Many of us are familiar with at least some of the names of those considered to be the “great painters” of the modern era and could pick out the popular ones when visiting art museums. However, their stories, styles, and inspiration behind their most famous works might still remain a mystery to most.
When visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, some of these infamous artists who have become household names have at least one work on display. Still, seeing some of those much sought after pieces can feel, well, anti-climactic if you’re not even a little sure of what you’re looking at, or why it’s so special.
Understanding the lives and historical context of the artists can help you better understand their work.
Here’s a run down of those artists and their pieces currently at the MoMA. You can also use this as a guide or jumping off point for visiting other art exhibits and galleries as well!
1. Henri Matisse
Nationality: French (So pronounce his name [On/Ree])
Dates: 1869 – 1954
Style: Fauvism
What People Like:
- Let’s be real, we all like saying ONREE instead of Henry.
- Bright colors in his work and distorted shapes
Interesting Tidbit:
- Matisse never wanted to be an artist!
- He got a bad case of appendicitis in his 20’s and his mother bought him some art supplies to keep him busy
- When the rest of us buy our kids art supplies, all they do is paint all over our new furniture
One Painting on Display: The Dance
We feel drawn to it because it speaks to our primal urges not just to look for food or seek shelter, but our primal urges to dance and create and live.
Some of us feel drawn to it because we used to do this exact naked dance at sorority parties in college, but I digress.
2. Frida Kahlo
Nationality: Mexican
Dates: 1907 – 1954
Style: Feminist & Surrealist (although Kahlo did remark that she didn’t think of herself as a surrealist)
What People Like:
- bright, vivid colors of her painting
- unusual, evocative subject matter
- For women in particular, I think she symbolizes all of the things that convention tells us we can’t experiment with: sexuality, gender fluidity, violence, gore, losing control, etc.
Interesting Tidbit:
Frida’s husband, Diego Rivera, was kind of incapable of being faithful in his marriage. He not only knew about her affairs that she began pursuing, but encouraged them. As such she’s known and rumored to have had several notorious lovers including Leon Trotsky and Georgia O’Keefe.
It’s important to note that in much of her work, you’ll notice themes of pain and suffering. As a child she suffered an illness which left her gait unsteady. She was in a vehicle accident in which she broke nearly half the bones in her body. She suffered several miscarriages and was unable to have children. Her heart was broken by her husband numerous times. And at the end of her life, her leg was amputated. Needless to say, all of this impacted her work tremendously.
Painting on Display: Self Portrait with Cropped Hair
The thing that most people wrestle with when first seeing this painting in an art museum is, are we looking at a man or woman? Well if you know Frida, you know the person in the painting is her, but if you look further, all of her hair is cut off and laying around her. Then you notice that she’s holding the scissors, so clearly, she’s cut off her own hair.
With the short hair and suit, she looks more masculine. At the top of the painting, it says something to the effect of that she was loved with long hair and now that it’s short, someone doesn’t love her anymore. I think we can all relate to the feeling of frustration when our value is only surface level.
3. Pablo Picasso
Nationality: Spanish
Dates: 1881 – 1973
Style: Cubism
What People Like:
- the fact that much of his paintings are childlike. Picasso once said of children, “When I was their age, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to draw like them.”
- He didn’t take himself or his work too seriously, there’s no fear of what art “should be” in his work. There are people who take his art and create a philosophy for their own lives and dreams from it.
Interesting Tidbit:
Picasso really kind of…didn’t like women. He once said something along the lines of when you’re finished with a relationship with a woman she should be burned so that the memories and past with her is burned as well.
In addition, he was just a straight up weirdo who liked playing around. When guests would come over, he would be dressed in unusual outfits. He liked taking photos of himself in the bathtub. People like kooky.
One Painting on Display: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
This work is considered important because Picasso kind of took everything that was “standard” in terms of Western painting and Western beauty and turned it on its head. Now, that might not be so “crazy” but we have to remember that form and convention were like, real things for a very long time. Few people strayed from convention. The faces of the women in the painting resemble African masks. Picasso took a lot of inspiration from African art, but that’s a debate and conversation for another time.
4. Vincent Van Gogh
Nationality: Dutch
Dates: 1835 – 1890
Style: Post-Impressionism
What People Like:
- reminding you that it’s pronounced VAN-GOFF and not actually VAN-GO
- He cut off his ear after an episode of “mania.” Nowadays we understand that he likely was having a manic episode in what is now called bipolar while simultaneously suffering from auditory hallucinations
- the intensity and color in his work
- His ability to put his emotions and the crises he was facing into his work
Interesting Tidbit:
During his year long stay at the mental facility in San-Remy, he completed 150 paintings.
Painting on Display: Starry Night
Van Gogh painted this piece at arguably one of the lowest points of his life. He was admitted to a mental asylum in the south of France and stayed there for about a year, maybe a little more. The original asylum that he was supposed to be in had a ton more patients and was in a bigger city.
The one he actually went to, in San-Remy, was smaller, had less people, and the attendants actually cared about his recovery. They gave him space, time, and supplies to paint. There’s a painting by Hokusai called The Great Wave and it’s easy to see the similarity between that painting and one of the biggest swirls in Starry Night.
5. Rene Magritte
Nationality: Belgian
Dates: 1898 – 1967
Style: Surrealism
What People Like:
- He challenges people’s perceptions of reality, he’s almost an illusionist.
- You might notice that in a lot of Magritte’s paintings, he has something hidden behind another object. This creates an interactive experience rather than a passive one. As an onlooker in an art museum, we’re thinking about what that hidden part might look like. We’re wondering why it’s hidden. We might even feel tense or conflicted about hiding a part of the painting.
- In short, his paintings feel like a dream…or a nightmare. People love that sort of thing. (Shrugs)
Interesting Tidbit:
- Magritte’s mother drowned herself in a river.
- She attempted many times to take her life, and therefore her husband, Leopold, would often lock her in rooms as a result.
- The image of a woman with a cloth covering her head appears in a few paintings. Some speculate, based on a story from Magritte’s governess that Magritte watched his mother being taken from the river after drowning, and that her white dress was covering her face.
Painting on Display: The False Mirror
This is kind of meant to be creepy! As a viewer at the art museum, you kind of feel like you can’t escape. You can’t help but stare at the enormous eye, but also, you can’t help but feel like it’s staring back at you.
6. Marc Chagall
Nationality: French, but Born in Belarus
Dates: 1887 – 1985
Style: A bunch of abstract kind of stuff. Surrealism, Cubism, Etc. He dabbled.
What People Like:
- style is really dreamy and poetic, Chagall really liked and respected poets
- paintings are whimsical and evocative of childhood
- lots of themes of love in his work
Interesting Tidbit:
- Marc Chagall wouldn’t cry out at birth, which is how babies get air into their lungs. His family had to dunk him in cold water and stick him with needles before he would cry.
- He often would joke that he was born dead.
- He was timid and shy as a child, he had a stutter and would faint frequently.
Painting on Display: I and the Village
This is a painting that reflects on his time living in a Hasidic community in Belarus. There’s a strong emphasis on animal and human having a relationship here, if you look closely there’s a line drawn between the biggest animal and the biggest peasant on the canvas. They’re of equal size/stature which might suggest that they’re equals. The peasants living their daily lives, the Russian houses at the top of the canvas, it gives us a sense of a simpler life that’s calming and cozy.
7. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Nationality: German
Dates: 1880 – 1938
Style: Expressionism
What People Like:
- vivid and unnatural use of color
- city scenes
- feeling that you’re getting the perspective of the people in the work
Interesting Tidbit:
Kirchner was considered a “degenerate” artist by the Nazi party in Germany. Therefore, hundreds of his works were burned or smuggled out of the country.
Painting on Display: Street, Berlin
I think we all enjoy people watching to a certain degree and that’s what Street, Berlin offers. At first we might think that Kirchner is simply painting a city, but what we then realize as we look at all of the people is that we’re getting their perspective on being in that busy city which feels a lot like people watching!
While the two women that are central in the painting look glamorous, they’re actually prostitutes. The men in the painting are not even paying attention to them and don’t even really appear to have faces. Kirchner is commenting on the tendency for cities to feel impersonal and uncaring. Because the painting is slightly slanted out toward the viewer, we feel like we’re personally in the city, feeling those emotions of loneliness and everything being crowded. Check this one out at the art museum and let me know what you think!
While you’re visiting New York City, you may be interested in visiting these other art museums and cultural travel locations. Check out my favorite places!
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