The highest known price paid for an artwork by a living artist was for Jasper Johns's 1958 painting Flag. Its 2010 private sale price was estimated to be about US$110 million ($ million in dollars).
All-time
This is a list of highest prices ever paidâÂÂat auction or private saleâÂÂfor an artwork by an artist living at time of sale.
Progressive auction sales records
This is a list of progressive records of the highest price ever paid at auction for the work of an artist who was living at time of sale. As a progressive record listing, it only lists auctions records that topple the previous best. The current record price is US$91 million for Jeff Koons's 1986 sculpture, Rabbit, set in 2019. The current record price for a painting is $90 million for David Hockney's 1972 Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), set the prior year.
Private sales
- Jasper Johns's 1958 Flag painting was sold by Steven A. Cohen to Jean-Christophe Castelli for ca $110 million in 2010 ($ million in dollars).
- Damien Hirst's For the Love of God (2007), composed of diamond and platinum, was privately acquired by a consortium, which included the artist himself, in August 2007 for $100 million â equivalent to approximately $141 million when adjusted for inflation to 2022 values.
- Another Jasper Johns painting, False Start (1959), was sold by Kenneth C. Griffin to David Geffen on October 12, 2006, for a then record $80 million.($ million in dollars)
- The Whitney Museum of American Art privately purchased Jasper Johns's Three Flags in 1980 for $1 million ($ million in dollars), then a record price for a living artist.
- In 1967, citizens of Basel, Switzerland, raised nearly $2 million to buy two Picasso paintings for their Kunstmuseum Basel.
- In 1890, , owner of the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store, purchased Ernest Meissonier's 1814 The Campaign of France from a banker for 850,000 Fr (US$162,000 in 1890; equivalent to $ million in ), the highest price for a painting by an artist alive or dead.
See also
References