A Brief Survey of Modern & Contemporary Art

Interested in learning the history of modern and contemporary art? While the whole story is much more diverse, international and complicated, below is a suggested place to start, from the perspective of Matthew Israel, Director of The Art Genome Project at Artsy. Israel narrates art history's last 150 years through ten of its most important works.

#1: Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass (1863)
#2: Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire (1885-1887)
#3: Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair-Caning (1912)
#4: Marcel Duchamp's Bottle Rack (1914)
#5:Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII (1913)
#6: Andy Warhol, Soup Cans (1962)
#7: William Eggleston's Guide (1977)
#8: Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980)
#9: Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)
#10: Andreas Gursky, Paris, Montparnasse (1993)
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