Contemporary art is difficult. Who in the world is it and how is it valued?
If you have ever tried to learn about contemporary art, you may have had such a puzzling experience.
Read the "100 People for Understanding Contemporary Art" series for a comprehensive overview of the major national and international players in the art world.

1. Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons is known for his paintings and sculptures that use kitschy imagery.
His most famous work is a ceramic sculpture of balloon art. He is also known for his "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" and other works that push kitsch to its limits.
Warhol first became active in the art world in the 1980s, when the contemporary art scene was dominated by minimalism and other forms of truncated expression. In this context, his factory-style works, which are reminiscent of Warhol's activities, with themes of mass production, advertising, and commerce itself, like factories, have been praised by some collectors and critics, while others have been harshly criticized.
Famous in the auction world for its often historic high prices, on November 14, 2007, Sotheby's auctioned off Koons's "Hanging Heart" for $23.6 million, the highest price ever paid by a living artist at the time. This was the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist at the time.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is a British contemporary artist.
He is well known as one of the leading figures among the Young British Artists (YBAs), a group of contemporary artists who emerged in the 1990s.
He is particularly well known for his "Natural History" series, in which dead animals (sharks, cows, sheep) are preserved in formalin. The works, which dealt with animals that had been cut up in rings or left to rot, were intended to reflect on the inevitability of life and death, but they also drew criticism for their cruelty and the fact that they did not look like works of art.
In 1993, Hirst represented the United Kingdom at the Venice Biennale of Fine Arts, where he exhibited "Mother and Child, Divided," a formalin-preserved work of a cow and calf cut in half lengthwise. This work won him the Turner Prize in 1995, and he is an artist of high reputation instead of notoriety.

3. Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans is a Belgian-born painter.
His work revolves around the relationship between man and history, the fact that man can ignore history, and the ethics of right and wrong. For this reason, World War II is one of his most important motifs.
He is considered one of the most important artists in European figurative painting, and in the age of digital devices, he has continued to show his work ambitiously, even among artists who continue to work in traditional mediums, which are considered to have lost their value.

4 Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor is a contemporary sculptor from Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
He is one of the most sought after contemporary artists of all time. He lives and works in London.
His works are characterized by their simple three-dimensional shapes and the use of light-reflecting metals and light-absorbing dyes on their surfaces, which have a strong visual impact on the viewer.
His works include a three-dimensional work using Benta Black, "the world's blackest paint," and "Sky Mirror," which reflects the viewer's own reflection.

5. simone leigh

Simone Leigh is a black female artist from Chicago, USA. Her work spans a wide range of fields, including sculpture, painting, installation, video, performance, and social activities.
Her work incorporates African art and feminism with the goal of reinserting marginalized black women's social activism at the center of society.
She will hold a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2022 as a representative of the United States Pavilion, and her "Brick House," which was shown at the main venue, won the Grand Prize.

6. Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud is often mentioned as one of the most important figurative painters of the 20th century.
Born in Berlin in 1922 as the grandson of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, his family emigrated to England in 1933 in fear of Nazi persecution.
At the beginning of his career, he was influenced by surrealism and other influences, but his work shifted to unique portraits of familiar people. Floyd was a man who favored very closed relationships, using only family members and close friends as models and leaving behind many tense paintings with a thick-painted technique that even gouged out the mental state of the models. He was also famous for demanding that his subjects pose for painstakingly long periods of time.

7. Banksy

Banksy is the most famous street artist in the world.
His paintings on city walls are reproduced and sold for millions of dollars at various auctions.
Often his work focuses on social issues and includes a strong political statement as a message. The Palestinian Civil War, graffiti that calls for peace in numerous conflict zones, and stencil works that poke fun at corrupt regimes are at the center of the conversation whenever they are released. In recent years, he has also caused a stir with works that are rigged to automatically mutilate themselves the moment they are sold at auction.