50 Iconic Artifacts
St. Peter's Basilica
"One of the most magnificent spaces on the face of the earth." Designed by, decorated by, and filled by some of the most talented artisans for 1.5 centuries spanning the Renaissance and Baroque. Large and ornate it is the center of the Roman Catholic Church. (Dome designed by Michelangelo)
Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain)
Frank Ghery (1997) Built in the heart of a waning industrial town, this behemoth of a structure, houses expansive galleries of art from the world-class Guggenheim collection. Its style, dubbed "deconstructivism" fragments forms that rise in seemingly capricious, wild, and unpredictable directions. Titanium and other materials cover the eclectically formed exterior, while walkways and glass atriums seem to bring the city and museum into the life of each other
Marilyn Diptych
Andy Warhol (1962) In both of these cases Warhol presented reproduced, common, everyday, accessible images as if they were fine art. He both depicts and creates the attitude, interests, and values of his era. Furthermore, many Warhol images were screen-printed, making them mass-producible, unoriginal, and less expensive. His work has a (two-fold if not more) effect. 1) It frames common life as worthy of aesthetic attention. 2) It dethrones "high art" from being separate from everyday existence.
De Nachtwacht
Baroque (Northern 1642 CE) AKA The Night Watch Rembrandt The pride of the Netherlands, this enormous (11' x 15') image with incredible composition, drama and attention to symbol and detail depicts a men's club as if they were the legitimate the guards of the city.
The Return of the Prodigal Son
Baroque (Northern 1669 CE) Rembrandt This earthy and warm image depicts a New Testament parable taking place in front of several witnesses. In it a repentant impoverished son finds a forgiving father who welcomes him home in an unforgettable embrace. His father is wealthy, but stoops to gather his son to himself.
Las Meninas
Baroque (Nothern 1656 CE) Velasquez Ichnographically rich, this painting plays some smart visual riddles while challenging the hegemony of royalty. Velazquez deftly, but with a painterly ease and flare, depicts himself, the court painter, a little person and others along-side the princess, La Infanta. The king and queen show up only on the reflective mirror on the wall behind the artist who could be painting either them or this painting Las Meninas
Ecstasy of St. Theresa
Baroque (Southern 1645-1652 CE) Bernini After nearly ruining St Peters Basillica by adding on an oversized and unwieldy bell-tower, Bernini came to near ruin. His redemptive sculpture was the most daring body-drama to that point in time. It intertwines the physical with a sensuous spirituality, enveloping the viewer with carved marble, cast bronze, fresco painting, stained glass and architectural design... an all encompassing experience about miracles, faith, and knowing God. At the front of a chapel, a cherub plunges an arrow in and out of St Theresa's breast as her habit and face metaphor the spiritual ecstasy she experiences amidst her relationship with God. (1645-52 During the counter-reformation)
Hagia Sophia
Byzantine (535 CE) Constantinople Church of "Holy Wisdom" was built by Emperor Justinian to surpass the glory of Solomon's temple. This, the highest dome to that point in time, floats on a rim of light, resonating with the Byzantines interest in the spiritual over physical.
Parthenon
Classic Greek Period (440 BCE) Possibly the most referenced architecture in the world, this ingeniously designed classical building embodies what it meant to be a Greek during the classic period. From its curved (looks straight) lines to its (golden ratio) proportioning, to its marble figures, this building discusses the Greek belief of godlikeness in human form and the belief that man is the measure of all things.
Diskobolus
Classic Period Greek (460-450 BCE) Myron Exacting example of classic period Greek sculpture, Myron built a noble, perfect and ideal form on a canonical structure. This body in motion pauses in tension before release, capturing balance, harmony, beauty, and the proportions of the human body in a structure that celebrates the divine in humanity. (Marble Roman COPY of Greek Bronze original)
Bird in Space
Constantine Brancusi (1923) Brancusi, a student of Rodin, depicts not a bird but, in his words, "the meaning of flight". In doing so he pushes his materials to their limits in a language of abstraction that was still in its birthing period in Western culture. When his sculpture first came to NY from France in 1926 it was held up in customs because it was so revolutionary the customs agents wouldn't believe it was a work of art.
The Persistence of Memory
Dali (1931) In both of these cases Warhol presented reproduced, common, everyday, accessible images as if they were fine art. He both depicts and creates the attitude, interests, and values of his era. Furthermore, many Warhol images were screen-printed, making them mass-producible, unoriginal, and less expensive. His work has a (two-fold if not more) effect. 1) It frames common life as worthy of aesthetic attention. 2) It dethrones "high art" from being separate from everyday existence.
Woman I
De Kooning (1950-1952) Figuring that this series of Women would not sell, DeKooning made a painting that not even he knew was art or artful. It is gestural, muscular, primal and honest with possibly 80 other paintings underneath it. Although it looks a bit like cubism, this violent image does the opposite. Instead of building up a form from component parts, in an emotive response he deconstructs the female visage with each mark and slash of his brushes until it falls apart. Possibly it prophesies the destructive strangle-hold pornography would soon take on American culture.
Nighthawks
Edward Hopper (1942) In an unmistakably American setting, Hopper shows us a place we feel like we have been before. Specifically rendered details fall within vast swaths of barren surfaces. The painting defies exact narrative, which keeps the beholder in the barren space outside the diner. We might desire to go in, to listen, to converse, but we end up feeling as alone and isolated as the figures on the other side of the glass. The painting feels romantic and ideal but ever-so full of isolation.
Queen Nefertiti
Egypt-- Armana Revolution (1344 BCE) Her name means "the beautiful one is here" and and this icon of feminine beauty and gaceful naturalism shows it by overlaying canonical Egyptian geometric structure with an unmistakable humanity new to Egypt during the Monotheism that her husband Akenaten introduced. This admirable work is a sketch by the artist Thutmose, found in his studio. Medium: Plaster over limestone
The Scream
Expressionism, Symbolism (1893) Edvard Munch Described by Arthur Lubow as "the Mona Lisa of the Modern era", this searing image expresses the ineffable horrors of suicidal inclinations. Munch ratchets up Van Gogh's emotional color and line to the level of a psychological drama allowing the viewer to empathize with this waif caught up in the overwhelming sensation.
Guggenheim Museum (Manhattan)
Frank Lloyd (1949-1959) Wright leaves an unforgettable modernist mark on Manhattan with this ahead-of-its time structure (yet reminiscent of the Pantheon). Its' cantilever-full design utilizes concrete and rebar with techniques that were specifically honed for this structure. The tastefully patterned ramp spirals up around an open atrium to showcase paintings but the structure itself never recedes as its own work of art.
Notre Dame de Cahrtres
Gothic (1145-1513 CE) Built on a miracle so-to-speak, this cathedral is of the earliest and most unified examples of Gothic architecture. (taller, thinner walls, more windows, more light) The proportioning of the building built on the golden ratio was intended, like so many other aspects of the structure, to incline the human soul to transcendence.
American Gothic
Grant Wood (1930) Maybe no other painting could be so recognizably American. With what undertone is this painting describing America? The painting defies interpretation making it a Mona Lisa in its own right. The image was painted just one year after the stock-market crash that lead to the great depression. The unflinching couple stands humble, stoic, hardworking, unmovable.
Nike of Samothrace
Hellenistic Period Greek (250 BCE or 190 BCE?) This emotionally charged monumental goddess of victory presses forward atop the prow of a stone ship. Like no work before it, with this masterpiece of realism, stone transforms into wind and spirit.
The Joy of Life
Henri Matisse (1905-1906) This is possibly Matisse's greatest work of Fauvism. "As with the earlier Fauve canvases, color is responsive only to emotional expression and the formal needs of the canvas, not the realities of nature. The references are many, but in form and date, Bonheur de Vivre is closest to Cézanne's last great image of bathers." (SmartHistory)
Impression Sunrise
Impressionism (Optical Realism 1872) Claude Monet This artifact showed in the first impressionist exhibit and eventually gave rise to "Impressionism" as the name of one of the most memorable and (eventually) loved art movements in the history of Western art. Monet's realistic and perceptual emphasis of color, even hue, over line stands on the shoulders of Rubens, Delacroix, Turner and others. The quickness of stroke and immediacy of the scene resonates with the quickness of life that took hold of society during the industrial revolution
Arrangement in Black and Grey, the Artist's Mother
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1871) Actually having been accused by the most influential art critic of his era to "have flung a pot of paint at the canvas," Whistler did believe that artists should be more interested in the harmony of the visual elements than in representing the natural world. "Art for art's sake" sums it up well. Besides the large (ironic) influence of that art critic John Ruskin, Whistler also grew his aesthetic from Japanese prints and the impressionists. In this case he has painted his mother, what should be a tender portrait he initially titles after the paint that makes his mother appear on the canvas.
Fountain
Marcel Duchamp (1917/1964) He acquired this urinal, flipped the "ready-made," on its back, signed it with a name not-his-own, and entered it in an art show. This distinctly set idea/concept as primary and set a precedent for removing craft/skill/technique from the necessary qualities of art allowing even this urinal, to begin philosophical discourse as to the nature of art. This direction paved the way for among many other things: pop art, conceptual art, and postmodern philosophy including deconstruction. Art critics and art historians widely consider this most the most influential work of art from the 20th century.
Death of Marat
Neoclassicism (1793 CE) Jacques Louis David This painting personifies the sacrifice and believed virtue of the proponents of the first French Revolution. From a tub that Marat was confined to because of a skin condition, he called for the deaths of the bourgeois. Charlotte Corday, tired of his death lists, gained access to his room and stabbed him to death. Shortly after, David paints his friend Marat as a saint and hero in the pose of Caravaggio's Christ descended from the cross.
Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon
Pablo Picasso (1907) The incredibly gifted Picasso while living in a rat infested basement, toiled over 700 sketches to discover this daring proto-cubist composition that is a response to Cezanne's' Bathers and a reaction to Matisse's Joy of Life. It deconstructs space, opens up form, lacks a focal point and is the first to avoid any kind of beauty, all of which deeply influenced the Abstract Expressionists in New York when this painting appeared there in the 1940s.
Guitar
Pablo Picasso (1912-1913) As the first assemblage sculpture, Picasso birthed this form from collage (also invented by Picasso) by playing with the geometry of a guitar (already a sculptural object) as opposed to the time-honored sculptural tradition of sculpting the human body. This form ends up leading the way for future artists to make sculptures about anything and out of anything.
Guernica
Pablo Picasso (1973) With a saturation bombing, Hitler (at Franco's request) as a show of strength, annihilated the civilian population of Guernica (a Basque town). The world responded with shock and horror. Picasso did to and expressed the horrors of war as no one had before... in this large grand history-like painting done in his honed language of synthetic cubism. The symbolism is rich and the emotions are raw.
Venus (or Woman) of Willendorf
Paleolithic (25-22,000 BCE) This well known, mysterious, ancient, and exquisitely crafted human figure reveals definite ideas about posture, proportion, and symmetry. We will never know what she was originally intended for but this small sculpture could fit comfortably into the palm of your hand. 11 cm high
Starry Night
Post-Impressionism (1889 CE) Van Gogh When Van Gogh painted this, he envisioned a world where God was present everywhere. In capturing that vision in his post-impressionist phase, he loosed art from its mooring in slavishly describing external reality as scientifically observable. Instead he used color and line expressively and cast a vision that 20th century artists could follow into new and unforeseen creative directions.
La Grande Jatte
Post-Impressionism, Pointillism (1884-1886 CE) Seurat To pursue a brighter of the canvas Seurat broke each element down into component colors. This took impressionism in a scientific direction, leaving behind much of the capricious and soft aspects of impressionism. He replaces these with a stoic, linear, classicism that anchors his subjects in unforgettable solitude.
The Stone Breakers
Realism (1836 CE) Courbet This image evidences Courbet's social and political interest in the plight of the poor (they were largely forgotten after the French Revolutions). Here he depicts them with no romantic undertones as worthy of study even amidst their toil. He painted this brutally rough composition just one year after Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto.
Le DeJeuner sur l'herbe
Realism (1863 CE) Manet Manet dismantles the beholders expectations of art while breaking many artistic rules in subject and form. Although the image is underpinned by classic composition it gaffs at classical assumptions and content. Manet thwarts those notions by, among other things, his artistic treatment of the nude woman, making her presence more personal and more alarming. ( recently disrobed, staring back at us, and flattened). Furthermore, he emphasizes the flatness and physicality of the canvas by his positioning and posturing of the woman in the background, as well as the bold physicality of the paint.
The Gates of Hell
Realism, Romanticism, Impressionism (1880) Auguste These gates counterpoint Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. Dante sits above the Inferno deep in thought. The couple Paola and Francesca were initially conceived for it as the sculpture know as "the Kiss" but were later separated from this composition to become their own distinct work.
Holy Trinity
Renaissance (1425 CE) Masaccio To make a physical realistic representation of Christ at this time was in its own right revolutionary. Additionally, however, Masaccio painted this completely illusionistic space, just 3 years after Brunelleschi published his discoveries in Alberti's book Della Pittura. It is the earliest known example of true 1-point scientific linear perspective. The writing at the bottom says approximately "I once was what you are and what I am you also will be."
Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride
Renaissance (Northern 1434 CE) Jan Van Eyck The quality of paint is mesmerizing and the subjects are arranged with masterful taste. Some of the cultural knowledge has been lost, so this painting remains somewhat mysterious, nevertheless, this symbolically rich and exquisitely detailed 33" x 23" image showcases the precise rendering abilities of its most gifted masters. He signed the painting on the wall in the back between the two heads "Jan Van Eyck was here"
Isenheim Altarpiece
Renaissance (Northern 1515 CE) Grunewald This painting displays a earth-bound and human perspective counter to that of the classically idealized religious images of the Southern Renaissance. On the front a definitively human crucified Christ reveals his ability to identify with humanity in their suffering. However, when the panels were opened on Sunday the Risen Lord unveils his power, defeating sin and death.
School of Athens
Renaissance (SOuthern 1510-1511 CE) Raphael In this symbolically loaded and ambitious composition, Raphael gracefully relays Renaissance values (science, philosophy and art) and divides between Plato and Aristotle, the other contributors to western culture. The architecture he renders contributes to the magnitude of the aura.
David (Donatello)
Renaissance (Southerm 1430 CE) Donatello Once a student of Ghiberti, Donatello made this, the first life-size, freestanding nude statue since ancient Roman times. This focus and respect for the body is distinctly classical, although more natural than the Greeks, it clearly breaks with prior Christian artistic tradition. This sculpture worked as a civic symbol for both the Florentines and the Medici family.
Sacrifice of Isaac
Renaissance (Southern 1401-1402 CE) Ghiberti This Bronze relief won the Florence Baptistery door competition (established Ghiberti's career) and helped reintroduce the classical style to southern Europe.
Birth of Venus
Renaissance (Southern 1486 CE) Botticelli This Byzantine and classically influenced painting dared to, in a Christian culture, reveal, not Mary or Eve but a nude pagan goddess at the center of the image. Possibly following the Greek goal of physical beauty that is meant to lead the viewer to divine beauty, the fresco is whimsical, poetic, and unforgettable.
Last Supper
Renaissance (Southern 1495-1498 CE) Da Vinci "A perfect representation of the high renaissance," Leonardo visually and expressively walks the viewer through an intense story within a geometric interior. It is an excellent example of 1-point linear perspective used to reinforce Christ's divinity and humanity as well as the disciples reactive humanity.
Pieta
Renaissance (Southern 1499 CE) Michelangelo At the age of 23, for his first major commission, Michelangelo turned marble into flesh, depicting Christ's limp and lifeless, body in the arms of his resigned mother who presents him to us. Utilizing naturalism with ideal /classical harmony he plays with proportion enough to make Christ full-grown body fit gracefully into his mothers lap.
David (Michelangelo)
Renaissance (Southern 1501-1504 CE) Michelangelo The ambitious size, powerful pose, and classical inspiration worked by the artist at the age of 27, relays inner feeling amidst heroic physique. Michelangelo's application of anatomical knowledge reinforces the idea and content of the sculpture which resonate with the values of Florence. The sculpture ended up as a symbol for Florence.
Mona Lisa
Renaissance (Southern 1504 CE) Da Vinci This, the most famous painting in the world is viewed for 15 sec on average. It is a mysterious work painted by a most intriguing character for the last years of his life. For that point in time it's a rare ¾ pose, done in oil, in Italy with flawless chiaroscuro and attention to anatomy yet exhibits idealized proportions.
Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Renaissance (Southern 1508-1512 CE) Michelangelo The sculptor, in a 4-year project, created a dizzyingly ambitious and successful fresco of sibyls and prophets surrounding scenes from Genesis. The figures are powerful, elegant and graceful, arrayed in dazzling color.
Versailles
Rococo (1682-1789) Louis 8-16 This sprawling mansion (700 rooms) that began as a hunting cottage typifies the excessively opulent Rococo style and its emphasis on luxury while neglecting the poor.
Pantheon
Roman-- Early Roman Empire (125 CE) An engineering marvel, this temple to all the gods, is an awe-inspiring structure, the largest dome to that point in time. Its "Dome of heaven" makes a perfect uninterrupted globe of space. If inverted, the open oculus would rest on floor. It has been one of the most influential structures from Renaissance through the Modern era.
The Third of May
Romanticism (1814-1815 CE) Goya Unlike any painting before it, this masterpiece emotes. This Romantic scene shows the slaughter of the native Spanish at the hands of the Napoleonic occupational army. Kenneth Clark considered it one of the first Modern paintings because of its revolutionary style (not illustrative), subject (subjective), and intention (social indignation).
Raft of the Medusa
Romanticism (1818-1819 CE) Gericault Typically a beholder of a painting this large would expect it to depict an ancient historical scene that caters to her tastes. This extraordinarily large image, however, depicts a disturbing scene from a relatively current event. As a ship went down at sea, the rich took the life-rafts and eventually cut the poor's raft loose. The rich were found shortly thereafter, and brought home as heroes... until the poor were saved and told their side of the story, which involved dehydration, death, and cannibalism. Only 15 of them survived. In this image life-sized rotting bodies lie exposed in the face of beholder as the figures at the top try to wave down the ship that would eventually save them.