It’s been a year of record-breaking auction sales, unseating Andy Warhol as the most expensive American artist at auction. View the top 10 sales of 2017 below, can you feel your wallet wincing?
1. Leonardo da Vinci, Salvator Mundi (c. 1500), sold for $450 million
2. Qi Baishi, Twelve Landscape Screens (1925), sold for $140.8 million
3. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (1982), sold for $110.4 million
4. Vincent van Gogh, Laboureur dans un Champ (1889), sold for $81.3 million
Contrasting Forms; Contraste de Formes, 1913 (oil on canvas), Fernand Leger / Private Collection / Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images
5. Fernand Léger, Contraste de formes (1913), sold for $70 million
6. Andy Warhol, Sixty Last Suppers (1986), sold for $60.8 million
Flower Garden, 1905-07 (oil on canvas), Gustav Klimt / Private Collection / Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images
7. Gustav Klimt, Bauerngarten (1907), sold for $59.3 million
8. Constantin Brancusi, La muse endormie (1913), sold for $57.3 million
Leda and the Swan, 1963 (oil, graphite and wax crayon on canvas), Cy Twombly / Private Collection / Photo © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images
9. Cy Twombly, Leda and the Swan (1962), sold for $52.8 million
10. Francis Bacon, Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer (1963), sold for $51.7 million
What do you think attributes to a high price fetched for an artwork at auction? Is it the intrigue and rarity of the piece, the aesthetic qualities of the artwork itself or the profile and biographical context of the artist? Or something else? Comment with your thoughts below.
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