Celebrated contemporary artist, Julian Opie, in front of one of his artworks.
Julian Opie is a British artist most famous for his stylised, minimalistic portraits which draw on many elements of Pop Art. His highly distinctive work is instantly recognisable, and though his repertoire is in some ways limited, it has been enough to propel him into the public eye as a leading and much-respected contemporary artist.
Opie’s popularity is reflected in the prices his work fetches. Prints, for instance, account for 53% of the artist’s work sold at auction, and the majority of them reach prices between £1,000 and £5,000, though a significant proportion have attained up to £50,000.
Below is a list of Julian Opie’s five most expensive prints sold at auction. If you’d like to find out more about how much a Julian Opie print might be worth, or how to sell it, please contact Mark Littler today.
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New York Couples
Julian Opie has created several series based on photographs of figures walking in the streets of well-known cities, including these eight screenprints from 2019. When asked about this method of working, Opie stated: “I spend some time photographing people, but I spend longer choosing them… There’s an awful lot of people you can’t draw because something is wrong with the picture.”
Once the artist has selected the usable pictures, he said: “I’ll draw all the people who are drawable and then I’ll play with them and mix and match them into groups.” Thus he creates series such as New York Couples, which was sold by SBI Art Auction in March 2022 for £117,738. The figures in the print are not real-life couples (some are even walking away from each other), but merely people in close proximity, all absorbed in their own small bubbles. It’s an interesting representation of being an independent individual in a large crowd, and a comment on the anonymity one can achieve in a large city.
New York Couples sold by SBI Art in 2022
Ika 4
Though Opie is a British artist whose work is most popular in the United Kingdom, he has significant international appeal, and he’s created public art projects in numerous cities around the world, including Tokyo, Prague, Seoul, Calgary, and New York. His art also fetches high prices in many different countries; this print from 2011 was sold by Ketterer Kunst GmbH in Munich in June 2021 for £51,560.
Ika 4 is part of a series of seven prints, all of which depict the same model, but in different poses and wearing different outfits. The prints appear more detailed and opulent than much of Opie’s other art, mostly due to the plush interiors, vibrant colours, and the elegant clothes worn by the model, none of which are common features in Opie’s work.
Ika 4 sold by Ketterer Kunst in 2021
Sian Walking/Jeremy Walking In A Coat/Verity Walking/Kris Walking
These four prints were sold by Phillips in September 2023 for £50,000, and they return to one of Opie’s favourite themes: figures in motion. To emphasise the movement of the characters, the artist experimented with lenticular printing, a technique which, according to Opie, uses “a 19th century invention of grooved lenses that gives the illusion of movement as you pass by a picture”, thus feeding into the artist’s deep interest in different artistic movements and techniques.
To create the prints, several images were divided into vertical strips and interlaced with each other, with each strip representing a frame of animation. The finished images were then placed behind a plastic lenticular lens screen. This means that when the viewer walks past the print, the figure in the image appears to be moving, too. In the case of these four prints, each figure has been created to look as if they are walking, and therefore mimicking the movements of the viewer. In Opie’s own words, “it’s a simple trick that fools no one, but nonetheless breaks the rules of reality. Magic is an important part of art”.
Sian Walking/Jeremy Walking In A Coat/Verity Walking/Kris Walking sold by Phillips in 2023
Walking In London 1: Detective/Lawyer/Banker/Student/Nurse
The Walking in London series from 2014 features images printed onto lenticular acrylic panels to give the illusion of movement, and it focuses on various different figures, all of whom are identified only by their occupation. As with much of Opie’s work, the series represents fairly mundane, everyday moments in these people’s lives. The quotidian is something the artist is particularly interested in; he’s said in the past that “mundane things are just as exciting as all the things you might imagine escaping into.” These five prints from the series far exceeded their estimated £25,000 to £35,000 when they were sold by Philips in January 2018 for £50,000.
Walking in London 1 sold by Phillips in 2018
Woman Undressing 1
Julian Opie’s figures are invariably pared down to the absolute basics, created from just enough simple lines for the viewer to understand the image. Woman Undressing 1 is no exception, featuring clean, bold lines (with Opie’s customary lack of feet or neck) against a vivid orange background. The print was sold by Grisebach in December 2023 for £42,859.
According to Opie, this minimalistic, reductive style was inspired by road signs and other “public imagery” designed to give information as quickly as possible (such as where the fire escapes are). Opie has stated many times that his work “is about how we interpret and read the world, how it feels. I don’t want to draw anything particularly special and I don’t want you to get too involved in who these people are…, but instead recognise the process of looking and the process of feeling what’s in front of you.”
Woman Undressing 1 sold by Grisebach in 2023
