You might have missed it with everything else going on in the world, but 2018 was a pretty exciting year for the art market. Many major artists set new price records for their work, a lot of which were sold off from the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller – which went for a record of its own, at $832.6 million, the most any estate has ever gotten. For a rundown of the year in art sales, here are the 20 highest valued works of art sold at auction in 2018.
1. Pablo Picasso, Le Repos, 1932: $36.9 Million
2. Andy Warhol, Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963: $37 Million
3. Vincent van Gogh, Vue de l’asile et de la Chapelle Saint-Paul de Mausole (Saint-Rémy), 1889: $39.7 Million
4. Pan Tianshou, View from the Peak, 1963: $41.4 Million
5. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Flexible, 1984: $45.3 Million
6. Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait, 1977: $49.8 Million
7. Jackson Pollock, Composition with Red Strokes, 1950: $55.4 Million
8. Pablo Picasso, La Dormeuse, 1932: $57.9 Million
9. Su Shi, Wood and Rock, 1071–1101: $59.3 Million
10. Zao Wou-Ki, Juin-Octobre 1985, 1985: $65.2 Million
11. Pablo Picasso, Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter), 1937: $69.4 Million
12. Willem de Kooning, Woman as Landscape, ca. 1954–55: $68.9 Million
13. Constantin Brâncuși, La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard), 1932: $71.2 Million
14. Henri Matisse, Odalisque couchée aux magnolias, 1923: $80.8 Million
15. Claude Monet, Nymphéas en fleur, ca. 1914–17: $84.7 Million
16. Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition, 1916: $85.8 Million
17. Edward Hopper, Chop Suey, 1929: $91.9 Million
18. David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972: $90.3 Million
19. Pablo Picasso, Fillette à la corbeille fleurie, 1905: $115 Million
20. Amedeo Modigliani, Nu Couché (Sur Le Côté Gauche), 1917: $157.1 Million
Outside of the top 20, other art sales records were broken, like Sean Combs’ purchase of Kerry James Marshall’s 1997 painting Past Times, which at $21.1 million made Marshall the most expensive living black artist but failed to crack the top 50 in price overall. And Jenny Saville became the most expensive living female artist after one of her works sold for $12.4 million, but that was outside the top 100 most expensive paintings of the year.
