Most Expensive Artworks by Living Artists (All Time)

Source:  Wikipedia

Most Expensive Artworks by Living Artists (All Time)

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Key Findings

🏆
Rabbit (Jeff Koons) leads in Auction Price (Million USD) with 91.10 in 2023.
📅
2019 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.
↔️
Gap in 2023: Rabbit (Jeff Koons) is 3.6× larger than Love is in the Bin (Banksy).

About This Dataset

Most Expensive Artworks by Living Artists (All Time)
Works by artists living at the time of sale, ranked by hammer price at public auction in millions of USD. Jeff Koons's stainless steel "Rabbit" (1986) became the most expensive work by a living artist ever sold at auction when it achieved $91.1 million at Christie's New York in May 2019 — surpassing David Hockney's record set just six months earlier.
Analysis

Rabbit (Jeff Koons) (91.1), Portrait of an Artist Pool (David Hockney) (90.3) and Hurting the Word Radio No.2 (Ed Ruscha) (52.5) take the top three in Auction Price (Million USD) in 2023. Values run from 91.1 at the top to 25.4 at the bottom, a spread of 65.7. First and second are separated by 0.80, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Below the top two the field is tightly packed: the remaining 6 run from 52.5 down to 25.4.

Data Insights

Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart

Admin
⬡
Data Points
8
8 categories  ·  8 years
↑
Top Value
91.10
Rabbit (Jeff Koons)
Auction Price (Million USD) · 2019
◈
Metrics
1
Auction Price (Million USD)
◷
Period
2006 – 2023
8 years of data

Methodology & source

Data source
Wikipedia
Coverage
8 entities · 2006–2023 (8 years) · 8 observations
Measure
Auction Price (Million USD)
Last updated
6 September 2026
Compiled by
The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
  • Values use the measure and unit named on this page. Consult the dataset description and cited source for coverage, definitions and any unit conversions. Displayed values may be rounded for readability.
  • Missing years are left empty rather than estimated — no interpolation, no carrying a previous year forward.
  • Change is measured between the first and last year in which an entity actually reported a value, so a series that starts late is not penalised for the years before it existed.
  • The compound annual rate is (last ÷ first)^(1 ÷ years) − 1, using those same two reported years.
  • Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2023.
  • An entity that reported nothing in the latest year is still listed — it follows the ranked entities in the table rather than being dropped.

Rankings & Full Data

8 records · Auction Price (Million USD) · ranked by 2023

✓ 8 sourced
# Category 2006 2013 2014 2015 2018 2019 2021 2023 Change Source
🥇 Rabbit (Jeff Koons) — — — — — 91.10 — — —
🥈 Portrait of an Artist Pool (David Hockney) — — — — 90.30 — — — —
🥉 Hurting the Word Radio No.2 (Ed Ruscha) — — — — — — — 52.50 —
4 Abstract Painting 649 (Gerhard Richter) — — — 46.30 — — — — —
5 False Start (Jasper Johns) 36 — — — — — — — —
6 Apocalypse Now (Christopher Wool) — 26.50 — — — — — — —
7 Untitled (Rudolf Stingel) — — 26 — — — — — —
8 Love is in the Bin (Banksy) — — — — — — 25.40 — —
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