American Phyllis Wattis). Estimate of the work was only $ 2-3 million, so the result was a real surprise for everyone.

Prior to this legendary sale, only two of Naumann's works had crossed the million dollar bar. And for his entire auction career so far only six works, in addition to "Henry Moore ...", went for seven-figure sums, but their results still cannot be compared with nine million.

The Helpless Henry Moore is one of a series of polemical works by Naumann about the figure of Henry Moore (1898–1986), a British painter who, in the 1960s, was regarded as one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century. Young authors, who were in the shadow of the recognized master, then pounced on him with vehement criticism. Naumann's work is a response to this criticism and at the same time a reflection on the topic of creativity. The title of the work becomes a pun as it connects two meanings english word bound - bound (literally) and doomed to a certain fate.

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It is customary to call all kinds of artistic trends that developed at the end of the 20th century as modern art. In the post-war period, it was a kind of outlet that once again taught people to dream and invent new life realities.

Tired of the harsh rules of the past, young artists decided to break the old artistic norms. They strove to create new, previously unknown practices. Opposing themselves to modernism, they turned to new ways of revealing their stories. The artist and the concept behind his creation have become much more important than the very outcome of creative activity. The desire to move away from the erected framework led to the emergence of new genres.

Disputes began to arise among artists about the meaning of art and the ways of expressing it. What is art? What are the means to achieve genuine art? Conceptualists and minimalists found the answer for themselves in the phrase: "If art can be everything, then it can be nothing." For them, the departure from the usual visual means resulted in the holding of various actions, happenings and performances. What is so special about contemporary art in the 21st century? We will talk about this in the article.

Three-dimensional graphics in art of the XXI century

The art of the 21st century is famous in 3D graphics. With the development of computer technology, artists have gained access to new means of creating their art. The essence of 3D graphics is to create images by modeling objects in 3D space. Looking at most of the 21st century contemporary art forms, 3D is the most traditional. 3D graphics have many sides, in the truest sense of the word. It is used to create programs, games, images and videos on a computer. But it can also be seen right under your feet - on the asphalt.

3D graphics made their way onto the streets decades ago and has remained one of the most important forms of street art ever since. Many artists paint on their "paintings" three-dimensional images that can amaze with their realism. Edgar Müller, Eduardo Rolero, Kurt Wenner and many other contemporary artists today create art that can surprise anyone.

21st century street art

Previously, the occupation was the lot of wealthy people. For centuries it was covered by the walls of special institutions, where access to the uninitiated was closed. Obviously, his immense power could not languish forever inside stuffy buildings. It was then that it got out into the gray gloomy streets. I got out to change my story forever. Although at first it was not that simple.

Not everyone was happy about his birth. Many considered it to be the result of bad experience. Some even refused to pay attention to its existence. Meanwhile, the brainchild continued to grow and develop.

Street artists faced difficulties on their way. With all its variety of forms, street art was sometimes difficult to distinguish from vandalism.

It all began in the 70s of the last century in New York. At this time, street art was in its infancy. And Julio 204 and Taki 183 supported his life. They left inscriptions in different places of their area, after expanding the territory of distribution. Other guys decided to compete with them. This is where the fun began. The enthusiasm and desire to show oneself turned into a battle of creativity. Each sought to discover for himself and others more original way leave your mark.

In 1981 street art managed to overcome the ocean. In this he was helped by street artist from France BlekleRat. He is considered one of the first graffiti artists in Paris. He is also called the father of stencil graffiti. His signature touch is the drawings of rats, which refers to the name of their creator. The author noticed that after rearranging the letters in the word rat (rat), art (art) is obtained. Blek once remarked: "The rat is the only free animal in Paris that is spreading everywhere, just like street art."

The most famous street artist is Banksy, who calls BlekleRat his main teacher. The hot work of this talented Briton can silence everyone. In his drawings, created using stencils, he denounces modern society with its vices. Banksy is characterized by the traditional one that allows you to leave an even greater impression on the audience. An interesting fact is that until now the identity of Banksy is shrouded in mystery. No one has yet been able to solve the mystery of the artist's personality.

Meanwhile, street art is gaining momentum. Once cast off to marginal trends, street art has entered the auction stage. The works of the artists are sold for fabulous sums by those who once refused to talk about him. Is it the life-giving power of art or mainstream trends?

Forms

To date, there are several rather interesting manifestations of contemporary art. An overview of the most unusual forms of contemporary art will be presented to your attention further.

Readymade

The term ready-made comes from English, which means "ready". In fact, the goal of this direction is not to create anything material. The main idea here is that depending on the environment of an object, the perception of a person and the object itself changes. The founder of the current is Marcel Duchamp. His most famous work is The Fountain, which is an autographed urinal with a date.

Anamorphosis

Anamorphosis is the technique of creating images in such a way that it is possible to fully see them only from a certain angle. One of the brightest representatives of this trend is the Frenchman Bernard Pras. He creates installations using whatever comes to hand. Thanks to his skill, he manages to create amazing works, which, however, can only be seen from a certain angle.

Body fluids in art

One of the most controversial trends in contemporary art of the 21st century is the drawing, painted with human fluids. Often, followers of this modern art form use blood and urine. In this case, the color of the paintings often takes on a gloomy, frightening look. Herman Nitsch, for example, uses animal blood and urine. The author explains the use of such unexpected materials by a difficult childhood, which came during the Second World War.

Painting XX-XXI centuries

A Brief History of Painting contains information that the end of the 20th century became the starting point for many iconic artists of our time. In the difficult post-war years, the sphere has experienced its rebirth. The artists strove to discover new facets of their possibilities.

Suprematism

Kazimir Malevich is considered to be the creator of Suprematism. As the main theorist, he proclaimed Suprematism as a way to purify art from all unnecessary things. Having abandoned the usual ways of transferring images, the artists strove to free art from the non-artistic. The most important work in this genre is the famous "Black Square" by Malevich.

Pop Art

Pop art has its origins in the United States. In the postwar years, society has experienced global changes. People could now afford more. Consumption has become an essential part of life. People began to be elevated into a cult, and consumer products into symbols. Jasper Jones, Andy Warhol and other followers of the movement sought to use these symbols in their paintings.

Futurism

Futurism was discovered in 1910. The main idea of \u200b\u200bthis movement was the desire for the new, the destruction of the framework of the past. The artists portrayed this aspiration using a special technique. Sharp strokes, flows, connections and intersections are signs of futurism. The most famous representatives of futurism are Marinetti, Severini, Carra.

Contemporary art in Russia of the XXI century

Contemporary art in Russia (21st century) smoothly spilled over from the underground, "unofficial" art of the USSR. Young artists of the 90s were looking for new ways to realize their artistic ambitions in a new country. At this time, Moscow actionism was born. His followers challenged the past and its ideology. The destruction of borders (in the literal and figurative sense of the word) made it possible to depict the attitude of the younger generation to the situation in the country. Contemporary art of the 21st century has become expressive, frightening, shocking. The one from which the society was closed for so long. Shares of Anatoly Osmolovsky ("Mayakovsky - Osmolovsky", "Against all", "Barricade on Bolshaya Nikitskaya"), the movement "THESE" ("THESE-text"), Oleg Kulik ("Piglet gives gifts", "Mad Dog or The Last Taboo guarded by a lonely Cerberus "), Avdey Ter-Oganyan (" Pop Art ") forever changed the history of modern art.

New generation

Slava ATGM is a contemporary artist from Yekaterinburg. To some, his work may remind the work of Banksy. However, Slava's works carry ideas and feelings familiar only to a Russian citizen. One of his most notable works is the "Land of Opportunities" campaign. The artist created an inscription from crutches on the building of an abandoned hospital in Yekaterinburg. Slava bought crutches from the residents of the city, who once used them. The artist announced the action on the page in social network, adding an appeal to fellow citizens.

Contemporary art museums

Perhaps once the contemporary visual arts of the 21st century seemed to be a marginal environment, but today more and more people are striving to join the new field of art. More and more museums are opening their doors to new means of expression. New York holds the record for contemporary art. There are also two museums, which are among the best in the world.

The first is MoMA, which is a repository of paintings by Matisse, Dali, Warhol. The second is the museum The unusual architecture of the building is adjacent to the works of Picasso, Marc Chagall, Kandinsky and many others.

Europe is also famous for its magnificent museums of modern art of the 21st century. The KIASMA Museum in Helsinki allows you to touch the exhibits. The center in the capital of France amazes with its unusual architecture and works of contemporary artists. The Stedeleikmuseum in Amsterdam houses the largest collection of Malevich's paintings. in the capital of Great Britain has a huge number of contemporary art objects. The Vienna Museum of Modern Art possesses works by Andy Warhol and other talented contemporary artists.

Modern art of the 21st century (painting) - mysterious, incomprehensible, bewitching, forever changed the vector of development not only of a separate sphere, but also of the entire life of mankind. It reflects and creates modernity at the same time. Constantly changing, modern art allows a constantly rushing person to stop for a moment. Stop to remember the feelings deep inside. Stop to regain the pace and rush into the whirlwind of events and deeds.