2018 was a record-breaking year for the auction world, as previous artists' records were shattered, the biggest private collection ever was sold for almost US$1 billion (£79 mil) and a new world's most expensive living artist was crowned. Here, Barnebys rounds up the 10 priciest artworks sold in 2018.
10. Zao Wou-Ki, Juin-Octobre 1985 (£51.7 million)
This monumental work, titled Juin-Octobre 1985 because of the months it took to complete, is by Chinese modernist Zao Wou-Ki. It was commissioned by legendary architect I.M. Pei, a close friend and collaborator of the artist, in 1985 to adorn Singapore's Raffle City, which Pei designed. The massive oil on canvas fuses traditional Chinese landscape painting in its horizontal triptych configuration with modern elements such as vivid, dynamic colour contrasts and a completely abstracted composition. When it sold for US$65.2 million (£51.7 mil) at Sotheby's Hong Kong auction in September 2018, it became the most expensive work ever sold at the auction house and the most expensive oil painting by an Asian artist.
9. Willem de Kooning, Woman as Landscape (£54.6 million)
A major record-breaking artwork by a celebrated American artist was Willem de Kooning's Woman as Landscape which sold for just shy of US$70 million (£55.5 mil) in November 2018. The large canvas (over 5.5 feet tall, or 168cm) from 1954-55 is an highly abstracted work of the female body, embodying de Kooning's Abstract Expressionist oeuvre and showing the complete transformation of the body into a non-figural form. He uses thick strokes of vivid colours: red, pink and beige for the body, and blue and green to delineate the background. Many of his other paintings of this subject are held in major museums, making this work one of the very few to still be privately owned.
8. Constantin Brancusi, La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait of Nancy Cunard) (£56.4 million)
‘La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard)’, Constantin Brancusi, 1932, bronze. Photo: Christie's
This unique work in polished bronze dates to 1932 and is titled The Sophisticated Girl because Constantin Brancusi used Nancy Cunard, a legendary heiress of the roaring twenties, as his muse for the piece. The sculpture offers a multitude of contrasts: straight lines mingle with curves, smooth surfaces swirl, while the curved shapes suddenly shrink and stagnate. In this remarkable piece, Brancusi was deftly able to capture Cunard’s elegant appearance without resorting to a traditional figurative language.
7. Henri Matisse, Odalisque couchée aux magnolias (£64 million)
Fauvist master Henri Matisse was fascinated by the lushness of brilliant colour and soft, sensuous forms as seen in this work Odalisque couchée aux magnolias (Odalisque lying with magnolias). In the 1920s, his depictions of odalisques, women lounging languorously partially nude or in flowing fabrics, were inspired by earlier trips to Algeria and Morocco. This record-breaking work for Matisse was part of the Peggy and David Rockefeller Collection, which upon its $832.5 million (£660.2 mil) price tag at Christie's in May 2018, became the highest selling private collection ever.
6. Claude Monet, Nympheás en fleur (£67.1 million)
Also part of the Rockefeller collection and setting a new record for the Impressionist, Claude Monet's Nymphéas en Fleur (Water lilies in bloom) depicts Monet's iconic garden and water lilies at his home in Giverny. After a five-year hiatus from painting after his wife and son died, Monet returned to the brush in 1914 at the onset of World War I. His Nymphéas series, painted between 1914 and 1917, employed vivid colours, a close-up perspective on the water lilies and frenzied painterly strokes.
5. Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition (£68.1 million)
Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) was the leader of Suprematism, a Russian abstract art movement that employed hard-cut geometric forms to reach supreme artistic expression. Suprematist Composition was one of his best-known works and epitomises what he strived to achieve through his art: a transcendence of earth to create new spatial representations and universes. When it sold in 2018 at Christie's, it became the most expensive painting of Russian art.
4. David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (£71.7 million)
The evening sale of Christie's Post-war and Contemporary art of 16 November 2018 made history when David Hockey became the most expensive artist in the world thanks to his iconic Portrait of an Artist (Pool with two Figures) painting which sold for a staggering US$90.3 million (£71.7 mil). The painting is the quintessence of Hockney's work because it contains all the elements that characterise the art of the English-American painter: the pool ("Making water transparency is a complicated challenge that I find always electrifying"), the California sun (which the artist fell in love with and moved permanently to LA), and male physicality (Hockey painted his partners well before the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967). The photo was inspired by a combination of images: the man by the pool is the artist's ex Peter Schlesinger, taken from a photograph of him in the same pose in Kensington Gardens, and the swimming figure was from a photograph taken in a Hollywood pool. The background is inspired by the landscape as seen from a home in the South of France.
3. Edward Hopper, Chop Suey (£72.9 million)
Chop Suey by Edward Hopper (1929) was the premier lot in the acclaimed Barney Ebsworth collection and is one of art history's best known works by the American master. The oil painting depicts two women dining at the New York Chinese restaurant Chop Suey, offering realist insight into 20th-century American life. Hopper's use of rich colour, light and shadows and focus on the woman in the green sweater creates a compelling, everyday scene that artists of the time didn't often capture. The iconic work sold for US$91 million (£72.9), setting a world record for the artist, more than doubling his previous highest sale price of US$40 million (£31.75).
2. Pablo Picasso, Fillete à la corbielle fleurie (£91.4 million)
Picasso's Fillette al Corbeille Fleurie (Girl with Flower Basket) was painted during Picasso's Rose Period in 1905, a three-year stretch marked by charming depictions of carnival performers, nude youths, and familial relationships in hues of rose, pink and oranges. The identity of the girl has been debated, but it has been alleged that she sold flowers outside of Paris' Moulin Rouge. Picasso sold the painting to a Parisian art dealer when he was desperate for money, who, in turn, sold it to Gertrude Stein, the American writer and member of the Parisian avant-garde. The painting later became part of the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller in 1968 and was sold at Christie's as part of their estate in May 2018.
1. Amedeo Modigliani, Nu Couché (£125 million)
The largest of Modigliani's 35 nude paintings, Nu Couché sur le côté guache (Nude lying on the left side) broke records as Sotheby's all-time highest sale and the tenth most expensive painting ever sold. The extraordinary work, painted in 1917, was a reinterpretation of the classical nude in the context of modern art. As Simon Shaw said, the co-head of Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art department, "There is the nude before Modigliani, and the nude after Modigliani". While today widely praised and admired, the nudes of Amedeo Modigliani weren’t so well received when first shown in 1917 and the Paris police even shut the representing gallery down. This particular work gained prominence during the Tate Modern's 2017 retrospective and was highly anticipated in the May Post-Impressionist and Modern Art sales at Sotheby's, where it sold for US$157 million (£125).
