Mental Floss

The 100 Most Collectible Living Artists

By Andrew LaSane

Getty Images
Getty Images / Getty Images
facebooktwitterreddit

When it comes to collecting art, buying works by Warhol, Basquiat, Picasso, and other deceased masters will always be a smart move, partially because they can't create any new pieces, which raises the value of the existing ones. Investing in work by artists who are still alive can be a bit trickier, but Artnet's list of the 100 most collectible living artists is a good place to start.

Using auction data collected over the past five years, Artnet was able to quantify popularity and overall collectibility, ranking each artist in terms of the number of works sold and the total value. At the top of list is 84-year-old German visual artist Gerhard Richter, who according to Artnet saw 1418 of his works sold at auction between 2011 and the first few months of 2016 for a total of $1,207,418,584. In second place is American artist Jeff Koons, with 721 pieces valued at $438,288,081. There are other names scattered throughout the top 100 list that casual art fans will recognize, including Damien Hirst, Yoshitomo Nara, Robert Indiana, Ai Weiwei, and the infamous street artist, Banksy, but the remainder of the list will probably not look familiar to most.

GERHARD RICHTER, UNTITLED, 1985

cea+, Flickr // CC BY 2.0

JEFF KOONS, SPLIT ROCKER, 2000 

Inhabitat, Flickr // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Scroll down to read the full list, and head over to Artnet to also see a list of the top selling lots from the past five years, which is also dominated by Richter and 

Koons.

Top 100 Living Artists (2011-2016)

  1. Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)
  2. Jeff Koons (b. 1955)
  3. Christopher Wool (b. 1955)
  4. Cul Ruzhuo (b. 1944)
  5. Zeng Fanzhi (b. 1964)
  6. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)
  7. Richard Prince (b. 1949)
  8. Peter Doig (b. 1959)
  9. Fan Zeng (b. 1938)
  10. Ed Ruscha (b. 1937)
  11. Damien Hirst (b. 1965)
  12. Zhou Chunya (b. 1955)
  13. Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958)
  14. Robert Ryman (b. 1930)
  15. Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920)
  16. He Jiaying (b. 1957)
  17. Huang Yongyu (b. 1924)
  18. Fernando Bolero (b. 1932)
  19. Frank Stella (b. 1936)
  20. Rudolf Stingel (b. 1956)
  21. Jasper Johns (b. 1930)
  22. Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959)
  23. Liu Wei (b. 1965)
  24. Ju Ming (b. 1938)
  25. Pierre Soulages (b. 1919)
  26. Georg Baselitz (b. 1938)
  27. Lee Wan (b. 1936)
  28. David Hockney (b. 1937)
  29. Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945)
  30. Enrico Castellani (b. 1930)
  31. Cindy Sherman (b. 1954)
  32. Anish Kapoor (b. 1954)
  33. Mark Grotjahn (b. 1968)
  34. Takashi Murakaml (b. 1962)
  35. Luo Zhongli (b. 1949)
  36. Robert Indiana (b. 1928)
  37. Andreas Gursky (b. 1955)
  38. Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933)
  39. Wade Guyton (b. 1972)
  40. Wang Yidong (b. 1955)
  41. Chen Peiqiu (b. 1923)
  42. Brice Marden (b. 1938)
  43. Jin Shangyi (b. 1934)
  44. Fang Lijun (b. 1963)
  45. Frank Auerbach (b. 1931)
  46. Yang Feiyun (b. 1954)
  47. Wang Mingming (b. 1952)
  48. Shi Guoliang (b. 1956)
  49. Liu DaWei (b. 1945)
  50. Mark Tansey (b. 1949)
  51. Gunther Uecker (b. 1930)
  52. Jia Youfu (b. 1942)
  53. Mark Bradford (b. 1961)
  54. Ai Xuan (b. 1947)
  55. Liu Ye (b. 1964)
  56. Maurizio Cahalan (b. 1960)
  57. Syed Haider Raza (b. 1922)
  58. George Condo (b. 1957)
  59. John Currin (b. 1962)
  60. Glenn Brown (b. 1966)
  61. Liu Xiaodong (b. 1963)
  62. Urs Fischer (b. 1973)
  63. Miquel Barcelo (b. 1957)
  64. Thomas Schutte (b. 1954)
  65. Liu Kuo Sung (b. 1932)
  66. Glenn Ligon (b. 1960)
  67. Ai Weiwei (b. 1957)
  68. Sean Scully (b. 1945)
  69. Fang Chuxiong (b. 1950)
  70. Bruce Nauman (b. 1941)
  71. Wang Ziwu (b. 1936)
  72. Yue Minjun (b. 1962)
  73. Albert Oehlen (b. 1954)
  74. Antony Gormley (b. 1950)
  75. Xue Mang (b. 1956)
  76. Shang Yang (b. 1942)
  77. David Hammons (b. 1943)
  78. Chung Sang-Hwa (b. 1932)
  79. Zhou Yansheng (b. 1942)
  80. Liu Wenxi (b. 1933)
  81. Julie Mehretu (b. 1970)
  82. Fan Yang (b. 1955)
  83. Lin Yong (b. 1942)
  84. Richard Serra (b. 1939)
  85. Marc Quinn (b. 1964)
  86. Banksy (b. 1974)
  87. Tian Liming (b. 1955)
  88. Xu Lele (b. 1955)
  89. Wang Hualqing (b. 1944)
  90. Sterling Ruby (b. 1972)
  91. Yang Zhiguang (b. 1930)
  92. Wang Guangyi (b. 1957)
  93. Neo Rauch (b. 1960)
  94. Gilbert & George
  95. Robert Longo (b. 1953)
  96. Marlene Dumas (b. 1953)
  97. Ren Zhong (b. 1976)
  98. Bridget Riley (b. 1931)
  99. Howard Terpning (b. 1927)
  100. Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981)

[h/t Artnet]