Landscape at La Ciotat
1907 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Hot pinks and oranges laid on freely, a year before Cézanne and Picasso's Demoiselles sent Braque off toward Cubism instead.
★ 4.8
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Descent from the Cross (Beckmann)
1917 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Beckmann came out of the war traumatized and painted a Christ so emaciated and angular that no consolation survives the picture.
★ 5.2
Painting Number 2
1954 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Black bars crossing a white ground, enlarged from small ink sketches so the speed and weight of the arm survive the scaling up.
★ 5.2
The Presidential Family
1967 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
President, wife, child, bishop and general, all inflated into balloons and posed with great solemnity in front of a volcano.
★ 5.2
Self-Portrait with a Cigarette
1923 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Beckmann had spent the war as a medical orderly, and he looks out of the shadows here like a man finished being surprised.
★ 5.6
The Menaced Assassin
1927 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
A murdered woman on a divan, a calm man listening to a gramophone, and two men with a club and a net waiting outside the door.
★ 6.3
The Bather
1885 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
He stands in bathing trunks with his hands on his hips, built out of planes and given the same weight as a mountain.
★ 6.3
The Charnel House
1945 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Bodies lie heaped and bound under a kitchen table, in grey. Picasso left it unfinished, painted after the camps were opened.
★ 6.5
Map
1961 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Johns stenciled the state names and then let red, yellow and blue run right over the borders. Another sign everybody already knows.
★ 6.5
Man with a Guitar
1913 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
A curve of the guitar, some stenciled letters, and otherwise a lattice of brown and grey. Braque and Picasso developed this together, canvas by canvas.
★ 6.5
Boy Leading a Horse
1906 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
The Rose Period cooling off into something graver and more archaic, the boy and horse built like figures off a Greek relief.
★ 6.7
The False Mirror
1928 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
One enormous eye with a cloudy sky for an iris. Whether it is looking out or reflecting back is the question.
★ 6.9
Three Women
1922 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Three nudes turned on a lathe, smooth and tubular, laid out among furniture built to match. The odalisque redone for the age of the factory.
★ 7.1
Drowning Girl
1963 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
She would rather sink than call Brad. Lichtenstein took one panel of a romance comic and blew it up to the size of a serious painting.
★ 7.2
I and the Village
1911 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
A green-faced peasant and a cow look at each other, and the houses behind them are upside down. Chagall grew up in Vitebsk.
★ 7.2
Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies
1899 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Monet dug the pond himself at Giverny, built the Japanese bridge over it, and then painted the place for the rest of his life.
★ 7.4
Woman I
1950 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
De Kooning dragged the figure back into abstract painting at the moment that was least acceptable, and worked this canvas over for two years.
★ 7.7
Broadway Boogie Woogie
1943 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Mondrian broke his own grid into blinking squares after moving to New York, where he loved the traffic and the jazz.
★ 7.7
Three Musicians
1921 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
A harlequin, a Pierrot and a monk in flat interlocking shapes that look cut from paper. Synthetic Cubism at its grandest and most deadpan.
★ 7.8
The Song of Love
1914 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
A marble head, a red rubber glove and a green ball hang together on a wall, and a train goes by in the distance.
★ 7.8