Artoholics: Breaking Down the Art You Missed on "Mad Men"

Image via Complex Original

Artist: Unknown

While it's unclear which style inspired this piece or who it was made by, it's a fixture of the office hallway that gets shown in Mad Men again and again.

Artist: Inspired by Witco

The Witco style of art has come to be associated with "Tiki art," which includes this giraffe painting in Pete Campbell's home. According to one enthusiast, Witco "started out as Western International Trading Company and imported South Pacific home furnishing items like Capishell Lamps." The creator of Mad Men Illustrated, Dyna Moe, created a reprintable version of this particular painting for Mad Men fans everywhere.

Artist: Unknown

This piece in Lane Pryce's office looks like it could be an abstract expressionist piece as much as it could be something Picasso dreamed up. Its muted tones make it easy to miss, but it's definitely a strong, money-hued compliment to the space...perhaps a reflection of Pryce's financial role at the company.

Artist: Inspired by Paul Klee

The painting hanging on Harry's wall looks like something Paul Klee would have done. It's hard to categorize the Swiss-born artist, as Klee experimented with a range of art styles; however, he had a knack for color theory, abstract shapes, and cubism in general, all of which can be seen in Harry's modern piece.

Artist: Inspired by Abstract Expressionism

This boardroom art piece, which appears in many Mad Men scenes, looks like an abstract expressionist piece by an artist like Clyfford Still, Franz Kline, or Helen Frankenthaler.

Artist: Inspired by Kazimir Malevich

This art piece in Pete Campbell's office appears to be inspired by artists like Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky who were both pioneers of geometric abstraction. Trapezoids, rectangles, and a circle in natural tones meet for a sophisticated-looking piece.

Artist: Inspired by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Though it's unclear whether or not this is a piece by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, it sure looks like a ukiyo-e by the great Japanese artist. Surely, Cooper would have something similar to a work by Yoshitoshi, who revitalized the ukiyo-e art form when photography and lithography began taking over Japan.

Artist: Inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e artists

The ukiyo-e art form became popular in Japan during the urbanizing Edo period, a time when the merchant class sprung into wealth. Ukiyo-e wood prints depicted the hedonism and indulgent lifestyle of the wealth. Back in the day, ukiyo-e filled the homes of those who could afford the bougie prints. It seems only appropriate that someone like Cooper would own not one but three of these. This particular wood print depicts two sloping trees.

Artist: Inspired by Alice Neel

Famous for her portraits of loved ones and strangers alike, Alice Neel portrayed the people around her in a playful yet gritty way. Not one for sugar-coating, she painted of all her subjects as she saw them, layering colors and brush strokes. Some of the people in her paintings wear grave expressions; others have fat rolling over their stomachs.

Though these portraits are intended to be realistic, they're also highly stylized, too. With visible brushwork and a strong overlay of colors, the painting of a solemn-looking woman may very well have been done by Neel.

Artist: Inspired by Robert Delaunay

To disassociate himself from the Cubist painters of his time, French artist Robert Delaunay and his wife Sonia pioneered the Orphism art movement in the 20th century. Instead of using just one color, Delaunay experimented with a range of colors to create vibrant and dynamic works similar to the one inside Sterling Cooper's home.

Artist: Midge Daniels

Unlike many of the paintings that either reference existing works or movements, this painting only exists within the world of Mad Men. When Don Draper's ex-fling, Midge Daniels, hits him up for money for her drug habit, he purchases this painting off of her, titled Number 4. The painting looks like a mock abstract expressionist work.

Artist: Unknown

The art in Pete Campbell's office and home contrasts what exists in Don Draper's collection. While Draper has fine art pieces by modern masters, Campbell's art resembles prints or cheap knockoffs (like the giraffe painting). This abstract piece looks like it's trying to emulate Draper's works, revealing more about Campbell's character than his actual taste in art.

Artist: Inspired by Hans Hofmann

Always a fan of Abstraction, Don Draper included this muted piece in his apartment from season 5. Its geometric composition may be inspired by a Hans Hofmann work, but the German-American abstract expressionist painter typically used more color in his works. The directors of the show may have just filled Draper's apartment with familiar but unidentifiable abstract paintings to suggest a polished sense of taste but not a flashy collection.

Artist: Unknown

An unusual piece of kitsch painting, this work says something about the taste of its owner. Regardless, it contrasts the other abstract paintings featured throughout the show. The painting of the birds looks like a naturalist's rendering or an uninspired decorative piece.

Artist: Inspired by Abstraction

Clearly a fan of abstract painting, Don Draper also has this blue piece in his apartment. The composition is a further reduction of figuration, moving beyond Cubism to full-blown rejection of representation. The painting may come from the tradition of the Abstract masters of the early 20th century, or it could be a version of the Abstract Expressionist paintings that were contemporary during Draper's time.

Artist: Inspired by Cubism

It's tough to identify the painting in the hallway of Don Draper's apartment, but that's because it looks like a lot of the Abstract masterpieces that came out of the early 1900s. The work falls in line with the Cubist tradition practiced by Pablo Picasso, Albert Gleizes, and Georges Braque. While many Cubist masterpieces have a muted color palette, Draper's painting involves brilliant reds along with earth tones.

Artist: Inspired by Post-Impressionism

Made up of vivid colors and loose, expressive brushwork, this painting in Joan's office looks a lot like something Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, or other post-Impressionist painters might have made. Instead of meticulously rendering true-to-life images, post-Impressionist masters veered towards abstraction. They emphasized expression over form. Though it's clear Joan's painting depicts buildings of some sort, the structures also look like bright, geometric shapes, much like Paul Gauguin and even Georges Seurat's paintings.

Artist: Hokusai

Known for his obsession with Japanese culture, Cooper owns more than one ukiyo-e woodblock print, but The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife is by far the smuttiest. Hanging in his office is Japanese artist Hokusai's kinky woodcut of a woman getting it on with a pair of octupuses.

Though it's a raunchy scene, Hokusai created this piece during the Edo period when people were getting exposed to different ideas of sexuality. It was a time when Shinto, a super sexy religion, was making a come back. So, really, it's both a piece of history and erotica.

Artist: Mark Rothko

In Episode 7 of Season 2, a few characters debate whether or not the Rothko painting is supposed to "mean" something. Ken Cosgrove says to Sal Romano, "Maybe it doesn't. Maybe you're just supposed to experience it. Because when you look at it, you do feel something, right? It's like looking into something very deep. You could fall in."

Artist: Michal Shapiro

This piece is seen more often than a lot of the art on this list because of its placement above the couch in Draper's office for the first three seasons of the show. The 24" x 36" acrylic painting is titled Butternut and was completed in the year 2000 (so not exactly of the times). Like other abstract pieces in his collection, this piece is heavily textured.

Shapiro's work has been used in various other TV shows, so maybe the set designer had her down as a reliable source. 

Artist: Bernard Buffet

The view from Don Draper's office isn't exactly scenic, and he has the blinds closed most of the time anyway. The Buffet painting of the Brooklyn Bridge provides a "scenic" escape from his environment, but it is also one of his least vibrant pieces and doesn't seem to belong in his world of abstract art.

Artist: Lisa Gizara

Designed by his ex-wife Jane and a hired decorator, Roger Sterling's office is most inspired by the modern 1960s aesthetic. The three black-and-white paintings titled The King of Hearts, The Queen of Hearts, and Madonna I were chosen by set director Claudia Didul who happened upon Gizara's work in the Art Pic catalog and found that they fit the space's color palette with their "swooping, curvaceous" lines.

Artist: Piet Mondrian

When most people think of Mondrian, they think of neoplasticism and compositions of black lines with red, blue, and yellow geometric shapes, but the Dutch painter did dabble in Cubism for a brief time while in Paris. One of the paintings in Sterling Cooper's home closely resembles his Grey Tree oil painting from 1911, though it isn't shown long enough for us to get a clear look.

Artist: Inspired by Bridget Riley

The art department (under the supervision of production designer Dan Bishop) created these Op Art pieces to truly bring the set into the '60s. During one episode, Freddie Rumsen comments that he feels like he is being "sucked in" by one of the paintings.

Artist: Kymm Swank

It's unknown whether Don Draper's taste in art came from the existing decor in his home or if the art was made to match his sophisticated style, but it's clear that the set designers decided to go abstract. The reds in this piece go well with the wool rug and the reddish-brown tones of the wooden furniture without distracting from the room and the characters when they're in it.