You might have missed it with everything else going on in the world, but 2018 was a pretty exciting year for the art market. Many major artists set new price records for their work, a lot of which were sold off from the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller – which went for a record of its own, at $832.6 million, the most any estate has ever gotten. For a rundown of the year in art sales, here are the 20 highest valued works of art sold at auction in 2018.
Pablo Picasso, Le Repos, 1932: $36.9 Million
Andy Warhol, Double Elvis [Ferus Type], 1963: $37 Million
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Vincent van Gogh, Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle Saint-Paul de Mausole (Saint-Rémy), 1889: $39.7 Million
Pan Tianshou, View from the Peak, 1963: $41.4 Million
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Flexible, 1984: $45.3 Million
Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait, 1977: $49.8 Million
Jackson Pollock, Composition with Red Strokes, 1950: $55.4 Million
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Pablo Picasso, La Dormeuse, 1932: $57.9 Million
Su Shi, Wood and Rock, 1071–1101: $59.3 Million
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Zao Wou-Ki, Juin-Octobre 1985, 1985: $65.2 Million
Pablo Picasso, Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter), 1937: $69.4 Million
Willem de Kooning, Woman as Landscape, ca. 1954–55: $68.9 Million
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Constantin Brâncuși, La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard), 1932: $71.2 Million
Henri Matisse, Odalisque couchée aux magnolias, 1923: $80.8 Million
Claude Monet, Nymphéas en fleur, ca. 1914–17: $84.7 Million
Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition, 1916: $85.8 Million
Edward Hopper, Chop Suey, 1929: $91.9 Million
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images
David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972: $90.3 Million
Pablo Picasso, Fillette à la corbeille fleurie, 1905: $115 Million
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Amedeo Modigliani, Nu Couché (Sur Le Côté Gauche), 1917: $157.1 Million
ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images
Outside of the top 20, other art sales records were broken, like Sean Combs' purchase of Kerry James Marshall's 1997 painting Past Times, which at $21.1 million made Marshall the most expensive living black artist but failed to crack the top 50 in price overall. And Jenny Saville became the most expensive living female artist after one of her works sold for $12.4 million, but that was outside the top 100 most expensive paintings of the year.
