As the new art season kicks off, Art Focus Now has assembled a list of Russia´s top ten most expensive living artists according to record results recently achieved mostly in Western auction houses. Led by the nation´s favourite nonagenarian artist Eric Bulatov, who else has made the cut?

Heraclitus reminds us that everything is in constant flux – no one ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and the person is not the same either and art markets are no different. How to capture the heroes of the art market, when there are so many variables in this flowing river where creativity meets economic metrics?

I thought about this recently when reading with great interest The Art Newspaper Russia´s Top50 works by fifty individual living artists from Russia. This is a list of the top fifty records set at auction of all time, with many stretching back to the mid 2000s, the golden era of the Russian international art market. Reviewing the names and studying the works on this list, many of which I knew personally when I was working at Sotheby´s, it is clear just how much the market for Russian contemporary art has evolved over the past decade, where Heraclitus´ river is more like wild water rapids. The context itself has changed radically. Since the turn of the millennium, the general dynamic for the market in non-conformist art has been boom, bust, stagnation and finally rise over the past five years. We have to ask ourselves how relevant now are results from the boom years, and with a context that has shifted radically over the past five years, to what extent it is even meaningful to dig further back in history?

In fact, instead of bells championing past success, those very old results for certain artists who have not kept pace sound more today like the death knell of artistic and market obscurity. But then there is the question of pre- or post- 2022, slicing through the heart of the matter, do we disregard those works sold before, and count ground zero as March 2022? Some might argue this case, however, I have decided to take a five year time frame, in part because despite the lack of auction results today due to the shuttering of auctions in London, the private art market over this time particularly for Russia´s contemporary artists has continued to exist with a certain vigour, and because for statistics to be meaningful they require some quantity. Besides, it still feels too raw to define art sales and collecting by armed conflict, and five years ago we started this new decade of the twenty-twenties, so here we are, measuring the halfway point.

Endeavouring to grasp a reflection of market performance today, here is Art Focus Now´s top ten living Russian artists based on top records achieved at auction over the past five years. Half of the works were painted in the 1980s, showing that art from this decade which culminated in perestroika and the end of the Soviet Union has become coveted. Unsurprisingly, Eric Bulatov tops our list, which includes two artist duos:

Top records of course come with a disclaimer: they often can be outliers. I have organised this list in order of the top result achieved, however, a deeper analysis based on not just the highest value but also the breadth of the market, which involves looking at the number of works offered for sale over a period of time can be useful along with the percentage of works sold versus unsold. This can be helpful for collectors looking at art as a kind of investment, as they can see broader trends, and market demand behind headline sales. Looking at these metrics, Grisha Bruskin comes out on top because over the past five years there have been seventy three works offered for sale at auction, more than any other artist in the top ten list, of which 59% of them sold (ostensibly a slightly better statistic than that of Eric Bulatov, where sixty-four works by Bulatov were offered over the same period with 56% selling). The artist duo Dubossarsky and Vinogradov also fare well coming in top of the charts for the percentage of works which sold, an impressive 71% of all works offered sold, and they also can hold a trophy for being the youngest artists among the top ten where the average age is 76.

This list throws up as many questions as it answers. It is dominated by male artists from Moscow, with only one exception: Valery Koshlyakov, who was born and trained to be a set designer in Rostov-on-Don, but even he moved to the Russian capital in his 20s finding himself in a baptism of fire in the legendary Trekhprudny Gallery ´squat´ around 1991. And can we include artist duos which are now defunct, namely Komar and Melamid, and Dubossarsky and Vinogradov on this list because these pairings no longer exist? The Art Newspaper includes Alex Melamid as an individual artist also on its list, but with only four auction records, despite one record price it is hard to justify his inclusion.

At the bottom of the list in terms of market breadth is Victor Pivovarov as there have been only ten works by the artist offered for sale at auction since 2020. That being said, only three did not sell, so this provides some reassurance, and perhaps a prize can be given for Russia´s greatest living artist father and son, because Pavel Pepperstein´s market performance has been notably strong over the past five years, with no less than forty four works offered on the international market, 59% of which sold. This is a better statistic showing broad market demand than several artists in the top ten, including the legendary Eric Bulatov illustrating the vagaries of market ratings.