Mona lisa by DaVinci.- My first pick because Mona Lisa revolutionized art in a very technical way—one of the first paintings to smile in art history, she makes eye contact (or past your shoulder) which was a very strange thing, her eyes followed you, DaVinci tried to play with foreshortening with her hands, he invented atmospheric perspective with Mona Lisa, and he uses chiaroscuro, artists adapted his techniques after this painting. He fell in love with his own painting and who wouldn’t? It’s a beautiful piece. Even today we still write about it, make documentaries, made a movie, and many things about this artwork are a complete mystery.
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| Mona Lisa |
Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo.- Not only was this huge piece completed in only 4 years (same amount of time davinci painted the mona lisa) but he painted it laying on this back. We have recently discovered many profane things Michelangelo added to this painting, and this is widely believed to be Michelangelo’s crowning achievement in painting. Michelangelo showed anatomy, there’s an illustration of a human brain, and showed god mooning at the pope right above him. He also painted realistic illusionistic architecture and supporting figures.
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| Sistine Chapel ceiling |
David by Michelangelo.- Michelangelo, once again, revolutionized art history. This time, he set the imagery of male perfection/beauty. He gave The Spearbearer an upgrade. More realistic, more muscular and more “beautiful”, but still keeping him calm (expression & pose—with the contrapposto) and brave looking.
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| David |
Starry night by Van Gogh.- this piece took impressionism and approached it with a less realistic theme. The sky is all swirly, the colors are obviously not realistic, the stars are too big… I think this really impacted art because it allowed artists to paint things that weren’t real, using their imagination a lot more. (also, art had started losing power around this time)
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| Starry Night |
Demoiselles D’Avignon by Picasso.- I believe this artwork impacted the art world after it. It lead to cubism, which broke every single rule set by previous artists before Picasso and led to what the art world is today. Just look at the painting, there’s no proportion, no perspective, no detail, impossible anatomy, no naturalism, no symmetry, etc.
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| Demoiselles D'Avignon |
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp.- Easily the most important artwork in the last 500 years, a urinal that Duchamp ordered and put the company’s name on it (R.Mutt). it simply raised the question “what is art?” With this controversial urinal, Duchamp raised the million dollar question, is it really art? Why not. I think it had great impact on modern art culture, because you see a lot of artists nowadays doing basically the same thing Marcel Duchamp did, grabbing something that has been manufactured by someone else, and putting it in the museum with their name on it. It has adapted to something much more in the modern art world, you see artists with the idea, and making others do it for them. (for example Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol, he made others do it but the idea was his) I think he also opened people’s eyes as to what art really is. Art is in the eye of the beholder, their interpretation of what is there, how that piece is perceived to them, how it makes them feel, what it makes them think. That’s what art is supposed to do, it boggles the mind.
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| Fountain |
The Treachery of images by Rene Magnitte.- Rene Magnitte raised the viewer’s attention to question their reality. He painted a pipe and wrote “this is not a pipe”. Which is true, it’s not a pipe… it’s a painting of a pipe. I think this painting is important because it made people realize something else about art, it made them think of art differently… what you see it’s a painting of something, not the thing itself.
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| The Treachery of images |
Autumn Rhythm by Jackson Pollock.-
Abstract Expressionism emerged thanks to this artwork, and this is a perfect
example of what expressing what you’re feeling is all about. Hardly thrown
paint at the canvas, like any manly man would do. I think abstraction is what
really shaped art today. Abstraction is a way of self-expressing without any
use of element.
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| Autumn Rhythm |
Composition in red, blue and yellow by Mondrian.- I think of this artwork as a mixture of abstraction and minimalistic art, both still going on today. This artwork by Mondrian is more than meets the eye, he was all about spiritualism and Neo-platicism. This grid, delineated with black lines and painted in with primary colors, soon formed into an art movement. But what made this his most popular “composition”? He had many others. Maybe because there’s a lot of red, so more contrast. (compared to most of the other ones which are mostly white with a bit of color)
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| Composition in red, blue and yellow |
I love you with my ford by James
Rosenquist.- Although pop art began in the late 1950’s, in America it had its
greates impetus during the 1960’s, and I think this artwork in particular was
one of the first to really push pop art forward. The ford, the spaghetti and the
woman literally represented the typical American male. We like nice cars, food
and—ofcourse—women.
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| I love you with my Ford |
