The highest known price paid for an artwork by a living artist was for Jasper Johns's 1958 painting Flag. Its 2010 private sale price was estimated to be about US$110 million ($ million in dollars).
All-time
This is a list of highest prices ever paid—at auction or private sale—for an artwork by an artist living at time of sale.
Progressive auction sales records
This is a list of progressive records of the highest price ever paid at auction for the work of an artist who was living at time of sale. As a progressive record listing, it only lists auctions records that topple the previous best. The current record price is US$91 million for Jeff Koons's 1986 sculpture, Rabbit, set in 2019. The current record price for a painting is $90 million for David Hockney's 1972 Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), set the prior year.
Private sales
Jasper Johns's 1958 Flag painting was sold by Steven A. Cohen to Jean-Christophe Castelli for ca $110 million in 2010 ($ million in dollars). Damien Hirst's For the Love of God (2007), composed of diamond and platinum, was privately acquired by a consortium, which included the artist himself, in August 2007 for $100 million – equivalent to approximately $141 million when adjusted for inflation to 2022 values. Another Jasper Johns painting, False Start (1959), was sold by Kenneth C. Griffin to David Geffen on October 12, 2006, for a then record $80 million.($ million in dollars) The Whitney Museum of American Art privately purchased Jasper Johns's Three Flags in 1980 for $1 million ($ million in dollars), 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 (US$162,000 in 1890; equivalent to $ million in ), the highest price for a painting by an artist alive or dead.