A viewing station for sunrise and sunset, Turrell’s work manipulates light, time, and perception.
1980 – now
Weems sets her series around the kitchen table, a metaphor for the intimate spaces of home.
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman Feeding Bird), ...
Kaphar takes a violent history and renders it visible in this modified portrait of Andrew Jackson.
Titus Kaphar, The Cost of Removal
Is staring into the eyes of one of the world’s most renowned performance artists scary? Transcendent? Boring?
Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present
Freud’s nude isn’t the idealized, horizontal beauty of previous centuries, but a forthright, vertical one.
Lucian Freud, Standing by the Rags
Cheap fabric with a garish print becomes an eerie specter of surveillance thanks to some creative chemistry.
Sigmar Polke, Watchtower series
On a beach in a suit, a discordant image, like South Africa, where it was made.
William Kentridge, drawing from Tide Table (Soho ...
Red Star annotated photographs to restore dignity and context to government-issue photographs of Crow chiefs.
Wendy Red Star, 1880 Crow Peace Delegation
The “father of video art” argued that electronic communication, not transportation, unites the modern world.
Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., ...
Textile or sculpture? El Anatsui purposely disregards the limiting categories imposed by Western art history.
El Anatsui, Old Man’s Cloth
Richter toys with both visual and ethical clarity in this evocative, ambiguous painting of an uncle lost to WWII.
Gerhard Richter, Uncle Rudi
The artist transforms metal from alcohol bottles into textiles that represent libations for ancestors.
El Anatsui, Untitled
Hyperreal paintings like “Betty” are just one part of Richter’s practice, which resists stylistic classification.
Gerhard Richter, Betty
John Cage and Richter never met, but there was a kinship between these two artists with diverse practices.
Gerhard Richter, The Cage Paintings (1-6)
Richter revives the genre of history painting in the 21st century in this work showing the events of 9/11.
Gerhard Richter, September
In her immersive dreamscapes, Mori transforms the celestial attendants of Buddhist art into pastel-colored aliens.
Mariko Mori, Pure Land
Using the medium of mass culture, Nauman brought high-brow questions about the role of art to broader society.
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the ...
Smith created this in 1992, responding to the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in North America.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Trade (Gifts for Trading ...
Haacke documents the provenance of a Seurat sketch held in a bank vault to lay bare the commodification of art.
Hans Haacke, Seurat’s “Les Poseuses” (small version), ...
Is this a painting or a relief sculpture? Unclear. Whatever it is, Kiefer’s landscape is falling apart.