The 10 Most Popular Artists
Most Popular and Esteemed Contemporary Artists
They have revolutionized the world of art, they have invaded the most important auctions, beating record top lots; having one of their works means being part of a certain status symbol; they provoked, communicated, risked and experimented through their art. They are the artists whose works commonly belong to the current that goes from 1954 to today, the so-called “contemporary”.
However, a style is not reduced only to a time limit, contemporary works of art must respond to another aesthetic criterion linked to the obsessive search for transgression, in contrast with the artistic criteria of classical art, but also with the more recent ones of modern Art.
Andy Warhol
Perhaps the most influential artist of the 20th century. He was a painter, sculptor, director, film producer, actor, screenwriter but above all a central figure of Pop Art. No artist has been able to explore the collective imagination of consumerism and to embody the contradictions of the United States like Andy Warhol. His works have become icons: Marilyn Monroe, Mao Tse-Tung, to name a few. Repetition was his method of success: on large canvases he reproduced the same image several times, altering its colors. From the advertising images of major commercial brands (Coca Cola, Cmpbell’s soups) to the series of electric chairs, he was able to empty them of any meaning by placing an aesthetic coating on them, revealing a precise meaning.
Francis Bacon
Artist famous for his very particular style characterized by the deformation of human figures, anguish and isolation. Born in 1909 in Dublin to British parents, and died in 1992 in Madrid, he was rejected by his family when he decided to declare his homosexuality, at the age of 16. His art is the result of a complex personality, evidently tormented and restless.
Keith Haring
He was one of the most singular exponents of frontier graffiti; still young, he moved to an area near Soho and the East Village, neighborhoods that allow him to discover the alternative culture of the underground New York of the 80s, in which the phenomenon was exploding. The fields of action for the creation of his works are not the best galleries in the world, but the street and the subway. His unmistakable style is recognized by the repetition of recurring shapes with black outlines and bright, bright colors. He died in 1990 after contracting the HIV virus.
Roy Lichtenstein
Another emblematic Pop Art artist. Roy Lichtenstein created his first works in 1961, using images taken from cartoons and applying techniques inspired by the commercial advertising trends of the moment. We are in the years in which the phenomenon of consumerism and Pop culture explodes worldwide. The climate of serene trust in the present and in the future is clearly opposed to the previous pessimism of an existentialist matrix, and the images of enlarged comics proposed by Lichtenstein seem to fully reflect the need to surround oneself with new images, free from existential anguish.
Mark Rothko
Artist and author of “Orange, red, yellow” sold at Christie’s auction for 86.9 million dollars, Rothko is generally considered abstract expressionist. The painting is for him an almost mystical means that puts him in contact with the other. It is an idea of painting based on the reflexivity induced by large fields of color. An alternation of monochrome bands, of different colors, with indecisive edges, fruit of the belief that the tragic sense of existence can be revealed through simple, non-narrative forms, and that emotions in the face of the mystery of life can be expressed through absoluteness of color.
Joseph Heinrich Beuys
The German Joseph Heinrich Beuys is one of the most emblematic representatives of the conceptual currents in the art of the second half of the twentieth century. His is an art that moves along completely new paths, completely merging his existence with his being an artist. Beuys, a German aviation fighter on the side of the Nazis during the Second World War, is the most radical expression of the European intellectual who seeks to be reborn from a cumbersome past. Beuys invents the concept of social sculpture, capable of leading to a more correct society; he thinks that every man is an artist and that if everyone used their creativity, then we would all be free beings.
Bansky
He is probably the most famous street artist in the world, as well as one of the most controversial. His fame is also due to the fact that his identity is not known, as well as to the “anti-system” message of many of his works and criticism of capitalism. Banksy’s style is characterized by the use of graffiti stencils made by spraying paint on one or more masks. His drawings are sometimes accompanied by slogans against war, power, greed.
Damien Hirst
Genius of art and the market, leader of the Young British Artists group, dominated the art scene in the nineties. “A Thousand Years” is the first surprising work Hirst creates out of college. Inside the display case, flies flit over a cow’s head lying in a pool of frozen blood. It is the synthesis of life and death. The following works were the repetition of an always brilliant and brilliant intuition of the artist that made him one of the most expensive living artists in the art world.
Jasper Johns
Together with Robert Rauschenberg is the leading exponent of New Dada. He invented a new style that would later contribute to the birth of various artistic movements such as Pop Art, Minimal and Conceptual Art. Johns initially devoted himself to advertising, but later moved away from it to move towards art. In the 1950s he created “Three Flags” which became the icon of the contemporary world.
Jeff Koons
Considered a neo-pop icon and famous all over the world for his large-scale works inspired by kitsch, he has recently created the cover of the new Lady Gaga record. His art is expressed through the use of a wide range of techniques, sculpture, painting, installations and photography, and the use of different materials including colors, plastics, inflatables, marble, metals, ceramics. The work “Hanging Heart” was sold on November 14, 2007 at an auction at Sotheby’s for the sum of 23,561,000 dollars.