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Austria, c. 25,000–20,000 BCE. Stone, 43/8" high.
This small but robust figure likely represented the power of female fertility and may have aided reproductive rituals in the Paleolithic era. -
Lyre, sound box from the tomb of Queen Puabi, Ur (Iraq), c. 2685 BCE. Wood, gold and shell inlay, lapis lazuli; 5' 5" high.
Beautiful design and expert craftsmanship distinguish this lyre, which was part of an ancient royal burial. -
Fourth Dynasty, Gizeh, Egypt, c. 2600 BCE. Slate, approximately 4' 6 1⁄2" high.
This early portrait of the royal couple displays the equal status of Menkaure’s wife Khamerernebty, who passes on the pharaonic succession through her offspring. -
Gizeh, Egypt. Menkaure, c. 2525–2475 BCE; Khafre, c. 2575–2525 BCE; Khufu, c. 2600–2550 BCE.
Oriented to the sun, these are the tombs of the pharaohs, who were believed to be sons of Re, the Sun God. -
Douris. Slip on clay, 13" diameter. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
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Mural painting from the Tomb of the Leopards in a cemetery near Tarquinia, Etruria (Italy), c. 480–470 BCE. The pleasures of Etruscan life included feasting, music, and dancing.
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Iktinos and Kallikrates. Parthenon, Athens, 447–432 BCE. Pentelic marble; columns: 34' high, dimensions of structure: 228' × 104'.
This structure is the standard Classical Greek temple using the post-and-lintel construction and the Doric Order. -
Ostia, 110–130. Marble relief, approx. 20" high. Vatican Museum, Rome. Details crowd together in this relief depicting a working-class man at his job, with his family.
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Syria, 245–256 CE. Interior, with wall paintings of biblical themes. National Museum, Damascus. Images of the Hebrew deity, Yahweh, were very rare; however, at times his hand appears in Old Testament paintings found on temple walls.
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Sarnath. Uttar Pradesh, India. Sandstone, 63" high. Sarnath Museum. Later in Buddhism, its founder is depicted as the Enlightened One, the Buddha.
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Longmen Caves, Luoyang, Valley of the Yellow River, China, c. 600–650. Natural rock carving, 50' high.
The colossal statue represents the universal principle dominating all life and phenomena. -
Michelangelo. Vatican, Rome, 1508–1512. Fresco, approximately 128' × 45'.
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Albrecht Durer. Engraving, 95/8" × 71/2" (24.5 × 19 cm).
Musee du Petit Palais, Paris.
This is a very fine engraving because of the thin canvas. -
Feathered Headdress of Moctezuma, Aztec, c. 1519. Quetzal and cotinga feathers, gold plaques; 451⁄2" × 69".
Conquering armies often plunder and take the art of subjugated peoples. -
Giuseppe Arcimboldo. A painting that plays off of visual tricks. It can be viewed from two different perspectives that display it either as a basket of fruit, or a human face made out of fruit.
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The former summer palace of the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama. Lhasa, Tibet
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Giovanni Battista Piranesi. 1745. Etching.
Although this image shows a gloomy architectural interior, it is a visual metaphor for the dark side of the human mind. -
Jacques-Louis David. France, 1784. Oil on canvas, 10' 10" × 14'. Louvre, Paris.
While this painting illustrates an event from Roman history, it also shows the kinds of behavior that reflected femininity and masculinity in eighteenth-century France. The Neoclassical architecture was associated with masculinity and revolution. -
Jacques Louis David. Oil on canvas
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Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. France. Oil on canvas, 35" × 64". Louvre, Paris. The nude Turkish harem woman was intended to be an erotic image for European men in the nineteenth century.
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Eugène Delacroix. France. Oil on canvas, approximately 8' 6" × 10' 8". Louvre, Paris.
This is an homage to the 1830 Paris Revolt in France in which the artist personifies liberty’s fight against oppression of the people. -
Honoré Daumier. France. Lithograph; image: 111/8" × 171/8"; sheet: 1311/16" × 203/16". Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
Daumier was particularly known for his political cartoons with his pointedly satirical caricatures in nineteenth-century France. -
Louis Daguerre. The first known example of a human represented in a photograph.
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Edouard Manet. France. Oil on canvas, 511⁄4" × 743⁄4". Musée d’Orsay, Paris. This painting of a sexual encounter scandalized the public because Olympia was not presented as a mythological or historical figure.
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Édouard Manet
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Vassily Maksimov. Portrayed the lives of Russian peasants.
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Pierre Auguste Renoir. France, 1881. Oil on canvas, 51" × 68".
The European middle class enjoyed greater leisure time in the late nineteenth century, including pleasurable outings in nature. -
Eadweard Muybridge. June 26, 1885, England/Scotland/United States, 1887. Print from an original master negative, Plate 365 of Animal Locomotion. International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.
The photograph allows artists and scientists to study the mechanics of human movement. -
Georges Seurat. La Grande Jatte (also called A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884), France, 1884–1886.
Art shows that the middle class enjoyed increased leisure time in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. -
Marianne Stokes.
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James VanDerZee. United States, 1927. Black-and-white photograph.
Art can promote the status and create a positive perception of a racial group. In this case, the portraits show the confident, affluent people of the Harlem Renaissance in the United States. -
Pablo Picasso. Spain. Oil on canvas, 11' × 28' 8". This work dramatized the 1937 destruction of the Basque capital by Nazi fire bombs during the Spanish Civil War
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Jasper Johns. Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood; 421⁄4" × 605/8".
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Le Corbusier. Ronchamps, France, 1950–1955. The church’s design recalls praying hands, dove wings, and a boat hull, Christian symbols of divine generosity.
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Andy Warhol. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, Each canvas 20 x 16". Warhol is commonly known by his commentary on the consumerist and mass-produced culture of the United States.
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Claes Oldenburg. Canvas filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, painted with acrylic paint.
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Wayne Thiebaud. Oil on canvas, 30" × 36". The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Reflecting modern cafeterias, this painting is a colorful display of standardized, mass-produced food.
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Moshe Safdie. Designed for Expo ’67 in Montreal, Canada. This modern version of group living features stacked modular living units that open up onto gardens on the roofs of other units.
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R. Buckminster Fuller. Expo ’67, Montreal. Geodesic dome, diameter 250'. The geodesic dome is an architectural form that can be scaled to large size, can be distorted to be flat or tall, and can be covered with a variety of material.
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Bruce Nauman. An art video in which Nauman repeatedly bounces his back in and out of the corner he is standing against.
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Barnett Newman. 1963–1969. Cor-Ten steel, 24' 10" × 10' 11" × 10' 11". This is an example of the large, bold artworks produced in the United States during the Cold War era. The theme of this work is the balance between life and death forces, which is symbolically expressed through the pyramid and the obelisk
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Betye Saar. United States, 1972. Mixed media, 113⁄4" × 8" × 23⁄4".
This work illustrates, and therefore protests, the ways that African Americans were often depicted in folk art and in commercial imagery. -
Walter De Maria. United States, 1971–1977. Four hundred stainless steel poles, average height: 20' 7"; land area: 1 mile ×
1 kilometer in New Mexico.
This work of art incorporates the ground, the sky, and weather activity. -
Ester Hernandez. United States. Color serigraph, 22" × 17".
This work exposes the dangerous chemical pesticides that are used in vineyards to grow grapes that eventually become raisins. These poisons leach into the public drinking water. -
Jean-Michel Basquiat
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Sue Coe. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 22" × 30"
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Nam June Paik. 1989. Video installation with Buddha sculpture. Paik’s work brings together opposites, sometimes humorously, in ways that suggest new potentials for cultural interaction.
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Keith Haring. Offset lithograph.
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Anselm Kiefer. Germany, 1990. Lead, iron, glass, copper wire, charcoal, and aquatec; 17' high.
Old books are not always storehouses of knowledge. They may make knowledge inaccessible, or they may rot and fall apart. -
Flelix Gonzalez Torres. 175 pounds of hard candy. An example of an interactive artwork. Viewers are encouraged to take a piece.
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Shirin Neshat. "a series of stark black-and-white photographs entitled Women of Allah, conceptual narratives on the subject of female warriors during the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. On each photograph, I inscribed calligraphic Farsi text on the female body" -Shirin Neshat
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Nam June Paik. Fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound
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Mariko Mori. 1998 (edition for Parkett 54, 1998–1999). Multiple of doll, 101⁄4" × 3" × 19/16" (irregular).
Mori’s self-portrait is a commercially packaged version of herself as artist, model, and fashion designer. -
by Douglas Schlesier. Charcoal on paper with gold leaf and color, 25" × 38
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Peter Eisenman. 2,711 concrete slabs of varying heights.
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Edgar Arceneaux. Acrylic, graphite on paper.
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Kara Walker. Sugar, polystyrene, plastic, molasses.
