Yayoi Kusama Tops 2023 List of 21st-Century Artists

Artworks by Yayoi Kusama collectively sold for nearly US$81 million last year at the major global auction houses, making her the top-selling 21st-century contemporary artist, according to the Hiscox Artist Top 100 report.

The boost in sales for Kusama’s works pushed David Hockney, the previous year’s top-selling artist, to second place. Hockney’s art garnered US$50.3 million in sales last year, down from US$74.7 million in 2022, said Hiscox, a London-based specialty insurer.

The second annual ranking, compiled with research and analysis from London-based ArtTactic, also showed Kusama’s No. 1 ranking was consistent with a strong showing by women artists overall last year. Joining Kusama among the top five last year was Cecily Brown, who ranked fourth with US$31.7 million in sales.

Yoshitomo Nara, ranked third with sales of US$36 million and George Condo ranked fifth with sales of US$29.5 million.

Total sales of contemporary art made after the year 2000 fell 17% to US$955 million last year from US$1.5 billion in 2022, according to the report. Though sales of contemporary art by women fell 8% to US$306 million, the number of works sold rose 21%. And sales by their male peers fell a much sharper 20%, the report said.

“The market for female artists has been much more resilient than that for male artists,” the report said.

The results go beyond ultra-contemporary art. Earlier this year, ArtTactic reported that overall sales of art by women at the major auction houses hit a record US$825.8 million last year, up 7% from a year earlier.

Another mark of progress: Art by women comprised 32% of 21st-century art auction sales last year, up from 29% in 2022, as the number of women artists behind these sales continued to climb. There were 728 women artists represented last year, up 179% from 2019, the report said.

“Contemporary female artists have always been undervalued and underrepresented,” Robert Read , head of art and private clients at Hiscox said in a news release. “Meaningful progress has been made in recent years, as the market gradually begins to recognise the importance and value of their work, but we are still some way from parity.”

Following Kusama and Brown, the top female artists by sales value were Julie Mehretu, with sales of US$21.4 million; Jadé Fadojutimi, with sales of US$8.5 million; and Jenny Saville, with sales of US$7.8 million.

The Hiscox report just examined the auction market for works created in the 21st century and sold at Christie’s, Phillips, and Sotheby’s. This segment was stronger than much of the art market last year, with sales still 26% above pre-pandemic levels. Sales of art made before 2000 have fallen 22% since 2019, the report said.

This segment of the market is also making up a larger share of all post-war and contemporary art sold at auctions, reaching 70% last year from 63% a year earlier.

The Hiscox report was consistent with other analyses of the art market last year that found large-ticket sales, over US$1 million, declined in favour of sales of works with price tags of US$50,000 or less.

Within the 21st-century art category, the number of lower-priced works sold gained 25% while the number sold above US$1 million fell by 12%. The trend is backed by a near doubling in the number of artists making 21st-century works that end up at auction since 2019, the report said.

The benefits of so-called flipping—or the practice of selling art made by young artists within two years of their creation—fell dramatically, bringing in US$39 million in sales last year from US$67 million in 2022. That’s despite the number of lots with this newly made art at 662 was about the same as the previous year.

Though Kusama is 95 years old, 41% of those making 21st-century art are under age 45, unsurprisingly. Leading this group of younger artists last year was: Nicolas Party, whose works sold for US$20.2 million; the late Matthew Wong, whose works sold for US$16.5 million; Fadojutimi; Caroline Walker, whose works sold for US$7.5 million; and Dmitri Cherniak, whose works sold for US$6.7 million.

Apple has dominated the electronics supply chain for years. No more.

Artificial-intelligence companies are writing huge checks for chips, memory, specialised glass fibre and more, and they have begun to out-duel Apple in the race to secure components.

Suppliers accustomed to catering to Apple’s every whim are gaining the leverage to demand that the iPhone maker pay more.

Apple’s normally generous profit margins will face pressure this year, analysts say, and consumers could eventually feel the hit.

Chief Executive Tim Cook mentioned the problem in a Thursday earnings call, saying Apple was seeing constraints in its chip supplies and that memory prices were increasing significantly.

Those comments appeared to weigh on Apple shares, which traded flat despite blowout iPhone sales and record company profit.

“Apple is getting squeezed for sure,” said Sravan Kundojjala, who analyses the industry for research firm SemiAnalysis.

AI chip leader Nvidia recently became the largest customer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , or TSMC, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on a podcast.

Apple had been TSMC’s biggest customer by a wide margin for years. TSMC is the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced chips for AI servers, smartphones and other computing devices.

Spokesmen for Apple and TSMC declined to comment.

The big computers that handle AI tasks don’t look like the smartphones consumers own, but many companies supply components for both. In particular, memory chips are in short supply as companies such as OpenAI, Alphabet’s Google, Meta , Microsoft and others collectively spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI computing capacity.

“The rate of increase in the price of memory is unprecedented,” said Mike Howard , an analyst for research firm TechInsights.

That applies both to the flash memory chips that store photos and videos, called NAND, as well as the memory used to run apps quickly, called DRAM.

By the end of this year, the price of DRAM will quadruple from 2023 levels, and NAND will more than triple, estimates TechInsights.

Howard estimates that Apple could pay $57 more for the two types of memory that go into the base-model iPhone 18 due this fall compared with the base model iPhone 17 currently on sale. For a device that retails for $799, that would be a big hit to profit margins.

Apple’s purchasing power and expertise in designing advanced electronics long made it an unrivaled Goliath among the Asian companies that make most of the iPhone’s parts and assemble the device.

Apple spends billions of dollars a year on NAND, for instance, according to people familiar with the figures, likely making it the single biggest buyer globally. Suppliers flocked to win Apple’s business, hoping to leverage its know-how and prestige to attract other customers.

These days, however, “the companies now pushing the boundaries of human‑scale engineering are the ones like Nvidia,” said Ming-chi Kuo, an analyst with TF International Securities.

Demand for AI hardware is poised to keep growing rapidly. Apple’s spending growth is modest in comparison with what is being spent to fill up AI data centers, even though it is breaking records with huge sales of the iPhone 17.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are raising the price of a type of DRAM chip for Apple, according to people familiar with Apple’s supply chain.

Big AI companies pay generously and are willing to lock in supply and make upfront payments, giving the South Korean chip makers leverage against the iPhone maker.

Apple signs long-term contracts for memory, but it has used its heft to squeeze suppliers.

Its contracts have empowered it to negotiate prices as often as weekly, and to even refuse to buy any memory from a supplier if Apple didn’t view the price as favorable, according to people familiar with its memory purchases.

To boost leverage with suppliers, Apple even began stocking more inventory of memory. That was atypical for Cook, who normally cuts inventory to the bone to maximize Apple’s cash flow.

Apple is fighting not only for current deliveries but also for the attention of engineers at suppliers.

Glass scientists who worked on developing the smoothest and lightest smartphone displays are now also spending time on specialised glass for packaging advanced AI processing chips, according to industry executives.

Makers of sensors and other gizmos inside the iPhone are winning new business from AI companies such as OpenAI that are developing their own hardware.

Still, suppliers said they were far from giving up on business with Apple. Working with Apple is a form of education, they said, because it remains one of the most demanding and disciplined customers in the industry.

TSMC, the Taiwanese chip manufacturer, has built successive generations of its most advanced chips with Apple as its lead customer, relying on the big predictable demand for iPhones.

Now that TSMC is doing more business with Nvidia and other AI companies, people with knowledge of the chip supply chain said Apple was exploring whether some lower-end processors could be made by someone other than TSMC.

One of Apple’s biggest profit-spinners is selling extra memory for far more than the memory chips cost the company.

Last fall Apple discontinued the iPhone Pro model with 128 gigabytes of storage.

Customers who want that model must now start at 256 gigabytes and pay $100 more—the type of move that could be repeated this year to help Apple offset higher costs, wrote Craig Moffett, an analyst at Moffett Nathanson, in an investor note.

However, Apple isn’t expected to raise the price of its next iPhone models over similarly equipped iPhone 17s, said Kuo, the analyst.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.

Yayoi Kusama Tops 2023 List of 21st-Century Artists

Parts for iPhones to cost more owing to surging demand from AI companies.