Pine Trees (Shorin-zu byobu)
1595 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
A few pines loom and dissolve on two screens where the bare paper does the work of mist. Japan's finest ink painting, by most accounts.
★ 9.1
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.
Haboku (Splashed-Ink) Landscape
1495 · Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo
A mountain, a wineshop flag and a boatman conjured from a few wet blots. Sesshu made it as a parting gift for a departing pupil.
★ 8.2
Rothko Chapel murals
1967 · Rothko Chapel, Houston
Fourteen near-black panels in an octagonal room, where your eyes adjusting to the dark is the point. Rothko died before it opened.
★ 7.9
Saint Mary Magdalen with the Smoking Flame
1640 · Louvre, Paris
One oil lamp, one skull in her lap, and a flame she does not take her eyes off. Everything else is dark.
★ 7.1
Woman Combing Her Hair
1920 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Goyo oversaw every stage of his prints himself and finished only a handful before dying young. This is the one everyone knows.
★ 6.5
The Moon Through a Crumbling Window
1886 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Bodhidharma meditates before a broken lattice with the moon behind it. Yoshitoshi is reckoned the last great master of the woodblock print.
★ 5.9
Night View of a Ginza Store
1884 · Ota Memorial Museum of Art, Tokyo
Gaslight in the windows of a new brick storefront on an empty Tokyo street. Yasuji died at twenty-five and got there before Hopper.
★ 4.7