Most WANTed II: February and May 2008
By Katherine Jentleson
Chart by Nigel Holmes
Published: June 1, 2008
The web exclusive that follows is an extension
of Most WANTed, originally published in the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction.
As the contemporary auctions take place in London this week, see how their results compare to the conclusions of our most recent WANT (Who Are The New Topsellers) Matrix. Will Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon remain the most WANTed artists of 2008? Will work by stalwarts like Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning sell better than it has so far this year? The answers to these questions were revealed this week at Christie’s (on June 30th) and at Sotheby’s, the following night.
Mouse over the names in red to find out how this year's sales compared to 2007.
How We Did It
We examined the catalogues from the 2007 and 2008 February and May sales and identified the artists who not only appeared in both but whose lot volumes were in flux. Along the horizontal axis, we plotted them according to the change in number of lots sold. Artists were given points if they exceeded their low estimates by a high percentage or were featured on the cover. We also took into account how much the artist contributed to overall sale totals in each year—if their works made up a bigger percentage of the total in 2008, they got points. They lost ground if their works were bought in, if they had sale prices that came in below low estimates or if their prices in 2008 made up a smaller percentage of the final tally.
"Most WANTed II: February and May 2008" is a web exclusive published in conjunction with the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2008 Table of Contents.
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