In 2020, only two of the ten most expensive works of art sold at auction went for prices exceeding $50 million. Then, the next year, driven in part by the sale of artworks from the divorced couple Harry and Linda Macklowe, each of the top ten lots surpassed the $50 million mark. In 2022, the bar was raised once again: the least expensive piece in the top ten, a work by René Magritte, was sold for $79.8 million.
Now, that bar has been lowered. In 2023, the landscape changed once again, with the prices of the most expensive works sold at auction having dropped off significantly from last year.
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Compare this year’s tenth-most expensive work to 2022’s. Henri Rousseau’s Les Flamants (1910) sold this past May for $43.5 million, setting a new auction record for him. That’s a little more than half the price of the Magritte sold in 2022.
Signs of a downturn are evident in other ways, too. This year, four of the works that generated the year’s top ten prices overall went for under $50 million—many fewer than last year. Consider the case of the most expensive work sold at auction, too. This year’s most expensive work, a Picasso painting, sold for $139 million. Last year’s, a Warhol painting of Marilyn Monroe, sold for $195 million. That’s a 29 percent drop-off between the two.
The total figures for the top ten lots exhibit a similar drop-off—$660 million in 2023 versus $1.1 billion in 2022.
Below, a look at the most valuable lots sold at auction in 2023.
Source: artnews.com