The 100 Most Important Art Works of the 20th Century

18. Elephant of the Celebes (1921) - Max Ernst

[image=http://www.fantasyarts.net/Ernst/ernst_elephant_celebs.jpg]

My opinion:

I have never liked Ernst. I loved his Murdering Airplanes, but most of the time he is so grotesque as to be literally unpleasant to look at.

Not that this is necessarily a problem, but grotesque surrealism is a problem, because we look at grotesque art to understand our lives and we look at surrealism to escape them. So, it backfires.

This at least is not ugly, but it is stupid and pointless.

No way.

 

I am not familiar with Ernst, and I can't say this encourages me to become so.

 

16. Woman I (1952) - Willem de Kooning

[image=http://www.moma.org/press/departments/painting_sculpture/de-Kooning-Woman-I.jpg]

My opinion:

One of my all time favorite lines of art criticism is about this painting: "You have to admire the skill with which the artist managed to rid this picture of anything aesthetically pleasing."

It's funny and pretty apt. But it's not awful. I particularly like those popping eyes and bared teeth. Somehow, it always moves me to laugh, which may not have been what Kooning intended, but, hey, it serves.

I don't know that it's top 100, but it's just iconoclastic and ludicrous enough for me to like it. Personally, I find this pretty hilarious. Whether 'hilarious' means 'great art' or not is anybody's guess.

 

It's a doodle, not a painting...

 

15. Just What is It that Makes Today?s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956) ? Richard Hamilton

[image=http://employees.oneonta.edu/sakoult/cart1/assignments/collage/images/hamilton.jpg]

My opinion:

This is often credited as a historic piece of art that really kicked off the pop art movement. Supposedly it is the first time the word ?Pop? actually does appear in an artwork like this. And with it?s reference to popular culture (advertisements, the moon, movies, perfect body image, etc) it certainly does cement the genre in stone.

So, in short, without this, we would probably not have Lichtenstein or Warhol or Johns. All of which would be pretty okay by me.

Historically significant, it might be and it is even slightly interesting the first time or two you see it. But, like most ?pop art? it wears and begins to feel exactly like every other pop art piece in existence. In other words, ?pop art? as a concept is probably really good for five or six paintings. And the thousands that have been produced all begin to run together and you just feel like they?re all belaboring the same point. You?d better be able to do something interesting visually if all you?re doing is rehashing the same point again and again. And this is not particularly interesting visually.

In other words, not a big fan.

 

I agree. Pop art has about interest for me as pop music, though they aren't coming from the same place.

It's more intellectual than aesthetic, which is the main objection I have to modern art.

 

Back to Nighthawks, I really really like that one.

 

14. The Kiss (1908) - Constantin Brancusi

[image=http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~vguerra/Other/Brancusi/kiss4.jpg]

This is one of my favorite sculpted pieces. It's minimalist, but it tells its story in a witty and clever way.

Top fifteen may be a little high, but it should definitely be on this list, that's for sure.

 

Top 15,000 is too high, IMO.

 

13. Mont Ste-Victoire (1904-06) ? Paul Cezanne

[image=http://www.angelo.edu/faculty/rprestia/1301/images/IN486Cezan.jpg]

My opinion:

This is one of the most often cited images to show Cezanne?s genius. I suppose it?s nice enough to look at. But I find it terribly overrated. I am not particularly a fan of landscapes unless there?s a point or an emotion behind them and this is just one of about a million studies of St. Victoria that Cezanne did during his lifetime.

I once read a hilarious piece of criticism that tried to read sexual fetishism of the breast into this series of paintings. I have rarely laughed so hard at something meant so seriously.

But, in short, not a favorite.

 

I've always like Cezanne; but I don't know if I would choose this particular painting to represent him. That said, despite international critics' obsession with phallic and pointrine imagery, it's a very nice representation of a hill in Southern France. The colours are beautiful.

 

This is one of my absolute favorite paintings. There's a number of variations on this, and this one it's the one that I like the best. I think that mainly, it's the colors that he choose to use, and because of that, it's been one of my desktop backgrounds for a while now.

I like this version better:

[image=http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/cezanne_ste_victoire.jpg]

 

12. The Human Condition I (1933) - Rene Magritte

[image=http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/511/projects/dimoia/final/conditn.jpg]

My opinion:

In case you can't tell, this is a painting of a painting that stands in for part of the image it blocks. It's a painting of a view out a window that includes another painting that is a view from the same window.

Magritte is one of my favorite painters really, but I never cared for this series. He did several of these and they're clever, but the idea wears thin, in my opinion.

Especially when you consider some of the other great Magritte paintings:

[image=http://truffula.net/~quotemaster/hum10_sem_review/art_images/full_size/magritte-time-transfixed.jpg]

[image=http://www.clarku.edu/research/images/physics/blatt/Magritte-le%20blanc%20seing-small.jpg]

[image=http://www.educared.org.ar/tamtam/images/magritte.jpg]

[image=http://www.poster.net/magritte-rene/magritte-rene-golconde-3100609.jpg]

[image=http://homepage3.nifty.com/kenkitagawa1/Magritte-Empire-Bruss.jpg]

[image=http://www.grazianospinosi.com/FOTOCURRENTI/MAGRITTE-AUTORITRATTO.jpg]

[image=http://weblog.educ.ar/espacio_docente/filosofia/archives/magritte-pintando.jpg]

Seriously, the way this guy plays with space and light is amazing. I particularly like his Empire of Light series, where the paintings are divided with night in one section, day in the other. And his paintings about painting are stunning, particularly that last nude. I mean just look at that for about five seconds.


And the bird painting/egg subject is just brilliant.

And his surrealism is just so incredible, probably the finest surrealism ever, if you ask me.

In short, I would prefer to see the list absolutely stuffed with Magritte's, the ones above and more. But this Human Condition is way down the list, as far as I'm concerned.

Again, do a search on Magritte. Those images posted above are only my favorites from the first two pages of Google searching his name. There are tons of other classics by him. Seriously, check this guy out.


Oh, apologies to 56K people.

 

The paintings seem more like intellectual exercises than paintings. My other complaint: they are very static. Somethings this works: in Hopper and Vermeer it does. But I didn't like these paintings much, though they are undoubtedly clever. (And the bird/egg one is the best)

 

Magritte would have to be one of my favorite if not my #1 artist for the 20th century. I have a Dali poster in my room, but that was before I knew who Magritte was and he's since become my favorite Surrealist by far. The way he uses the medium to mess with your head and think about the painting appeals to me on many levels. I love all the different paintings he makes with the painting in front of the subject, though not my most favorite of his, definatly up there.

 

11. Fountain (1917) ? Marcel Duchamp

[image=http://arthistory.westvalley.edu/images/D/DUCHAMP/FOUNTAIN.JPG]

My opinion:

Oh, God, this debate again.

For the sake of completeness let me copy/paste my thoughts on a previous Duchamp exhibit: Bicycle Wheel.

Duchamp was perhaps the greatest charlatan of the twentieth century (possibly outstripped by Warhol), but his work is tremendous fun. He popularized the idea of found art, the principle that you could pick up an object off the street, write your name on it and call it art. He infamously submitted a urinal to an art show under the name Richard Mutt, entitled Fountain, to cries of outrage.

And people would eventually run it into the ground. But to me, the idea is solid, at least as far as interest goes. I?m not sure if it?s art, but when you see things out of context you really do see them differently and the central idea, that of finding beauty in the commonplace is a powerful one that I support.

This is one of those rare artworks that, due to its experimental nature, has been redone several times. I?ve seen it in person and I think it?s been totally redone at least three times now.

So, again, it started one of the most irritating movements of modern art, it doesn?t even exist anymore except in a copy, and it?s just something that Duchamp picked up off the street and bolted onto a stool.

And I know Zaz will rag on me for this, but I love it despite all that. Now ?found art? is pure laziness. Then it was groundbreaking and, dare I say it, witty. And you can still feel that charm, standing in front of it.

I?m not sure if it?s art, but it is one of the funniest jokes ever perpetrated and to a degree humor is art. I can?t help but laugh when I stand in front of this piece and for the life of me I can?t figure out if that means I?m in on the joke or the butt of it.

Is it art? Maybe. But the sheer joie de vivre that must have spawned this ludicrous exercise in mounting is fantastic to contemplate.

Like many art forms, I can?t recommend all that came after it, but as a forerunner and as a grand inducement to laughter and sheer joy, I have to say that I love this.

In short, it?s probably the only non-artwork that belongs on any list of the great artworks. If you can?t snicker over this, you probably take Art too seriously.

And as one who is given to take art very seriously, this is a fabulous needle in the balloon.

Finally, and I know this has been scattered, I love it and yes, I?d back it?s presence here.

So, that?s what I said a while back. It does not completely hold true, because since we had bicycle wheel, I really don?t think we need this one.

 

Well, since you already told me what I was going to say......I'll say it anyway.

More intellectual than aesthetic. And ideas can date, and this has.

 

10. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23) ? Marcel Duchamp

[image=http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jconte/Images/Duchamp_Bride.jpg]

My opinion:

This is one of the all time hilarious Duchamp . . . even he has admitted that he has no idea what this means. And yet it is still heralded as a great art work.

It may seem hypocritical to herald Duchamp?s found art as great stuff, but to dislike this kind of senseless meandering, but I don?t think it is. The key to found art is removing the artist from the equation; here, the artist is ludicrously present, but also pointlessly interfering.

In other words, no.

 

This is the sort of thing that gives modern art the reputation of being a giant Ponzi scheme.

Absolutely not.

 

Forgot to mention that Hughes, in The Shock of the New, claims this artwork is about masturbation.

It just kind of makes you wonder sometimes.

 

He would.

 

9. The Kiss (1904-08) ? Gustav Klimt

[image=http://dreams.awarm.net/images/klimt/kiss.jpg]

My opinion:

We briefly brought up Klimt before, with his Holofernes painting.

If you recall, we spent the next few posts talking about somebody else, Gentilleschi and her art.

I think, judging from this, we should do it again.

Not a Klimt fan, if you were wondering. Top ten is ludicrous.

 

Not a big far, I remember this from High School

 

Interior decoration as art.

 

8. Spiral Jetty (1970) ? Robert Smithson

[image=http://puffin.creighton.edu/fapa/aikin/Web-files/ART219%20Webfiles/STUDY%20FOR%20ART%20219%20FINAL/11Smithson,%20Spiral%20Jetty.jpg]

My opinion:

One of the icons of modern conceptual art. Frankly, I?d prefer Maya Lin to be on the list instead of this.

The Wave Field preferably.

This is not bad, and it is striking, but not top ten.