Most Famous Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago

Highlights

What to Come across in an 60 minutes

Short on time? Never fear, you can even so come across some of the well-nigh iconic and honey works in the Art Institute'due south collection on this quick spin through the galleries. Ready, set—art!

Please note: artworks occasionally go off view for imaging, handling, or loan to other institutions. Click on the images to ensure the work is currently on view.

Grant Wood

One of the well-nigh famous American paintings of all fourth dimension, this double portrait by Grant Wood debuted at the Art Institute in 1930, winning the artist a $300 prize and instant fame. Many people think the couple are a husband and wife, but Wood meant the couple to be a father and his daughter. (His sis and his dentist served equally his models.) He intended this Depression-era canvas to be a positive argument about rural American values during a time of disillusionment.

Come across American Gothic on view in Gallery 263.

NARRATOR:
Creative person Grant Wood discovered the house in this painting by accident. Judith Barter, Field-McCormick Chair and Curator, American Arts, tells the story.

JUDITH Castling:
Well, he was riding around in the land one day, and he found this wonderful Gothic Revival house. And it is a wonderful house—I'd buy it in a heartbeat. And he said he wanted to paint the perfect couple that would live in a house like that. And and then he engaged his dentist and his sister to pose for this picture.

NARRATOR:
As the artist said:

Player (GRANT Wood):
I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to get with this American Gothic firm.

JUDITH BARTER:
Grant Wood never said whether this was a husband and wife or a father and girl. She'due south wearing her frock, and on the left side of the painting are her flowerpots and the domestic chores. He is on the correct, with his pitchfork, probably headed to the barn, which is as well on the right side of the picture. Over his bib overalls, which mark him every bit a farmer, he wears a dress shirt and probably his merely suit jacket, dressing upwards for this picture. And she wears her best apron and the family cameo.

Ironically, in 1930, this neat, tidy little subcontract couple was already a dying breed. In 1920, this country was predominantly urban, and no longer rural. And particularly in the early 1930s, at the depth of the Depression, young people were leaving the farms. This couple would have been sort of left behind in the grit.

NARRATOR:
This work reads both like a satire of the American dream…and a celebration of a way of life that was apace disappearing.

JUDITH BARTER:
People in Chicago loved this picture because it was something so strange to them. It was certainly an American scene, but information technology wasn't something that people lived in large cities could chronicle to very well. And they establish information technology rather exotic and fun, and so it was quite popular.

Hear the full tour on our app, available for Apple and Android

Georges Seurat

For his largest and best-known painting, Georges Seurat depicted Parisians enjoying all sorts of leisurely activities—strolling, lounging, sailing, and fishing—in the park called La Grande Jatte in the River Seine. He used an innovative technique chosen Pointillism, inspired by optical and colour theory, applying tiny dabs of dissimilar colored pigment that viewers see as a single, and Seurat believed, more brilliant hue.

See this piece of work on view in Gallery 240.

NARRATOR:
This may exist the about iconic work of art in the Art Institute. Gloria Groom, David and Mary Winton Greenish Curator and Chair of European Painting and Sculpture.

GLORIA GROOM:
What you see are a lot of dissimilar figures. And these figures represent dissimilar walks of life. They've gathered here on the banks of the Seine on a Sun afternoon, and they're in their Sun best, most of them.

It seems very alive, because of the color. Simply no one is really moving. In that location is really a stillness. Seurat wanted to excerpt from modernistic life, to distill it. And to brand it, as he said, similar the Parthenon frieze, but using modern people in all their traits.

NARRATOR:
At that place are mysteries here: on the left, the boater with the cap seems disproportionately big in relation to the couple seated next to him. Why is the little daughter in orange the only one captured in movement? What are those ii orange shapes at the far right?

GLORIA GROOM:
For u.s.,it's an enigmatic painting. It'south one that we return to again and again. You never get tired of information technology. Considering y'all're always finding something else that is unusual, that makes you think differently about what you lot thought yous knew. And that, I think, is the sign of a great painting.

NARRATOR:
Seurat used a technique chosen 'pointillism,' and it's what he's famous for. He painted in tiny fiddling dots, often in complementary colors.

GLORIA GROOM:
If you were an avant-garde artist in tardily 19th century, you would be thinking most complementaries on the colour cycle. So royal and yellow, and blueish and orange, and red and dark-green.And when you lot lay them down next to each other, and you don't blend them,they have a flickering quality.

And and then he breaks upwardly the surface with these little dots of paint. And that is what is his completely dissimilar approach to painting. And every artist after 'the Grande Jatte' had to reckon with what a painting should be, and how can we at present have this new technique.

Hear the full tour on our app, available for Apple and Android

Richard Chase

Hero Structure, created in 1958, just a year afterwards Chicago sculptor Richard Chase graduated from the Schoolhouse of the Art Constitute, is composed of found objects—old pipes, bits of metal, and automobile parts—that the creative person discovered in junkyards and on the street. Inspired by mythology and heroic sculptures past and present, the welded effigy suggests a hero for our times, humble yet resilient in the confront of past, present, and futurity injustices and uncertainties.

See Hero Construction on view on the Woman'southward Board Thou Staircase.

Edward Hopper

This iconic painting of an all-night diner in which three customers sit down together and yet seem totally isolated from one another has become one of the best-known images of 20th-century fine art. Hopper said of the enigmatic work, "Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city."

See Nighthawks on view Gallery 262.

NARRATOR:
Judith Barter, Field ¬McCormick Chair & Curator, American Arts.

JUDITH Castling:
'Nighthawks' is a really fascinating painting. It's such an American painting. The Americanness is in many of the details: The 'Phillies Cigar' advertizement higher up the diner. The common salt shakers, the heavy-duty porcelain mugs. The napkin holders. The large java urns in the back. The soda jerk, with his cap on. It's what America was like and what America liked in the '30s and '40s.

NARRATOR:
But await closer. In that location's something unrealistic—and off-putting—about Edward Hopper's scene.

JUDITH Castling:
It looks real, merely it's non. At that place's no sense of real depth. When you try to go deep into this picture, information technology pushes you lot back to the surface. He uses acid greens confronting bright yellows and oranges—the red clothes of the woman with her orange pilus. These fix your teeth on edge, just they do work together; he was a brilliant colorist.] And if you look at the diner, there's no style in or out except through that orange door that ostensibly goes to the kitchen. So it's sort of a hermetically-sealed environment with these four people in this diner at night.

NARRATOR:
And…no one is talking. To many, 'Nighthawks' evokes a sense of loneliness. Only Hopper himself disagreed with this interpretation. In an interview, he said.

[EDWARD HOPPER ARCHIVAL Sound]:
I recollect those are the words of critics. It may be true, information technology may not be truthful. It'due south how the viewer looks on the pictures. What he sees in them.

JUDITH Barter:
What I see in Hopper is a sense of everyman. That any of us could be sitting in this diner. it'southward really the idea of we are individuals, just we have a collective consciousness as well. I think people just relate to the everydayness of information technology. They tin can put themselves in these pictures.

Hear the full tour on our app, available for Apple and Android

Kerry James Marshall

Chicago-based creative person Kerry James Marshall applies themes from art history to examine and recontextualize the representation of blackness culture. This piece of work referencesnkisi nkondi, or power figures, of the Democratic Republic of Congo—sculptures into which metals, mirrors, and nails were driven to channel their forces. Marshall affixed his sculpture with "medallions" or "icons," laminated images and texts that refer to figures inside the blackness liberty movement in America as well as to Egyptian iconographies championed by African Americans in the 1970s equally a way to challenge dominant Western worldviews. Marshall adds new elements each fourth dimension the sculpture goes on view, treating it like a living and continually evolving work.

See Africa Restored (Cheryl every bit Cleopatra) on view in Gallery 295.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso's The Quondam Guitarist is a work from his Blue Menses (1901–04). During this time the artist restricted himself to a cold, monochromatic blue palette and flattened forms, taking on the themes of misery and alienation inspired by such artists as Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin. The elongated, athwart effigy also relates to Picasso'southward interest in Spanish art and, in particular, the great 16th-century creative person El Greco. The image reﬂects the 22-year-quondam Picasso'southward personal sympathy for the plight of the downtrodden; he knew what it was like to be poor, having been nearly penniless during all of 1902.

See The Onetime Guitarist on view in Gallery 391.

NARRATOR:
Stephanie D'Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator, International Modern Art.

STEPHANIE D'ALESSANDRO:
You're looking at Pablo Picasso's 'Old Guitarist', from late 1903-'04. Information technology'south a painting of a man, who, by his sunken eyes and closed eyelids, seems to be a bullheaded human being playing a guitar. Maybe his oral fissure is a footling open singing, or maybe he's breathing. Maybe considering of the blue colour, maybe because of the emaciated quality of his body and its angular position, sort of smushed into this composition—but at that place'southward an emotional level to the painting also.

The color blueish was an important colour for many artists, artists interested in this kind of evocative feeling or kind of personal subjectivity, or psychology. Picasso was very much a office of that as much as anything else.

NARRATOR:
Take a wait at how Picasso uses white highlights to emphasize the gauntness of the effigy'south torso. In both the composition and the sensitive rendering of the effigy, Picasso references the great 16th-century Spanish painter, El Greco.

STEPHANIE D'ALESSANDRO:
Picasso was someone very sensitive to the plight of the downtrodden. He himself was a struggling artist at this time, and certainly would've been sympathetic to people like this old guitarist, who would've been an outcast in lodge.

This is not only is an amazing painting by Picasso but it happens to be the very first acquired by an American museum. And information technology was the start of Chicago becoming known as a identify for modern fine art.

Hear the total bout on our app, available for Apple and Android

Vincent van Gogh

This sun-drenched limerick with its bright palette, dramatic perspective, and dynamic brushwork depicts Van Gogh's chamber in his firm in Arles, French republic, his get-go truthful dwelling of his own. Van Gogh dubbed it the "Studio of the Southward" in the hope that friends and artists would join him there. He immediately set to work on the house and painted this sleeping room scene equally a part of his decorating scheme. Van Gogh liked this image and so much that he painted three distinct versions—the other ii are held in the collections of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Encounter The Bedchamber on view in Gallery 241.

NARRATOR:
Gloria Groom, David and Mary Winton Green Curator and Chair of European Painting and Sculpture.

GLORIA GROOM:
I call up ane of the reasons that people are so fatigued to this is because of the subject area thing. I mean, Van Gogh is painting his bedroom with his paintings in information technology, and the article of furniture that he purchased.

NARRATOR:
This was Vincent Van Gogh's bedchamber in his firm in Arles, where he lived in the late 1880s. In that location he'd dreamt of establishing an artists' commonage—a "Studio of the S." Initially he'd filled with swell optimism about the endeavor and the idea of finally finding a place to phone call home.

The room itself is simple, almost austere. In a letter to his brother Theo, he wrote:

ACTOR (VINCENT VAN GOGH):
You'll probably observe the interior the ugliest, an empty bedchamber with a wooden bed and two chairs—yet I've painted it twice on a large scale.

NARRATOR:
Van Gogh, in fact, considered this painting ane of his very best. Curator Gloria Groom.

GLORIA GROOM:
He makes information technology await so interesting and inviting, and at the same time, [rather discomforting. The style the paint is laid on, the brokenness of it. The extreme radicalness of splayed-out floorboards. In that location's a kind of…I wouldn't say creepiness, merely definitely unease, unsettledness about it.

NARRATOR:
That unease likely relates to Van Gogh's country of heed at the fourth dimension. He painted this work subsequently he'd had a mental breakup, left the business firm, and had been hospitalized for mental disease.

GLORIA GROOM:
He'south in the asylum. [His] dreams have been shattered. He knows he will never, ever have that kind of domicile of his own …it's a bedroom that has furnishings as you lot might imagine in whatever chamber, but the way information technology is painted makes it live. Gives it some other sense of excitement that we just don't think almost in art of that period. It is very unusual.

Hear the full tour on our app, available for Apple and Android

South High german, Nuremberg, about 1520

Defenseless in the heat of battle with sword raised and equus caballus rearing, this mounted figure may match many notions of a knight in shining armor but actually represents a mutual hired soldier. The armors for both man and horse were produced in Nuremberg, Federal republic of germany, in the 16th century, but the clothing was meticulously recreated in 2017 from menstruation designs. Await for the special leggings: small plates of steel are sewn betwixt 2 pieces of linen to protect the soldier'due south legs. You'll besides spot some splashes of mud and grime from the battlefield.

Meet Field Armor for Homo and Horse on view in Gallery 239.

Kuba

The densely painted and geometrically patterned Kuba mask is a ngady mwaash, an idealized representation of a woman that honors the role of women in Kuba life. Ngady mwaah virtually often appear as office of a trio of royal masks in reenactments of the Kuba Kingdom's origins, which are staged at public ceremonies, initiations, and funerals. In these masquerades, the ngady mwaash dances together with the mooshamb-wooy mask, which represents the rex (who is both her brother and her husband), and the bwoom mask. Male person mask characters like bwoom display assailment and heaviness while female characters similar ngady mwaash trip the light fantastic toe in a sensuous and graceful manner even though the mask is always worn by a man.

See this ngady mwaash on view in Gallery 137.

Nagapattinam, Chola period

This 12th-century statue of the Buddha comes from the due south Indian littoral town of Nagapattinam, where Buddhist monasteries flourished and attracted monks from distant lands. He is seated in a lotus posture of meditation, with hands and feet resting atop one some other. The marking on his forehead is called the urna, which distinguishes the Buddha equally a swell being.

Run into this piece of work on view in Gallery 140.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: Equally you walk into the Alsdorf Galleries, the sculpture that takes one's eye is this very big Buddha who is seated in meditation.

NARRATOR: Alsdorf Acquaintance Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, Himalayan and Islamic Fine art, Madhuvanti Ghosh.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: This is the first sculpture that I decided to install in these galleries because it's location determined how everything else fitted around. {musical intermission} So the Buddha faces sculptures from South E Asia, which you run into on either side of him. I've placed a pair of Thai monks in forepart of him honouring him. {pause} What is really beautiful about him is the fact that he has these markings on his body — these 32 markings that special beings were supposed to take.

NARRATOR: If yous expect between the Buddha'south eyes, you'll meet one of those markings. A small dot, called the urna, is a sign of divine vision. On the palms of his hands yous tin see the the symbol of the chakra, or cycle of law.

NARRATOR: At present, start to make your way around the sculpture. From the side you'll notice his unusually large ears, the beat-like curls of his hair, and the flaming knot atop his head, representing spiritual knowledge. Equally you circle toward the rear of the Buddha, you'll see an inscription across his dorsum. The writing is likely a dedication from or about the person who donated this sculpture to its original location, a monastery at the port urban center of Nagapattinam, almost the southwestern tip of India.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: Unfortunately, it's quite illegible so it so nosotros oasis't been able to decipher it yet. Only it also helps the states realise that this sculpture would've been seated somewhere in the round. Information technology would've been possible for pilgrims to circumambulate the Buddha and that is the fashion in which you honor a sacred being.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: I hope that seeing this beautiful, large Buddha gives you a moment to only be silent and appreciate what the Buddha stood for… his ideals.

Hear the full bout on our app, available for Apple and Android

Georgia O'Keeffe (American, 1887–1986)

Painted in the summer of 1965, when Georgia O'Keeffe was 77 years onetime, this monumental work culminates the creative person'south serial based on her experiences every bit an airplane rider during the 1950s. Spanning the entire 24-foot width of O'Keeffe's garage, the work has not left the Art Institute since it came into the edifice—because of its size and because of its status as an essential icon.

Run into Sky above Clouds Iv on view in Gallery 249.

Tiffany Studios

More than 100 years agone, Agnes F. Northrop designed the monumental Hartwell Memorial Window for Tiffany Studios as a commission from Mary Hartwell in accolade of her husband, Frederick Hartwell, for the Fundamental Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Isle (now Customs Church of Providence). Composed of 48 panels and numerous different glass types, the window is inspired by the view from Frederick Hartwell's family home most Mt. Chocorua in New Hampshire. The imperial scene captures the transitory dazzler of nature—the sun setting over a mountain, flowing h2o, and dappled light dancing through the trees—in an intricate arrangement of vibrantly colored glass.

Come across the Hartwell Memorial Window on view at the top of the Woman's Board Grand Staircase.

The Hartwell Memorial Window on view at the Art Found of Chicago