Trending Artists at Art Basel in Hong Kong 2014
As the highly anticipated second edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong is unveiled, an international audience converges on the fair looking for the next big artists, and the familiar figures they’ve come to expect. Over the past week Artsy users have been scouring our preview of the fair, and we present below the artists who have received the most follows.
10. David Hockney: A pioneer of the British Pop Art movement in the early 1960s alongside Richard Hamilton, Hockney is as relevant as ever today, due in part to his vibrant landscapes created on an iPad.
9. Sam Falls: Known for combining photography, painting, and sculpture, Sam Falls explores the intersection of color, digital imagery, and natural processes; he also tops our trending artists under 40 list.
8. Pablo Picasso: As prolific as he was unparalleled, Picasso is an international art fair staple; at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Beck & Eggling brings a lithograph and an oil by the 20th-century master.
7. Willem de Kooning: A first-generation Abstract Expressionist, de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the 20th century and one of the few AbEx members to maintain commitment to the figurative tradition.
6. Yayoi Kusama: Recently in the spotlight at multiple booths at Frieze New York, and still garnering buzz following her David Zwirner show last fall, Kusama has been an influential figure since the 1960s, through her dizzying walk-in installations, public sculptures, and “Dots Obsessions” paintings.
5. Vik Muniz: Popularized for his series of canonical artworks realized with trash, the ingenious Muniz recently worked with scientists to develop a method to create drawings on grains of sand.
4. Frank Stella: An innovator of post-painterly abstraction, Stella is known as an iconic figure within postwar American art, and is considered the most influential painter of a generation that moved beyond Abstract Expressionism toward Minimalism.
3. Keith Haring: During a career that was severely cut short, Haring bridged the gap between the art world and the street through his distinct pop-graffiti style, and spearheaded the New York East Village Art scene in the 1970s and ’80s.
2. Shepard Fairey: Rising to prominence as a street artist in the 1990s with his “Obey Giant” campaign, Fairey disrupts the distinction between fine and commercial art through his prints, recently paying tribute to Ai Weiwei, and investigating the significance of the American flag.
1. Roy Lichtenstein: Master of benday dots and champion of commercial art, Lichtenstein’s iconic paintings began as drawings, which he would enlarge with a projector. A drawing by the artist, which riffs on Matisse, is on view at the fair.
