Don Thompson

the world of contemporary art, branding can substitute for critical judgment

The best description comes from W. M. Hunt of the Hasted Hunt Gallery in New York, who describes the typical gallery (not his) as looking like the sort of place where “You could be set on fire and no one would give you a glass of water.”

TWENTY-FIVE MAJOR CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

Jasper Johns (American, 1930–)
Andy Warhol (American, 1928–87)
Gerhard Richter (German, 1932–)
Bruce Nauman (American, 1941–)
Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–97)
Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008)
Joseph Beuys (German, 1921–86)
Ed Ruscha (American, 1937–)
Francis Bacon (Irish/English, 1909–92)
Lucian Freud (English, 1922–)
Cy Twombly (American, 1928–)
Damien Hirst (English, 1965–)
Jeff Koons (American, 1955–)
Martin Kippenberger (German, 1953–97)
Donald Judd (American, 1928–94)
Willem de Kooning (American,1904–97)
Takashi Murakami (Japan, 1963–)
Peter Fischli/David Weiss (Swiss, 1952/54–)
Richard Serra (American, 1939–)
Antoni Tapies (Spanish, 1923–)
Maurizio Cattelan (Italian, 1960–)
Andreas Gursky (German, 1955–)
David Hockney (English, 1937–)
Richard Diebenkorn (American, 1922–93)
Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960–88)

THE MOST EXPENSIVE SCULPTURES SOLD AT AUCTION
Bird in Space (1923), Constantin Brancusi, $27.5 million, Christie’s New York, 2005

THE MOST EXPENSIVE SCULPTURE SOLD PRIVATELY
Bird in Space (1923), Constantin Brancusi, $38.5 million, private sale brokered by New York dealer Vivian Horan to a Seattle collector, 2000 (this is a different version [of 16 in total] from the Bird in Space listed under “sculptures sold at auction” above)

A fourth, the most recent addition, is London’s Frieze, held each October.