[Best of 2014] The Year in Viral Art

Art Basel Miami offered $3 billion worth of work, Peter Lik sold the most expensive photograph ever ($6.5 million), and a second Mona Lisa was discovered, making 2014 a monumental year for art. Whether it was Kara Walker's sugar sculpture, Miley Cyrus' solo show, or even Shia LaBeouf's #IAMSORRY performance, this year was filled with works we couldn't stop seeing, sharing, or talking about.

This is the Year in Viral Art:

+ We Instagrammed Kara Walker’s 75-foot-long sugar sculpture at the Domino Sugar Factory and she caught us taking #artselfies.

+ Takeshi Murata created an alienesque sphere that could melt into itself.

+ In February, a random painter picked up one of Ai Weiwei's colored vases, and smashed it into pieces at the Perez Art Museum in Miami.

+ UK nanotech company Surrey Nanosystems created vantablack, the darkest material in the world. Master sculptor Anish Kapoor announced he'd soon be creating something with it.

+ Jeff Koons showed off what looked like a big pile of Play-Doh and an inflatable Hulk at the Whitney Museum as part of his first New York retrospective, and later sold other peoples handbags as readymades.

+ Shia LaBeouf sat in a room with a paper bag over his head in the name of performance art for his #IAMSORRY exhibition in Los Angeles.

+ Artist Vik Muniz and artist/researcher Marcelo Coelho etched intricate castles onto grains of sand. Also in 2014, Muniz, alongside MIT postdoctoral fellow, Tal Danino, biogenerated artworks using cancer cells, cheek cells, and bacteria.

+ Shaquille O’Neil curated his own portrait exhibition. Enough said.

+ Back in February, Beijing-based sculptor Li Hongbo crafted paper sculptures that stretched like slinkys.

+ Over the summer, Japanese artist Azuma Makota sent flower art traveling 90,000 feet into our stratosphere. Then, in November, Makota released a documentary about it.

+ Studio Roosegaarde's glowing bike path inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night lit up the Dutch province where the artist was born.

+ The floors of the Sacré Coeur and the Castel Del Monte were coated with a morphing virtual carpet, courtesy of digital artist Miguel Chevalier.

+ We watched a model’s face transform with projection-mapped makeup.

+ Disney heroines got a rude awakening in the real world.

+ 8,000 balloons recreated the Berlin Wall for its 25th Anniversary, and we took a peek behind-the-scenes.

+ We questioned, along with the rest of the world, who owned the monkey selfie.

+ The most expensive photo in the world sold for $6.5 million. The next day, another artist joked that he'd actually sold a photograph for $6.5 million and ten cents that same week.

"Phantom" by Peter Lik is the most expensive photograph ever sold. via