Modern Art

“Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” (1907)

Artist: Pablo Picasso
For Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Picasso gathered
inspiration from a variety of sources, including
African tribal art, Expressionism, and the Post-
Impressionist paintings of Paul Cézanne.
Assimilating these seemingly disparate sources in
one piece was a new approach to art making and
conveys just how much artists' perspectives
expanded with the rise of modernism. The painting
originally raised significant controversy for its
depiction of a brothel scene and for the jagged,
protruding, and abstract forms used to depict the
women. It is also widely considered the artwork that
launched the Cubism movement. The multiplicity of
styles incorporated within this work from Iberian
sculpture referenced in the women's' bodies to the
sculptural deconstruction of space derived from
Cézanne - not only represent a clear turning point
in Picasso's career but make the painting an incredibly distinct achievement of the modern era.

“The Large Bathers” (1898-1906)

Artist: Paul Cézanne
The Large Bathers is one of the finest examples
of Cézanne's exploration of the theme of the
modern, heroic nude within a natural setting.
The series of nudes are arranged into a variety
of positions, like objects in a still life, under the
pointed arch formed by the intersection of trees
and the sky. Cézanne was attempting a
departure from the Impressionist motifs of light
and natural effect and instead
composed this scene as a
series of carefully constructed
figures, as if creating sculpture
with his paintbrush.

Contemporary Art
“The Little Girl with the Balloon” (2002)
Artist: Banksy
Girl With Balloon is the quintessential Banksy image. Using his signature graffiti stencil technique, this
motif is internationally recognizable. It depicts a young girl whose hair and dress are blowing in the
wind, reaching for, or releasing, a red, heart-shaped balloon that has slipped from her grasp. The
gesture and the red balloon, an archetypal symbol of childhood and freedom, present a powerful
message that can be read in several ways. Whether you see the girl as losing the balloon, or about to
catch it, the meaning can be interpreted as a loss of innocence or the arrival of new hope and love.

“Cloud Gate” (2006)

Artist: Anish Kapoor
The sculpture is nicknamed
The Bean because of its
shape, a name Anish Kapoor
initially disliked, but later grew
fond of. Its reflective surface
was inspired by liquid mercury.
This shiny exterior reflects the
people moving around the
park, the lights of Michigan
Avenue, and the surrounding
skyline and green space
perfectly encapsulating the
Millennium Park experience.
Since its installation, the
sculpture has become one of
the most famous public works in the world . Made of 100 tons of polished stainless steel, Cloud Gate
appears to float over the AT&T Plaza with an extraordinary sense of lightness. Its underside presents
an omphalos (Greek for ‘navel’), a concave chamber which offers viewers distorted perspectives of
themselves. It is now the most famous artwork created by a contemporary artist.

Pop Art
“Drowning Girl” (1963)
Artist: Roy Lichtenstein
To create Drowning Girl, Lichtenstein cropped
Abruzzo’s splash page (a comic book page with a
single image surrounded by a frame), showing the
woman alone and encircled by a threatening wave. It
depicts a young woman drowning in Lichtenstein’s
signature comic-strip style. Her face is central to the
piece, surrounded by water. It also features a thought bubble with the phrase, “I DONT CARE! I’D
RATHER SINK — THAN CALL BRAD FOR HELP!” The dialogue in the panel, clearly disjointed from
the remainder of the story’s plot, adds an element of satire to the piece. It is copied from DC Comics’
‘Run for Love!’ from the Secret Love comic book series.

“Campbell’s Soup Cans” (1962)

Artist: Andy Warhol
Campbell’s Soup Cans consists of
multiple canvases that are aligned
linearly, as if on a grocery store
shelf. Each one features a
Campbell’s soup can in a different
flavor. Although every canvas is
hand-painted, they are all uniformly
replicated, indistinguishable from
one another except for their different
flavors. The piece thus exemplifies
POP Art’s use of the mass
production advertising style. Initially
created as a series of thirty-two canvases in 1962, the soup cans gained international acclaim as a
breakthrough in Pop Art. When the paintings were first exhibited in that year, they were displayed
together like products at a grocery store. Each soup can correspond to a different flavor and
resembled the actual image of the red and white Campbell’s Soup cans.

Photorealism
“ON THE STATEN ISLAND
FERRY LOOKING TOWARD
MANHATTAN” (1989)
Artist: Richard Estes
He is the most associated with
Photorealism. He began
painting cityscapes in this style
in the late 1960s, using multiple
source photographs to
composite his paintings. Initially,
he focused on the Upper West
Side of New York City but has
since travelled the world and
depicted numerous cities. More recently, his subject matter has expanded to include landscapes.
Since 1966 Estes has produced approximately 400-500 paintings. His works are held in notable
museum collections including Whitney Museum of American Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum in New York City.

“Big Nude” (1967)

Artist: Chuck Close
It is the first painting completed in Close's signature
grid process, and both its size and self-
conscious title indicate its ambitious nature.
Although the transferred image "reads" as
a flat transcription of light and dark characteristic
of a photograph, the painting's variegated
brushstrokes reveal Big Nude to be more
of a prototype for future development than a
fully resolved picture. Poised precariously
between a common studio exercise in figure drawing
and a 1960s girlie magazine shoot, "Big Nude" also challenges the future of representational painting
at a moment in history when the genre would seem to have long ago exhausted its potential for future
development. Only the antiseptic whiteness of the canvas hints at a new approach to the figure that
might perfectly marry an instant, unforgiving photographic record of a subject with the artist's
reconsideration of its every component over months of studied, methodical transcription.

Conceptualism
“Serial Project #1 (ABCD)”, 1966
Artist: Sol LeWitt
This accumulation of open
structures signifies a revival of
seriality in LeWitt's work, inspired
by the serial photographs of
Eadweard Muybridge, whose work
LeWitt discovered in an abandoned
book a previous tenant had left in
his apartment. The network of
cubes allowed LeWitt to study the
juxtaposition of different sizes and
shapes, arranged according to
certain preset rules and ideas. Looking at Serial Project #1, it appears to be nothing so much as a
city, revealing LeWitt's architectural roots. It also imposes itself as a kind of framework for a finished
work or series of works, imitating the preparatory sketches that precede blueprints and completed
structures. Once again, LeWitt challenges the conventional methods of artistic production; in this
instance, he halts the additive process of sculpting and allows the viewer to observe what would only
have existed beneath other materials.
“Fat Chair” (1964–1985)
Artist: Joseph Beuys
The idea behind this series is to let the individual artworks
speak directly to us from their own mysterious realm, rather
than interpreting and ‘explaining them away’ in
conventional terms. Fat Chair looks, at a glance, to be
some kind of emergency storage attempt, though perhaps
only temporary. The fat has been deliberately smoothed off
on one side at a 45° angle to form a kind of wedge triangle.
It is therefore part of a wider ‘landscape’ meaning artistic
presentational context and this landscape is revealing to us
many diffuse layers of narrative, yet without the least clear
purpose and resolution. It’s telling us about
industrialisation, and about the essentially uncanny nature
of discarded industrial artefacts, combined with oblique
references to the industrialisation of murder (in war and
genocide). Alongside references to the industrialisation of
medicine and healing, as might be instanced by large scale
hospitals and medical centres.

Performance Art
“One Year Performance” (1980-
1981)
Artist: Tehching Hsieh
Born in Taiwan in 1950, Hsieh is best
known for the one-year performances
he undertook while living in New York
from the 1970s onwards. One of these
performances, Time Clock Piece (One
Year Performance 1980–1981) 1980–
1981, involved punching a time clock
every hour for a year. It was on display
at Tate Modern until June 2018.
Between 1978 and 1986 Hsieh made
five year-long performances, followed
by a thirteen-year performance of making art but not publicly showing it. Striking in his commitment to
these physically and mentally grueling works, Hsieh nonetheless remained in relative obscurity for
most of his career.
 “Rhythm 0: A Scandalous
Performance”
Artist: Marina Abramović
The act comprises seventy-two objects
set out on a long table covered with a
white tablecloth, as well as sixty-nine
slides. The slides are projected onto
the gallery wall above the table from a
projector which sits on a stand. Among
the objects on the table is a framed
description of a performance piece of
the same name that took place at
Studio Morra in Naples in 1974. The
slides document this performance, and
the objects replicate the original props used. Many are perishable items, such as foodstuffs and
flowers, which need to be replaced each time the work is displayed. The work was remade for
exhibition purposes in 2009 as part of the Abramovic’s retrospective exhibition at the Museum of
Modern Art, New York. It exists in an edition of three plus two artist’s proofs, and Tate’s copy is
number one in the edition.

Installation Art

“Noviembre 6 y 7, 2002”
Artist: Doris Salcedo
Utilizing the facade of Bogotá’s Palace of
Justice as her canvas, Colombian installation
artist Doris Salcedo’s immense work
Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002) was an act of
remembrance for the 17th anniversary of the
siege of the Palace by M-19 guerrillas and the
government’s subsequent counterattack in
1985. Focused on acknowledging and
remembering violent deaths, Salcedo’s work
has highlighted this theme through her work
through Colombia’s civil war casualties as well
as Chicago’s gun violence victims. Her poetic
works are often monumental in size, forcing her
audience which is often comprised of unwitting passersby to recall these violent acts and engage in
the act of mourning.

“In-Between” (2015)
Artist: Thomas Hirschhorn
Using his signature materials of plywood,
cardboard, aluminum foil, packing tape, and
copious photocopies, Thomas Hirschhorn
makes installations that advance pointed
critiques of the global military-industrial
complex. Hirschhorn’s works overflow with
imagery and text, created with a deliberately
slap-dash DIY aesthetic and often incorporating
the writings of such Leftist philosophers as
Antonio Gramsci and Georges Bataille. The
over-abundance of ideas and images in
Hirschhorn’s installations mimics the media
saturation of contemporary life and highlights
the desensitization that consumers experience
as a result.

Earth Art
“Spiral Jetty” (1970)
Artist: Robert Smithson
Realized in April 1970, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty
is one of the most recognizable works from the Earth
art movement. Smithson constructed a 1,500-foot-long
and fifteen-foot-wide spiral made of stones, algae, and
other organic materials (6,000 tons in all) in the
northeastern part of Utah's Great Salt Lake. The Ace
Gallery of Vancouver and Dwan financed an earth-
moving company to create the spiral out of basalt rock
and earth from the surrounding area. The work was
inspired by the Pre-Columbian structure Serpent
Mound, which Smithson had seen on a site visit in
Ohio. Spiral Jetty and Smithson's body of work were
typical of Earth art in their protest against the
commodification of the art market since it was
impossible to buy or sell the work. The physical mutability and even invisibility of the work resulting
from natural processes, such as water currents and erosion, were essential to its meaning. As a work
of art that was not only remote, but also at times impossible to view because of the forces of nature,
Spiral Jetty is one of the best examples of Earth art and underscores the movement's roots in
Conceptualism.
“Sun Tunnels” (1973-76)
Artist: Nancy Holt
Positioning four gigantic concrete hollow cylinders,
each measuring nine feet in diameter, Nancy Holt
arranged her tunnels at precise geographical points to
correspond with the sunrise and sunset during the
summer and winter solstices, much like Stonehenge.
Fascinated by astronomy, Holt punctured the cylinders
with holes of differing sizes to create shadows of select
constellations. Like some other Earth artists, Holt had
a significant interest in science and ecology, actively
informed by her undergraduate work at Tufts
University. Sun Tunnels closely examines the physical
qualities of perception, marking accurate positions of
the sun on the horizon and allowing light to filter
through the starry holes according to the position of
available light. The work is not meant to disintegrate as
the majority of Earthworks, but it draws attention to the
details of nature in a site-specific and remote locale.

Street Art

“Hush!” (2011)
Artist: Jean-François Perroy
In this self-portrait the artist asks you to
take a moment of silence to calm yourself
and breath despite the bustling city that
surrounds you. Also, gesturing to people
to stop speaking, amidst the constant
sounds of a metropolis stopping for a
moment to breathe and listen to the
voices within is perhaps the advice
everyone needs. Aérosol almost always
includes a red arrow in his street art
works. He uses them as a second
signature but has never explained their
meaning. Hush! was supposed to be destroyed in early 2014 but it was kept intact and is now an
iconic piece of Parisian Street Art.

“We the Youth” (1987)

Artist: Keith Haring
Keith Haring's (1958-1990) lively figural
and patterned imagery blended elements
from Pop Art and Street Art. His work
started drawing people's attention in the
early 1980s when he created thousands
of illegal chalk drawings in the New York
City subways. We the Youth was painted
to commemorate the bicentennial of the
United States Constitution and the title
plays on the phrase "We the people"
from the preamble of the document. It
was a pro bono collaboration between
Haring, City Kids of New York, and
Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia.

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