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Art History 101 will give you an overview of art periods across time, highlighting pivotal works of art that every art-lover should know. This means, however, that a lot of important art becomes overshadowed by these "masterpieces." There are certain pieces that aren't necessarily famous but need to be seen, and seen in person, because of their cultural relevance, innovation, or sheer aesthetic beauty. We assure you that some of the art on this list would make Da Vinci's jaw drop. So we bid adieu to Michelangelo's David and Van Gogh's Starry Night. These are not the most famous works of art in history (although some of them are very well known), but a collection of the pieces you need to see up-close and in person. Here's 25 Works of Art You Need to See Before You Die, your real list of required museum visits.
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25. Electronic Superhighway
Artist: Nam June Paik
Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, D.C.
Year Created: 1995
Nam June Paik immigrated to the U.S. from Korea in 1964, and he was blown away by the vast network of the American highways. His large-scale work captures the overwhelming implications of a modernized country. Busy neon signs speak to glaring commercialism, and audio segments from The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma, and other American classics create a mix between freedom of the open road and the claustrophobia of American consumption. Electronic Superhighway is a cultural and sensory overload.
24. The Peacock Room
Artist: James McNeill Whistler
Location: Freer Gallery of Art, D.C.
Year Created: 1876-77
Entering James McNeill Whistler's Peacock Room is like entering the living room of a wealthy art collector with a fondness for ceramics and color-coding. The Peacock Room was originally designed by architect Thomas Jeckyll to display his Chinese porcelains. Whistler later reorganized the room on a theme of blue and gold, maintaining the relationship of East-meets-West. This summer, the original Detroit room has been recreated at the Freer Gallery of Art in a show called "The Peacock Room Comes to America."
23. Autumn Rhythm
Artist: Jackson Pollock
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Year Created: 1950
When Jackson Pollock laid his canvases on the ground and dripped paint across the large surfaces, he invented action painting. A glimpse of Pollock working energetically over his horizontal works must have been a sight to see. Because we can no longer watch the master at work, we have to rely on his paintings to express the energy and emotion behind his Abstract Expressionist works. Seeing Autumn Rhythm in person can hit you like an emotional bulldozer.
22. Three Flags
Artist: Jasper Johns
Location: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Year Created: 1958
For this 1958 piece, Johns doused three flags in encaustic (a wax substance), adhered them to canvases, and layered them together. The result was a disorienting image of America. Not only do the Stars and Stripes seem to recess in an illusion of 3D space, but Johns threw into question our conceptions of national pride. What did it mean that the artist had cast this sacred symbol in wax? On the one hand, he was elevating the flag, putting it on a museum's walls. But still, his repetition suggested that the flag wasn't so special after all. And because he used real flags, was he actually desecrating the American symbol? The tactile quality of the work, as well as its imperfections—in some areas, colored wax drips outside the stripes—makes this one worth seeing up close.
21. "The Underbelly Project"
Artist: 103 street artists
Location: International
Year Created: 2008-Present
It's unlikely that you will get to see the incredible collection of street art in "The Underbelly Project," a secret show of murals in abandoned subway stations, but the opportunity to sight the illegal works would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Over the last 5 years, 103 street artists have participated in this project, trespassing below ground to create murals that no one can see. According to Gothamist, the artists were attempting to create "a space in the world that collectors couldn't contaminate." "The Underbelly Project" is almost like the flip side of a show like "10 Years of Wooster Collective," which exhibited works from street art stars across the world this summer in a Chelsea gallery. While seeing the underground street art would involve trespassing into a hazardous area, if these spaces were open to the public one day, we would be the first to darn hardhats and head below ground.
Check out street artists at work in a Paris subway station below:
20. Rothko Chapel
Artist: Mark Rothko
Location: Houston, TX
Year Created: 1971
The Rothko Chapel was founded by John and Dominique de Menil with the intention to create a meditative space to display the Menil's art collection. There are fourteen Rothkos displayed at the chapel, but the real stunner is his crisp purple triptych. Rothko's work in the chapel's impressive architecture creates a perfect environment for meditation or prayer.
19. Portrait of Silvia Elena
Artist: SWOON
Location: New York and Juarez, Mexico
Year Created: 2008
SWOON's intricate Portrait of Silvia Elena perfectly blends gritty street art with delicate cut paper. The intricate portrait depicts one of the first femicide victims in Southern Mexico, Silvia Elena. When it was displayed in a New York gallery, the work was dimly lit by candles and while the voice of Silvia Elena's mother, Ramona, played in the background. SWOON later recreated the work as a mural in Juarez, Mexico. She has been in the street art scene for a while now and has expanded her work into the fine art world.
18. Street Market
Artist: Barry McGee, Todd James, and Stephen Powers
Location: Deitch Projects, New York and MOCA, Los Angeles (previously)
Year Created: 2000
Street Market, an installation by Barry McGee, Todd James and Stephen Powers, exists on a thin line between reality and fantasy. The artists combined found objects with their own unique works to create a distinct, urban universe of their own. In 2000, the artists recreated a street market, including a bodega, liquor store, real street signs, and graffiti, inside Deitch Projects. The installation was again reassembled at MOCA for Deitch's "Art in the Streets" exhibition. Viewers can walk through the space to find subtle details that the artists left behind. You will forget that you were in an art space to begin with.
17. Companion (Passing Through)
Artist: KAWS
Location: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (upcoming)
Year Created: 2010
KAWS' Companion (Passing Through) is a contemporary version of Rodin's The Thinker, the eponymous French sculpture that depicts a man caught in philosophical thought. KAWS, whose works reside in both the commercial and fine arts, reinterprets the classic state of grievance in context of our consumerist, pop-culture society. KAWS does this by casting his character Companion as Rodin's man. Companion is growing to become a pop culture icon. Most recently, he was the mascot and Moonman of the 2013 VMAs. This fall, Companion (Passing Through) will appear at PAFA in Philadelphia to accompany a show on KAWS.
16. Untitled (Big Man)
Artist: Ron Mueck
Location: Hirshorn Museum, D.C.
Year Created: 2000
Mueck is known for his hyperrealist and larger-than-life human sculptures. Untitled (Big Man) depicts a large, naked, and hairless man sitting in the corner of the room. He shows visible signs of old age and maturity while giving off the attitude of a little boy on time out, like an overgrown infant. He lacks the beauty and peacefulness of your classic statue, but he definitely makes up for it in size and personality. This spring, Mueck unveiled a new set of sculptures at Fondation Cartier in Paris, which are on view until September 29.
15. Women Are Heros
Artist: JR
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Year Created: 2008-2009
It's hard not to get emotional when one watches the creation of JR's Women Are Heroes. JR installed this art project in Morra da Providencia, one of the most crime- and drug-ridden favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Instead of critiquing Brazil's corrupt justice system, JR decided to focus on the favela's true heroes: the women. The result? The diverse faces of Brazilian women plastered on the hills of the favela watching over Rio de Janeiro.
14. Dustheads
Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat
Location: Private Collection
Year Created: 1982
Basquiat's Neo-Expressionist work blew up the art market in 2013, beginning with a blow-out show at Gagosian Gallery. His work accurately critiques racism and class struggles while encompassing the grit of New York in the '80s. He remains relevant to all artists, including Jay-Z, and this year Basquiat's Dustheads sold at a record-breaking price of $48.8 million.
13. The Means to an End...A Shadow Drama in Five Acts
Artist: Kara Walker
Location: Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis
Year Created: 1995
Kara Walker is not known for being subtle, and her work The Means to an End...A Shadow Drama in Five Acts is no exception. By depicting vulgar imagery with simple black-and-white cutouts, Walker's commentary on racism and black history is dark and disturbingly jaunty. Her work is both hard to look at and impossible to tear your eyes away from.
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12. La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) or Pope Struck By a Meteorite
Artist: Maurizio Cattelan
Location: Private Collection
Year Created: 1999
"WTF?" might be the first thing that comes to mind when one first experiences Cattelan's Pope Struck by a Meteorite, but that's exactly what the artist intended. Known for his satirical sculptures, Cattelan enjoys poking fun at the art world and useless social norms by subverting expectations. You never thought you'd see the day when the Pope would be hit by a meteorite, did you?
11. "Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective"
Artist: Sol LeWitt
Location: MASS MOCA, North Adams, MA
Year Created: 1969-2007
"Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective" consists of 105 of LeWitt's large-scale wall drawings, spanning the artist's career from 1969 to 2007. Sol LeWitt became a pioneer of American Conceptual and Minimal art, claiming that "no one should be intelligent enough to know when not to be too intellectual." His work ranges from simple to more complicated isometric forms that vary in energy depending the wall you were viewing.
10. Crack Is Wack
Artist: Keith Haring
Location: Crack Is Wack Playground, Harlem, NY
Year Created: 1986
In 1986, the downtown New York graffiti artist Keith Haing, painted this mural in Harlem River Park. The work is a perfect example of Haring's bubble-figure style, and it takes on the '80s crack epidemic, making it historically significant. The fact that it remains outside gives it a new meaning then if it were to appear in a gallery.
9. The Cremaster Cycle
Artist: Matthew Barney
Location: Periodic screenings and DVDs
Year Created: 1994–2002
Barney's The Cremaster Cycle is more of an experience than an art piece. Consisting of five feature length films with related sculptures, photographs, drawings, and artist's books, it took Mr. Björk eight years to premier his project at the Guggenheim. Most people have a love/hate relationship with the piece because of its peculiar imagery. Nonetheless, The Cremaster Cycle looks into the creation of form beyond biology with strange, yet stunning visuals. It's hard to look away.
8. The Dinner Party
Artist: Judy Chicago
Location: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Year Created: 1979
Judy Chicago created this controversial installation piece by sewing the names and representations of famous fictional and real women onto table runners. She would then display them below table settings on a triangular table. The controversy? On many of the plates are sculptures of flowers and butterflies, meant to depict the vulva. Some art critics praised her work as an effort to empower women. Others called it tasteless. However shocking it may be or have been decades ago, you can't deny her artistic genius. Chicago chose a triangular table because the triangle is a symbol for women. Each side consists of 13 place settings (no doubt a modern allusion to The Last Supper, which consisted of 13 men) for a total of 39 place settings. Some famous women referenced include Virginia Woolf, Ishtar, and Georgia O'Keeffe.
7. Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Artist: Michelangelo
Location: Vatican City
Year Created: 1508-1512
There's a reason that the Sistine Chapel is a must-see destination for tourists who come to the Vatican. Just consider the chapel as the house of Michelangelo, as the walls and iconic ceiling are covered in his High Renaissance handiwork (though the walls also boast paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Piero Perugino too). The Sistine Chapel will take a viewer's breath away, as its expansive surface is covered in nine scenes from the Book of Genesis. It even includes Michelangelo's most famous Creation of Adam.
6. The Garden of Earthly Delights
Artist: Hieronymus Bosch
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain
Year Created: 1503–1504
This insanely terrifying and insanely awesome triptych makes it seem like Bosch invented Surrealism 400 years before Dalí became the face (mustache) of the movement. His incredibly detailed masterpiece tells the story of Creation. But this is not a simple rib-of-Adam Creation. Bosch's work includes giant fruit, fantastical creatures, and fractured body parts. The right panel of the triptych shows damnation, and it's the scariest version of Hell we've ever seen. Impossible to take in without seeing this in person, you could spend a whole day observing this wonderful nightmare.
5. Balloon Dog
Artist: Jeff Koons
Location: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (upcoming)
Year Created: 1994–2000
Jeff Koons has garnered so much attention and controversy for his artwork that it simply wouldn't be right to pass through life without glimpsing one of his famous balloon dogs. His balloon dogs, shiny metal sculptures that mimic a clown's balloon animals, are like Warhol's Campbell's soup cans, an embodiment of everything that the artist represents.
4. Torqued Ellipses
Artist: Richard Serra
Location: Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY
Year Created: 1997
When Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses first opened to the public in 1997, tourists and art lovers alike flocked to the Dia Art Foundation to gaze upon his massive steel sculptures. Working primarily with steel, Serra wanted to explore the way an artist could shape space rather than the medium at hand. Thus, he created his most well-known Torqued Ellipses series, which was inspired by the architecture of the San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, a church in Rome. The massive sculptures are an immersive and interactive experience.
3. Spiral Jetty
Artist: Robert Smithson
Location: Box Elder, Utah
Year Created: 1970
Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is a particular must-see simply because, depending on when viewers visit its home on the northeastern coast of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, they may or may not be able to spot it. Smithson created this synthesis of art and nature in six days after hiring a mover from a local construction company to transport 6,650 tons of rock and soil into the lake. When Smithson began working on the project, the lake's water level was low due to drought. A few years after he finished the piece, however, the water levels returned to normal, thus submerging the spiral artwork for three decades. Since then, the water levels fluctuate so Spiral Jetty is only visible when the water level is below 4,195 feet. As of July 2013, the jetty can still be seen.
2. Meeting Room
Artist: James Turrell
Location: MoMA PS1, Long Island City, N.Y.
Year Created: 1986
As a manipulator of light and space, James Turrell fashioned this room in the MoMA PS1 building. It's a square room, consisting simply of benches that align the walls and a rectangular opening, which has been cut into the ceiling of the meeting room to expose the sky. When viewers lean back, they no longer see the space they're in as the sky is all they see. Consider this the epitome of Turrell, his artistic vision, and brilliance.
1. Guernica
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Location: The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
Year Created: 1937
Perhaps the most famous anti-war work in art history, Pablo Picasso created this black and white oil painting in response to the bombing of Guernica located in Spain. The piece portrays haunting caricatures of fallen civilians and those killed or injured during the Spanish Civil War. After Picasso finished the painting, it traveled from country to country, bringing the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention. And though many people speak of the Guernica's "return" to Spain, it was actually created in Paris and made its way back to Spain only after the war ended. It was Picasso's wish that the painting not travel to Spain until after peace and democracy had been restored in his home country.
