List of most expensive artworks by living artists
This is a progressive list of record auction prices for an artwork by a living artist. The current record price is $91.1 million for Jeff Koons's 1986 sculpture, Rabbit, in May 2019. The most expensive painting by a living artist sold at auction is David Hockney's 1972 Portrait of an Artist at $90.3 million in 2018.
Overall, the highest known price paid for an artwork by a living artist was for Jasper Johns' 1958 painting Flag. The 2010 sale price was estimated to be about $110 million.
List of auction sales records
| Adjusted Price | Original Price | Work | Artist | Auction Date | Auction House | Ref. |
| 91.82 | 91.1 | Rabbit | Christie's | |||
| 92.48 | 90.3 | Portrait of an Artist | Christie's | |||
| 64.68 | 58.4 | Balloon Dog | Christie's | |||
| 48.93 | 44.5 | Abstraktes Bild | Sotheby's | |||
| 41.11 | 37.1 | Domplatz, Mailand | Sotheby's | |||
| 38.16 | 34.2 | Abstraktes Bild | Sotheby's | |||
| 40.03 | 33.6 | Benefits Supervisor Sleeping | Christie's | |||
| 28.98 | 23.6 | Hanging Heart | Sotheby's | |||
| 25.92 | 20 | Swamped | Christie's | |||
| 23.91 | 19.3 | Lullaby Spring | Sotheby's | |||
| 36.48 | 17 | False Start | Sotheby's | |||
| 15.02 | 7 | White Flag | Christie's | |||
| 9.18 | 4.18 | Diver | Christie's | |||
| 8.28 | 3.63 | Pink Lady | Sotheby's | |||
| 8.49 | 3.63 | Out the Window | Sotheby's | |||
| 3.23 | 1.2 | Two Women | Christie's | |||
| 2.19 | 0.8 | L'Enigme du Desir/Ma Mere, Ma Mere, Ma Mere | Christie's | |||
| 4.13 | 0.53 | Mother and Child | Sotheby's | |||
| 1.88 | 0.22 | Death of Harlequin/Woman in a Garden | Sotheby's | |||
| 1.34 | 0.15 | La Belle Hollandaise | Sotheby's | |||
| 1.34 | 0.15 | Mother and Child | Sotheby's | |||
| 0.066 | Friedland, 1807 | Stewart estate sale | ||||
| 0.045 | Les Communiantes | Mary J. Morgan estate sale |
Private sales
- Jasper Johns' 1958 Flag painting was sold by Steven A. Cohen to Jean-Christophe Castelli for ca $110 million in 2010.
- Privately, Damien Hirst's For the Love of God, composed of diamond and platinum, sold to a consortium including the artist in August 2007 for $100 million.
- Another Jasper Johns painting, False Start, was sold by Kenneth C. Griffin to David Geffen on October 12, 2006, for a then record $80 million.
- The Whitney Museum of American Art privately purchased Jasper Johns's Three Flags in 1980 for $1 million, then a record price for a living artist.
- In 1967, citizens of Basel, Switzerland, raised nearly $2 million to buy two Picasso paintings for their Kunstmuseum Basel.
- In 1890,, owner of the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store, purchased Ernest Meissonier's 1814 The Campaign of France from a banker for 850,000 Fr, the highest price for a painting by artist dead or alive.