Hello, dear readers and subscribers.
We continue our search for the most iconic artworks of the 21st century.
We have already covered 10 iconic great sculptures, followed by five paintings we discussed two weeks ago featuring Teymans Mehretu Twombly, Richter and David Hockney, and today we're going to do part two, to have the complete top 10 paintings, and definitely feel free to stay tuned until the end of the video, where i'll give a few critical reflections on painting in the 21st century and our attempt to crystallize the most iconic pieces of recent history.
So, without further ado, enjoy this video.
Marlene Dumas de Marilyn takes one of the most overexposed faces of the 20th century and returns it to the fact of death.
The painting is based on an autopsy photograph of Marilyn Monroe, an image Dumas came across while searching through old materials.
In her hands, Monroe is no longer the polished icon of popular culture courtesy of Andy Warhol, but a spectral and deeply uncomfortable presence, a shift that matters and characteristic of Dumas' approach towards second-hand imagery.
Dumas has long worked with found images, often transforming photographs already burdened with public circulation into paintings of emotional and moral intensity.
Here the mythology of Marilyn is stripped of glamour and forced into another register altogether.
Dumas herself connected the painting not only to Monroe but also to the end of a certain era, linking the image to the broader political mood of the late 2000s.
In that sense that Marilyn is not a portrait of a dead celebrity, but a painting about a certain disillusionment.
It stages uncanny exhaustion, the inevitability of death and the decay of beauty, or perhaps even the strange beauty of the decay itself within the afterlife of images.
Nicole Eisenman's Triumph of Poverty of 2009 is a complex and allegorical painting made in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, responding to the economic downturn and the fraught political atmosphere in the United States.
As is often the case with Eisenmann, the work brings together sharp social observation art, historical reference and a deliberately unruly mode of figuration.
Its title is a direct nod to Hans Holbein de Jongor's lost 16th century painting The Triumph of Poverty, immediately placing the work within a longer tradition of allegory, moral tension and social critique.
The painting is also haunted by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, as a group of figures is lifted directly from the blight leading the blind, turning the scene into an image of society moving blindly towards disaster.
That reference matters, because Eisenmann does not present poverty as a somewhat abstract condition, but as something lived, visible and deeply collective.
If works such as Beer Garden with AK Sloppy Barroom, Kiss or Morning Studio may feel more refined or visually seductive within her broader oeuvre, I believe that The Triumph of Poverty remains one of her most telling paintings of the late 2000s, as a bitterly funny, unsettling and painfully lucid portrait of a world already coming apart.
McLean Thomas' Le déjeuner sur l'herbe Les trois femmes noires of 2010 is both a direct homage to and a pointed revision of Édouard Manès' Le déjeuner sur l'herbe of 1863.
Monumental in scale and composed in Thomas's signature language of pattern collage, rhinestones and painting.
The work presents three black women in an ornate setting, with a striking sense of confidence, sensuality and presence.
Originally staged as a photograph in the MoMA sculpture garden.
The image was later translated into one of Thomas' most celebrated paintings.
The importance of the work lies not only in the art historical reference, of course, but in how decisively Thomas shifts its terms.
A composition once associated with modern painting scandal is here reoccupied by three women who meet the viewer's gaze with complete self-possession.
And that's what the painting is about.
The painting is theatrical and unapologetically beautiful, but also sharp in what it claims and especially rewrites.
By inserting black female presence into a canonical image from which it had been excluded.
Thomas turns quotation into reassertion.
Dana Schutz's Open Casket of 2016 is one of the most controversial paintings of this century.
The work is based on the historic photographs of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
His mother, Mammy Till Mobley, insisted on an open casket funeral so that the world would see what had been done to her son.
Schutz made the painting in 2016, in a moment shaped by renewed media attention to racial violence in the United States, and first showed it quietly in Berlin, before it appeared at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, where a storm broke loose.
There, the painting immediately became the centre of a fierce public debate.
Artist Parker Bright protested in front of the painting wearing a shirt reading Black Death Spectacle, accusing Schutz of turning black trauma into cultural capital, one could say, while Hannah Black's open letter called for the work's removal.
Either way.
Even if Open Casket is not Donna Schutz's strongest painting, in my humble opinion it remains one of the most charged case studies in recent painting, making its place in the history of 21st century art difficult, if not impossible, to ignore.
Amy Sherald's portrait of Michelle Obama became iconic almost overnight.
Commissioned for the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, alongside Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama.
It was historic from the outset.
For the first time, an official portrait of a black first lady had been painted by a black artist.
Cheryl depicts Michelle Obama seated against a pale blue background, her chin resting lightly on her hand, while the vast geometric dress takes over much of the canvas.
Rendered in Sherald's signature grisaille, the portrait feels crisp, self-possessed and immediately recognisable.
Even beside Wiley's widely discussed portrait of Barack Obama, Sherald's contribution arguably lingered more powerfully as a painting.
It felt fresher, more surprising and somehow more intimate despite its monumentality.
Never before had a First Lady's portrait travelled quite like this one, circulating far beyond the museum through headlines, social media and public conversation.
People queued up to see it and, for once, that response felt entirely justified.
So this concludes our top ten and I think with the first five it is kind of on point.
I think these works should be included, they are iconic, they are part of the Khan of Art history.
With more recent works it's always more difficult, especially because the first five are living icons, the greatest, most important painters, and in a sense these works were somewhat the icing on the cake which kind of justifies their presence in such a list.
But I also feel like with the second part not only because it has become more difficult, because it is more recent or because the artists are less of an icon for now I also feel like, for instance, with Marlene Dumas, who is an iconic artist, that it's very difficult to pin down one work that really stands out from her practice.
And I think Miss January is a more iconic work from her because it is now the most expensive painting by a female artist.
You see that that event, a market event, which is also kind of a one-off, is also heavily influencing what we consider as iconic or what images circulate the most.
I think the same can be said with the Dana Schutz painting.
I definitely don't think this is her best work, but the controversy surrounding it made it circulate and made it also such an iconic painting, a bit similar how we had Catalan's banana with the artwork comedian in the sculpture list instead of his better works, such as him, La Nuna Ora or Ave Maria.
So I think those are important considerations to make that iconicity or greatness is always in flux.
And then there is also very clearly that in the second part there is a strong emphasis, of course, on more identity-based artworks, which has, of course, been one of the main topics in public discourse in contemporary art.
And here it is also very difficult, I feel, to select these artworks, I think.
The studio of Kerry James Marshall would have been another excellent choice, perhaps one that I would personally prefer over the Maclean Thomas.
Lynette Yadon-Bokie is also an artist that I really really, really enjoy, but it's very difficult to identify that one single standout piece.
And perhaps to conclude, another interesting topic.
I think it is more difficult, when it comes to the different artistic disciplines, that we have to decide on the iconic paintings.
With the video works it is very clear, it's crystal clear almost.
With the sculptures it was also somewhat clear.
With the installation artworks it's also quite clear.
And with painting it was a lot more difficult.
And the question is why is that so?
Because, of course, painting didn't die in the second half of the 20th century, despite That being a big argument, of course, and it is very alive and kicking in the 21st century.
Yet, for instance in I think it's Artnew's list of 100 of the best works of the 21st century.
I think five of them are paintings.
Even though, for instance, if we have a look at the art market, then 60 are paintings and most artists are painters.
So there is this abundance of painting and then also at the highest level, the level of greatness, iconicity.
Then painting almost feels unrepresented or unclear.
I would love to hear your thoughts about that contradiction in the comment section.
That being said, thank you very much for tuning in once more.
Feel free to head over to our online magazine for more contemporary art, more articles, more top lists, more curated anthologies.
And I warmly recommend you to have a look at our previous video, the part one, with five iconic paintings of the 21st century.
Next,
Support us on Patreon and please consider subscribing to stay posted for more contemporary art.
Bye.
