People love leaderboards. Especially at the end of the year they accumulate when we look back. One of the rituals of rankings in the art world is the art compass, which has been published for more than half a century and was invented by the art and business journalist Willi Bongard.
The painter Gerhard Richter led him for almost half of this time. The evaluation is based on the number of exhibitions, specialist articles, awards and museum purchases. On this basis, Gerhard Richter will probably continue to stay at the top.
He is followed by the American artist Bruce Nauman, and right behind him are two other Germans, Georg Baselitz and Rosemarie Trockel. The stars of tomorrow, who recorded the biggest increase in points outside the top 100, are almost even more exciting. The top position is occupied by the 96-year-old Japanese Yayoi Kusama, and after the American Tschabalala Self, the Swiss artist Julian Charrière, who lives in Berlin, follows in third place. In the special ranking of deceased artists, Joseph Beuys remains at the top.
Two days after the art compass, the art magazine “Monopol” has now published its “Top 100”, although only half of it is made up of artists, the other half is made up of collectors, museum people and gallery owners as enablers. In addition to market prices and auction records, the more important criterion here is who shaped the current discourse over the past year.
To our own surprise, Gerhard Richter also takes first place in “Monopol”, whom the art magazine has previously viewed more as an art historical figure than as a decisive position for contemporary debates. With his brilliant retrospective at the Paris Fondation Louis Vuitton, the 93-year-old gained so much attention in the art scene that “Monopoly” also put him at the top this time.
Second place goes to an entire region, the Gulf states, where more than anywhere else new museums are being built and cultural infrastructure is being built. Art Basel Qatar and Frieze Abu Dhabi will also be restarting there next year. The founding of the two art fairs is a result of the estimated 142,000 millionaires who will have relocated to the Gulf states in 2025 – attracted primarily by the tax exemption there. This also leads to shifts in the art world.
For many, it may be reassuring that for the time being it is still primarily Western players who are shaping the art world, including many who live and work in Germany. In the top places are the artists Katharina Grosse, Anne Imhof, Florentina Holzinger and Leiko Ikemura, the new president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Marion Ackermann and the two directors of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Sam Bardouil and Till Fellrath.