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.
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.
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Henri Rousseau, Les Flamants, 1910
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby’s Sold for: $43.5 million
In May, when this painting sold for $43.5 million with fees during Christie’s 20th-century evening sale, it generated a new record for Rousseau. The price far surpassed the artist’s previous record of $4 million, set three decades ago, in 1993, by the sale of his painting Portrait of Joseph Brummer.
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Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau mit Kirche II (Murnau with Church II), 1910
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby’s Sold for: $44.8 million
In March, this early abstract painting by Kandinsky sold at Sotheby’s London after being restituted to its original German-Jewish owners, Johanna Margarete Stern and Siegbert Samuel Stern. Kandinsky the painting during a period considered by researchers to be a seminal once for the Russian-born artist.
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Mark Rothko, Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange), 1955
Image Credit: Courtesy Sotheby’s. Sold for: $46.4 million
Rothko’s Untitled (Yellow, Orange, Yellow, Light Orange) became one of the top lots of the November New York sales when it was auctioned by Christie’s, even though just barely exceeded its estimate of $45 million. While the painting stood out as one of the top sellers of its respective auction, increasing in value by 20 percent from 2014, when it sold at Sotheby’s for $36 million, its price was considerably lower than the $86 million achieved by Lucian Freud’s Large Interior, W11 (After Watteau), 1981–83, when it appeared in a comparable sale.
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Richard Diebenkorn, Recollections of a Visit to Leningrad, 1965
Image Credit: Courtesy Christie’s. Sold for: $46.4 million
Critics have said this Diebenkorn painting can be related to his famed “Ocean Park” series, and that may account for why it achieved a record for the American artist when it was sold in November during a Sotheby’s evening sale, where it hammered for $40 million, far above its $25 million estimate. The final sum surpassed the artist’s previous benchmark of $27.3 million, earned in 2021 by a 1971 painting.
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Francis Bacon, Figure in Movement, 1976
Sold for: $52 million
Bacon made Figure in Movement a few years after the death of his former partner, George Dyer, who was a recurring subject in his work. In November, after being held privately for five decades, the painting returned to public view, selling during a Christie’s New York evening sale. Specialists expected the dark canvas to sell for $50 million.
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Gustav Klimt, Insel im Attersee (Island in the Attersee), ca. 1901–02
Image Credit: Getty Images Sold for: $53 million
Once owned by the art collector Otto Kallir, who helped popularize Austrian modernists in the United States, this painting went for $53 million during a Sotheby’s evening sale in New York in May. The work, which depicts a body of water in the Salzkammergut region of Austria, had never before appeared at auction. Ahead of its sale, it was expected to sell for $45 million.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat, El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile), 1983
Image Credit: Courtesy Christie’s Sold for: $67 million
The highest price of a Christie’s contemporary evening sale held in May was made by this Basquiat triptych, in which floating skulls and figures are set against scrawled phrases referencing ancient mythological texts. It had come to auction from the collection of fashion designer Valentino Garavani, and was offered in the sale with an estimate of around $45 million.
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Claude Monet, Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1919
Image Credit: Getty Images Sold for: $74 million
Le bassin aux nympheas exceeded its estimate of $65 million when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in New York in November, generating a total of $74 million with fees. That figure puts it among the most expensive Monet paintings ever auctioned.
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Gustav Klimt, Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), 1917
Image Credit: Getty Images for Sotheby’s. Sold for: $80 million
When Sotheby’s London branch announced that it was selling this painting, which is thought to be the last portrait Klimt painted, the house said it thought it would bring in £65 million ($80 million). No painting had ever been given a higher estimate upon appearing at auction in Europe, and expectations ran high. The painting ended up surpassing that estimate, hammering at £74 million ($94.3 million); with fees, the price rose to £85.3 million ($108 million). That was nearly 10 times the $11.6 million it sold for when it last appeared at auction, in New York in 1994.
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Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, 1932
Image Credit: Getty Images for Sotheby’s Sold for: $139 million
This painting was made in 1932, like many of the most expensive works by Picasso that have been sold at auction. It came from the collection of the late New York philanthropist Emily Fisher Landau, and was sold in November at Sotheby’s during a New York evening sale. Femme à la montre now marks the second-highest price achieved by Picasso at auction, below the $179 million paid for Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’), from 1955, when it was sold at Christie’s in 2015.
