Contemporary painting · world ranking
100 world-famous paintings from the 21st century
From Banksy to Julie Mehretu, from Gerhard Richter to Amy Sherald: one hundred paintings created since 2001 which have left their mark on museums, criticism, the market and the public imagination. The century is still young; his pantheon already has a lot of people in the hall.
David Hockney, Bigger Trees Near Warter, 2007
A living classification, not a prophecy set in stone
Classifying the painting of a century that has not yet reached its first third requires a little caution. The first places bring together images recognized well beyond specialized circles; the rest opens the classification to works already installed in major museums, international retrospectives and recent histories of painting.
Method. Rank intersects public notoriety, critical impact, institutional presence, visual influence and international circulation. The selection excludes sculptures, videos and installations, even famous ones. She does not claim that these works are available in the Alpha Reproduction catalog: no product button is invented to furnish the wall.
The Top 100
One painting per line, with a commentary truly linked to its history, its image or its reception.
#1
Banksy
Girl with Balloon
2002
A black silhouette, a red balloon and enough empty space for the image to immediately become memorable. This stencil left the streets to enter global popular culture, becoming the starting point for Love Is in the Bin.
Editorial visual: artsy.net
artsy.net
#2
Luc Tuymans
Still Life
2002
Presented at Documenta 11 after the September 11 attacks, this monumental still life refuses the spectacular. His pale calm transforms fruit and a carafe into a history painting, as if Cézanne had suddenly lowered his voice.
Pinault Collection, Studio Luc Tuymans; CAI editorial reproduction
Contemporary Art Issue
#3
Julie Mehretu
Stadia II
2004
Architectural plans, flags, trajectories and clouds of signs jostle there as in a stadium that has become a planet. Mehretu gives a pictorial form to the crowd, to power and to political energy without drawing a single wise platform.
Julie Mehretu; CAI editorial reproduction
Contemporary Art Issue
#4
Gerhard Richter
September
2005
Richter takes an image of the World Trade Center towers and blurs it to the edge of memory. The small format retains the drama instead of enlarging it: a sober gesture, precisely for a subject that the media had made immense.
Editorial visual: artsy.net
artsy.net
#5
Cy Twombly
Untitled (Bacchus)
2005
Large red loops rotate on the canvas with the violence of a wine that has forgotten moderation. Twombly summons Bacchus, war and writing in a painting in which each line seems to hesitate between dance and injury.
Editorial visual: customprints.sfmoma.org
customprints.sfmoma.org.jpg?maxwidth=3030&maxheight=1950)
#6
Gerhard Richter
Cage 1 -6
2006
These six monumental abstractions superimpose scraping, controlled chance and color. The title pays homage to John Cage; painting makes silence heard with a quantity of material that is not shy.
Editorial visual: christies.com
christies.com #7
David Hockney
Bigger Trees Near Warter
2007
Fifty assembled canvases form a landscape more than twelve meters wide. Hockney combines outdoor painting, preparatory grid and photographic mosaic to give a corner of Yorkshire the scale of a national setting.
David Hockney Foundation; CAI editorial reproduction
Contemporary Art Issue
#8
Marlene Dumas
Dead Marilyn
2008
From an autopsy photograph, Dumas removes Marilyn Monroe from the glamor that had transformed her into an icon. The swollen and pale face does not seek to please: it is a stark reminder that fame does not sign any contract with eternity.
Editorial visual: davidzwirner.com
davidzwirner.com
#9
Banksy
Devolved Parliament
2009
The House of Commons is populated by chimpanzees, a political metaphor of almost embarrassing effectiveness. The painting became even more famous at the time of Brexit, proof that the news sometimes knows how to take the guided tour itself.
Editorial visual: news.artnet.com
news.artnet.com
#10
Nicole Eisenman
The Triumph of Poverty
2009
Eisenman diverts the language of great allegorical painting to show a procession as funny as it is desperate. The grotesque, the tenderness and the economic crisis advance in the same procession, without security.
ICA Philadelphia; CAI editorial reproduction
Contemporary Art Issue
#11
Mickalene Thomas
Lunch on the Grass: The Three Black Women
2010
Thomas responds to Manet with three black women occupying the space without asking permission. Rhinestones, acrylic and enamel transform the scholarly quote into a declaration of presence, style and sovereignty of the gaze.
Mickalene Thomas/ARS; CAI editorial reproduction
Contemporary Art Issue
#12
Kehinde Wiley
Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps
2005
Wiley replaces Napoleon with a young black man in contemporary attire, while retaining David's prancing horse and pomp. The ornamental background is even gaining ground on the figure: the history of art here receives a highly anticipated change of distribution.
Editorial visual: theartnewspaper.com
theartnewspaper.com
#13
Amy Sherald
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama
2018
Michelle Obama's official portrait combines gray skin with monumental geometric dress. The image attracted an exceptional audience at the National Portrait Gallery and imposed a new way of representing power without protocol stiffness.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian; CAI editorial reproduction
Smithsonian
#14
Kehinde Wiley
President Barack Obama
2018
Sitting in front of a wall of foliage that seems to grow around him, Barack Obama appears both president and nobody. Wiley retains the authority of the official portrait, but removes the imaginary dust that sometimes accompanies the genre.
Editorial visual: whereartinspiresbeauty.com
whereartinspiresbeauty.com
#15
Banksy
Love Is in the Bin
2018
At the very time of its sale, Girl with Balloon partially self-destructed within its framework. Renamed Love Is in the Bin, the work made the dramatic twist a second painting and the art market an involuntary participant.
Editorial visual: news.artnet.com
news.artnet.com
#16
Dana Schutz
Open Casket
2016
Inspired by Emmett Till's photographs, this painting sparked a global debate over a white artist's depiction of black suffering. Its place here is as much about controversy as it is about the question it leaves open: who can paint what story?
Dana Schutz /Petzel; CAI editorial reproduction
Contemporary Art IssueGerhard Richter
Birkenau
2014
Four clandestine photographs of Auschwitz are painted and then covered with abstraction. The images remain buried beneath the surface: Richter does not erase them, rather he shows the moral difficulty of looking at them.
Editorial visual: metmuseum.org
metmuseum.org
#18
Zeng Fanzhi
The Last Supper
2001
Zeng transposes the Last Supper into the world of Chinese students wearing red scarves. Between Leonardo da Vinci, Maoist memory and economic shift, the scene transforms a sacred meal into a nervous portrait of a generation.
Editorial visual: sothebys.com
sothebys.com
#19
Julie Mehretu
Mural
2009
Commissioned for the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, this gigantic canvas superimposes trade routes, plans and traffic signs. Mehretu paints capitalism as global weather: complex, fast and slightly worrying when you forget your umbrella.
Editorial visual: theartnewspaper.com
theartnewspaper.com
#20
Kerry James Marshall
School of Beauty, School of Culture
2012
In a lively hair salon, Marshall slips in an anamorphosis of Sleeping Beauty and multiplies visual conversations. The painting celebrates black beauty while examining the rules, mirrors and images that shape it.
Editorial visual: davidzwirner.com
davidzwirner.com
#21
Damien Hirst
Cherry Blossoms
2018 -2019
With this series, Hirst returns frankly to painting and covers his canvases with thick, almost explosive flowers. The pattern is charming from afar and much more turbulent up close: spring has visibly found the tube of paint.
Editorial visual: gagosian.com
gagosian.com
#22
Takashi Murakami
The 500 Arhats
2012
Created after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, this monumental painting displays five hundred disciples of the Buddha over one hundred meters. Murakami unites religious tradition, manga and collective workshop in a fresco designed as an offering and consolation.
Editorial visual: mori.art.museum
mori.art.museum
#23
Kerry James Marshall
Untitled (Studio)
2014
A black artist works in her studio among tools, colors and fragments of images. Marshall does not only show a finished work: he places the creative process, long refused to certain figures in museums, at the center of the painting.
Exhibition view; ARTnews editorial reproduction
ARTnews
#24
Amy Sherald
Breonna Taylor
2020
Sherald depicts Breonna Taylor standing, in a blue dress that stands out against an equally calm background. This restraint makes the absence even more sensitive and transforms a media face into an individual presence.
Editorial visual: artnews.com
artnews.com
#25
Banksy
Game Changer
2020
A child plays with a nurse in a cape while Batman and Spider-Man wait in the trash. Offered to a hospital during the pandemic, the image became a popular tribute to caregivers before reaching a record charity award.
Editorial visual: Artnet
Artnet
#26
Banksy
Love Is in the Air
2003
The gesture of a projectile thrower ends with a bouquet of flowers. This collision between anger and tenderness gave Banksy one of his most reproduced images, with an economy of means that would make many posters with twelve slogans pale.
Editorial visual: sothebys.com
sothebys.com
#27
Banksy
Kissing Coppers
2004
Two British police officers kiss in uniform on a Brighton wall. The scene brings together authority, intimacy and provocation in an image readable in one second, then much less simple from the second.
Editorial visual: stopwatchgallery.com
stopwatchgallery.com
#28
Banksy
Show Me the Monet
2005
Banksy invades a Monet-inspired pond with supermarket trolleys and a traffic cone. The joke is immediate; the criticism of consumption thrown into the landscape is just as much.
Editorial visual: signarigallery.com
signarigallery.com
#29
Banksy
Well Hung Lover
2006
A naked man hanging from a window tries to escape the husband who is looking outside. Painted on the facade of a sex clinic in Bristol, the scene combines vaudeville, urban trompe l'oeil and an almost too perfect sense of placement.
Editorial visual: banksyexplained.com
banksyexplained.com
#30
Banksy
One Nation Under CCTV
2007
The giant slogan is painted under the eye of a real surveillance camera. The work therefore does not just talk about control: it allows itself to be observed doing so, conceptual loop included.
Editorial visual: et.wikipedia.org
and.wikipedia.org
#31
Banksy
Slavic Labor
2012
A kneeling child makes a garland of British flags. Appearing before the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, the image links national celebration, consumption and invisible work.
Editorial visual: bbc.com
bbc.com
#32
Banksy
The Son of a Migrant from Syria
2015
Steve Jobs appears with a bundle and an old Apple computer in the Calais camp. Banksy recalls that the son of a Syrian migrant can become a central figure in the global economy, an argument delivered without a PowerPoint presentation.
Editorial visual: Banksy Explained
Banksy Explained.jpg)
#33
David Hockney
The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011
2011
This sequel follows the return of spring on a Yorkshire road, with almost daily attention to buds and colors. Hockney proves that one season can still produce suspense, as long as you really look at the trees.
Editorial visual: christies.com
christies.com
#34
David Hockney
The Road to Thwing
2006
The winding road, jagged fields and stylized trees resettle Hockney in his native landscape. The perspective is deliberately mobile: the eye advances in the countryside instead of remaining parked in front of it.
Editorial visual: wayfair.com
wayfair.com
#35
David Hockney
Woldgate Woods, November 6 & 9, 2006
2006
Painted on two dates indicated in the title, this autumn wood shows the weather within the landscape itself. The pink and orange trunks make up a familiar space that has decided not to dress in camouflage.
Editorial visual: flickr.com
flickr.com
#36
Julie Mehretu
Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation
2001
Maps, trajectories and colorful marks construct a geography that refuses to stay in place. This youthful work already contains Mehretu's ambition: to make painting a system capable of thinking about the city and history.
Artnews editorial reproduction
ARTnews
#37
Julie Mehretu
Dispersion
2002
A mass of colorful signs crosses a precise architectural network. The canvas combines the speed of an explosion and the discipline of a shot, a rare encounter between Kandinsky, cartography and cosmic traffic jam.
Editorial visual: smp.smcm.edu
smp.smcm.edu
#38
Julie Mehretu
HOWL, eon (I, II)
2016 -2017
This very large format diptych combines landscapes of the American West, images of racial violence and abstract gestures. Installed in the public space of the SFMOMA, it makes conquest, erasure and resistance a single unstable surface.
Editorial visual: whitecube.com
whitecube.com
#39
Marlene Dumas
The Blindfolded Man
2007
The bandaged face comes from political and media imagery linked to torture. Dumas paints few details, but this economy makes the subject more vulnerable and the viewer's gaze much less comfortable.
Editorial visual: flickr.com
flickr.com
#40
Marlene Dumas
Osama
2010
The portrait of Osama bin Laden escapes heroic framing as well as immediate caricature. Dumas works on the ambiguity of a face that media circulation had already transformed into a global symbol.
Editorial visual: lost-painters.nl
lost-painters.nl
#41
Marlene Dumas
The Widow
2013
Based on a photograph by Pauline Lumumba, topless during a mourning march, Dumas gives grief a political presence. Painting together retains vulnerability, dignity and anger.
Editorial visual: davidzwirner.com
davidzwirner.com
#42
Peter Finger
Pelican (Stag)
2003
A man drags a kayak across a tropical beach, in a light that makes the scene both ordinary and strange. Doig paints the memory as a climate: recognizable, but impossible to measure precisely.
Editorial visual: whitechapelgallery.org
whitechapelgallery.orgPeter Finger
Spearfishing
2013
A figure equipped with a mask crosses dark water where each reflection hesitates between depth and surface. The leisure scene becomes almost mythological, proof that a snorkel can sometimes carry more mystery than a scepter.
Editorial visual: Paris Art Now
Paris Art NowPeter Finger
Two Trees
2017
Two men stand near a hockey field in Trinidad, under trees that divide the space like a curtain. The painting mixes camaraderie, waiting and diffuse threat without explaining which one will arrive first.
Editorial visual: metmuseum.org
metmuseum.org
#45
Dana Schutz
Frank as a Proboscis Monkey
2002
Frank, a recurring fictional character, here becomes a monkey with a spectacular nose. Schutz transforms the absurd into a pictorial laboratory where anatomy, color and story have clearly decided not to fill out the same forms.
Petzel; ARTnews editorial reproduction
ARTnews
#46
Dana Schutz
Presentation
2005
A body is presented to a host of figures who examine it, touch it and transform it into a spectacle. The thick material and acidic colors make the collective curiosity as comical as it is frankly disturbing.
Editorial visual: moma.org
moma.org
#47
Dana Schutz
Swimming, Smoking, Crying
2009
The figure performs three actions incompatible with impeccable logic and a much more flexible anatomy. Schutz condenses contemporary exhaustion into a funny, sad and almost heroic image.
Editorial visual: mam.paris.fr
mam.paris.fr
#48
Nicole Eisenman
Beer Garden with Ash/AK
2009
Around long tables, the characters drink, talk or isolate themselves in the middle of the group. Eisenman updates the coffee scene in social painting: no one is completely alone, no one is really available.
Artnews editorial reproduction
ARTnewsMickalene Thomas
A Little Taste Outside of Love
2007
A reclining woman looks directly at the viewer in an interior saturated with patterns. Thomas takes up the odalisque, restores its agency and transforms the decor into an active partner rather than into well-bred wallpaper.
Editorial visual: Invaluable
Invaluable
#50
Jenny Saville
The Mothers
2011
Maternal and infantile bodies overlap in a composition inspired by both Leonardo and the physical experience of motherhood. The lines search, correct and start again: the flesh is never reduced to its own silhouette.
Editorial visual: International Women Magazine
International Women Magazine
#51
Jenny Saville
Aleppo
2017 -2018
Saville responds to images of war with a tangle of bodies and gestures which refuse journalistic illustration. Painting carries violence in its very construction, between appearance and erasure.
Editorial visual: artistsandillustrators.co.uk
artistsandillustrators.co.uk
#52
Cecily Brown
The Splendid Table
2019 -2020
Dead animals, fruits and flowers dissolve in a movement of paint inspired by hunting still lifes. The banquet is sumptuous, but the color red is a quick reminder that no one ordered a salad.
Editorial visual: dallasnews.com
dallasnews.comNeo Rauch
Der Rückzug
2006
Characters from multiple eras perform tasks that are difficult to connect in an Eastern European landscape. Rauch treats the story as a collective dream whose instructions would have been printed on another canvas.
Editorial visual: Fondation Beyeler
Beyeler Foundation
#54
Neo Rauch
Die Fuge
2007
A crack, workers, floating figures and improbable architecture share the same space. The title evokes both musical fugue and flaw: two excellent reasons not to hope for a perfectly tidy scene.
Editorial visual: davidzwirner.com
davidzwirner.com
#55
George Condo
The Orgy
2004
Condo fills the canvas with grotesque figures inherited from ancient masters, caricatures and his own mental theater. The stage resembles a worldly reception from which each guest would have brought their existential crisis.
Editorial visual: mutualart.com
mutualart.com
#56
George Condo
Orgy Composition
2008
This composition transforms the social frenzy into a host of dislocated faces and bodies. Condo paints contemporary excess with considerable classical culture and absolutely no intention of remaining polite.
Editorial visual: mutualart.com
mutualart.com
#57
George Condo
Force Field
2010
Psychologically cubist faces crowd into a space where identity seems to change with each outline. The painting brings several moods into the same head, an impractical solution on a daily basis but very effective on canvas.
Editorial visual: christies.com
christies.com
#58
Lisa Yuskavage
Pie Face
2008
Yuskavage takes the traditional female nude and literally throws a pie in her face. The virtuoso rendering complicates satire: the painting criticizes the eye while demonstrating a mastery that attracts it.
Editorial visual: figurationfeminine.blogspot.com
figurationfeminine.blogspot.com
#59
Yoshitomo Nara
Too Young to Die
2001
The child with big eyes carries the melancholy and distrust characteristic of Nara. Behind the apparent graphic simplicity stands a figure less cute than rebellious, who has gone far beyond the borders of the art world.
Editorial visual: Artsy
Artsy
#60
Yoshitomo Nara
Blankey
2012
Nara's young figure seems both vulnerable and ready to challenge any interpretation that is too rapid. The eyes, worked with a new depth, carry the essence of the story without uttering a word.
Editorial visual: MutualArt
MutualArt
#61
Takashi Murakami
Tan Tan Bo Puking
2002
A psychedelic creature vomits up a universe of patterns, eyes and colors. Murakami pushes his Superflat to total saturation: the board does not lack information, it especially lacks a pause button.
Editorial visual: artsy.net
artsy.net
#62
Takashi Murakami
727-727
2006
Mr. DOB traverses a landscape inspired by classic Japanese painting like a mascot turned cultural storm. Murakami connects historical crafts, animation, branding and monumental painting in a single wave.
Editorial visual: sothebys.com
sothebys.com
#63
Mark Bradford
Bread and Circuses
2007
Bradford builds his surface with accumulated papers, posters and urban traces. Seen from afar, the work evokes a map; up close, it reveals the savings, circulation and erasures that really create a city.
Artnews editorial reproduction
ARTnews
#64
Mark Bradford
Helter Skelter I
2007
Painting-collage deploys a monumental network of lines, uproots and layers. Bradford makes the surface an abstract city whose streets still bear the marks of those who crossed them.
Editorial visual: news.artnet.com
news.artnet.com
#65
Adrian Ghenie
Nickelodeon
2008
Eight figures stand in an interior linked to the beginnings of cinema and propaganda. Ghenie blurs faces and historical memory to the point of producing a scene which seems to be found in an archive that slept very poorly.
Editorial visual: ocula.com
ocula.com
#66
Adrian Ghenie
The Sunflowers in 1937
2014
Van Gogh's Sunflowers Meet the Year of the Nazi-organized Degenerate Art Exhibition. Ghenie does not copy the motif: he takes it through history, censorship and almost burned pictorial material.
Editorial visual: artnet.com
artnet.com
#67
Adrian Ghenie
The Collector I
2008
The collector appears as a dark presence, absorbed by the images and the power they represent. Ghenie makes the portrait a space of suspicion where the face is never sufficient proof.
Editorial visual: borsaefinanza.it
borsaefinanza.it
#68
Michael Borremans
The Angel
2013
A young girl stands before us in the light of a former master, with a pose as precise as it is enigmatic. Borremans installs doubt in technical perfection: the angel may have a message, but he left no note.
Editorial visual: davidzwirner.com
davidzwirner.com
#69
Michael Borremans
The Avoider
2006
The figure appears engaged in a task or ritual whose logic escapes us. Meticulous realism makes incomprehension stronger, as if a perfectly clear scene stubbornly refuses to become clear.
Editorial visual: artsy.net
artsy.netLynette Yiadom-Boakye
Any Number of Concerns
2010
A fictional man in a red dress and white slippers occupies the canvas with the assurance of a historical portrait. Yiadom-Boakye invents his models to free the black figure from the obligation to document a precise biography.
Editorial visual: paintingstar.com
paintingstar.com
#71
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
The Hours Behind You
2011
Dancers appear in a dark light, caught between movement and suspension. The scene does not tell a closed story; it gives the body enough presence for time to become the real subject.
Editorial visual: artnet.com
artnet.com
#72
Jordan Casteel
Yvonne and James
2017
The couple is painted in their daily environment with equal attention to faces, clothes and objects. Casteel transforms the encounter into a calm monument, without asking the decor to disappear to be serious.
Editorial visual: jordancasteel.com
jordancasteel.com
#73
Jordan Casteel
Kevin the Kiteman
2016
Kevin is represented among the objects he sells in the street, in full possession of his space. The bold colors and the proximity of the framing give the relationship between painter and model a warmth rarely given to urban portraiture.
Editorial visual: Studio Museum
Studio Museum
#74
Salman Toor
Bar Boy
2019
In a green nighttime bar light, a young man waits, observes and protects himself. Toor paints queer sociability with tenderness, discreet humor and that slight tension that accompanies the places where we seek to belong.
Editorial visual: whitney.org
whitney.org
#75
Salman Toor
The Star
2020
A figure is being prepared under the gaze, telephones and signs of contemporary celebrity. The soft touch gives the scene the charm of an old painting, while the smartphone is suddenly reminiscent of the century.
Editorial visual: Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum
#76
Matthew Wong
River at Dusk
2018
A water path crosses a deep blue landscape punctuated by yellow light. Wong builds an immediately accessible world, then establishes a solitude that continues to grow after the first glance.
Editorial visual: artnet.com
artnet.comMatthew Wong
Night Crossing
2018
A small boat advances under an immense night sky. The simplicity of the pattern recalls the symbolist landscapes, but the electric color gives it a completely contemporary intensity.
Editorial visual: artinwords.de
artinwords.de
#78
Amoako Boafo
Hands Up
2018
Boafo builds the skin with his fingers, leaving the gesture visible in each contour of the face and hands. The pose combines confidence, play and challenge; the portrait seems less demanding attention than realizing that he already has it.
Editorial visual: mutualart.com
mutualart.com
#79
Amoako Boafo
Baba Diop
2019
The model stands out from a colorful background with direct elegance. Between detailed clothing and finger-painted skin, Boafo makes style a form of presence rather than a simple accessory.
Editorial visual: mutualart.com
mutualart.com
#80
Titus Kaphar
Behind the Myth of Benevolence
2014
Thomas Jefferson's portrait is literally drawn like a curtain to reveal Sally Hemings. Kaphar does not destroy historical painting: he shows what she had carefully placed behind it.
Editorial visual: seegreatart.art
seegreatart.art.jpg?maxwidth=2250&maxheight=1050)
#81
Titus Kaphar
Another Fight for Remembrance
2014
Demonstrators painted in the style of a historical scene occupy the canvas, while certain figures disappear in the white. The work questions the way in which a protest becomes memory, then sometimes simple wallpaper.
Editorial visual: christies.com
christies.com
#82
Anselm Kiefer
Athanor
2007
Installed at the Louvre, this monumental painting shows a body lying under dark architecture and a heavy sky. Kiefer connects alchemy, German history and depth of material in a work that really does not seek to lighten the atmosphere.
Editorial visual: artnet.com
artnet.com.jpg)
#83
Anselm Kiefer
The Morgenthau Plan
2012
Fields of flowers invade a reference to Germany's post-war deindustrialization project. The beauty of the landscape and historical violence remain inseparable, like two layers that the canvas refuses to let dry separately.
Editorial visual: artnet.com
artnet.com
#84
Georg Baselitz
The Great Friends (Remix)
2006
Baselitz takes one of his own paintings from the 1960s and redoes it with a faster, clearer and always reversed touch. The remix is not a nostalgic copy: it is an argument with his younger self.
Editorial visual: Modern art
Modern art
#85
Sean Scully
Wall of Light Cubed
2007
Irregular colored blocks build a wall that breathes instead of closing the space. The edges, repeats and density differences give the geometry a surprisingly human presence.
Editorial visual: artsy.net
artsy.net
#86
Bridget Riley
Arcadia 1
2017
Vertical colored bands produce an optical rhythm that changes with distance. Riley does not paint an Arcadian landscape; it creates a sensation of light precise enough for the eye to walk itself.
Editorial visual: maxhetzler.com
maxhetzler.com
#87
Tracey Emin
The Last Great Adventure Is You
2014
Emin paints her own body in a nervous line and fragile material. The title turns introspection into adventure, without promising that it will include a map, guide, or return before dark.
Editorial visual: White Cube
White Cube
#88
Ellen Altfest
Armpit
2011
This close-up of an armpit is painted with a precision once reserved for jewelry, fabrics and saints. Altfest forces the eye to admire an area of the body that visual culture generally prefers to reframe.
Editorial visual: MK Gallery/White Cube
MK Gallery
#89
Tomma Abts
Uphe
2011
Geometric shapes appear to float, bend, and cast shadows in a small, constant format. Abts slowly constructs an abstraction without a declared symbol, which fortunately leaves colors the right to work without a name badge.
Editorial visual: moma.org
moma.org
#90
Maria Lassnig
Krankenhaus (Hospital)
2005
Painted over eighty years old, this scene shows illness from the body's inner experience. The distorted figures and beds divide the canvas between what the hospital exhibits and what the patient feels.
Editorial visual: Maria Lassnig Stiftung
Maria Lassnig Stiftung
#91
Ibrahim El-Salahi
The Tree
2003
Inspired by the haraz tree of Sudan, the composition connects calligraphy, African modernism and memory of the Nile. The vertical lines hold the structure while the floating shapes give the pattern an almost respiratory life.
Editorial visual: vigogallery.com
vigogallery.com
#92
Brice Marden
Event
2004 -2007
Serpentine lines cross several panels without ever completely merging. Marden transforms the observed calligraphy into an abstract, slow and meditative rhythm, a quality that has become almost exotic in the age of notifications.
Editorial visual: Artsy
Artsy
#93
Glenn Brown
The Hinterland
2006
What appears to be a thick pictorial paste is actually an almost perfectly smooth surface. Brown assembles fragments of art history into a mutant head, a virtuoso display of painting and distrust of reproduction.
Editorial visual: Glenn Brown official website
Glenn Brown
#94
Liu Xiaodong
Hot Bed
2005
Carried out between China and Thailand, this monumental project brings together displaced workers and young migrant women. Liu paints on site to keep in the canvas the duration, warmth and discomfort of reality.
Editorial visual: artsy.net
artsy.net
#95
Yue Minjun
Gweong Gweong
2003
Yue's characteristic laughing figures float in a space crossed by planes and violence. The repeated smile does not cancel out the anxiety; on the contrary, it becomes the collective mask of an era which sometimes prefers to laugh very loudly.
Editorial visual: MutualArt
MutualArt
#96
Liu Ye
Leave Me in the Dark
2008
Liu Ye combines geometric precision, stage light and a figure absorbed in his own world. The apparent softness of the image retains a deeper solitude than its elegance at first suggests.
Editorial visual: artnet.com
artnet.com
#97
Ed Ruscha
Pay Nothing Until April
2003
An advertising promise floats in front of a mountain landscape like a commercial revelation. Ruscha gives the text the grandeur of the sublime, then lets the payment deadline bring everyone back to earth.
Editorial visual: Avant Arte
Before Arte
#98
Lucian Freud
The Brigadier
2003 -2004
Andrew Parker Bowles poses in uniform, but the painting emphasizes body weight, fatigue and physical presence more than military prestige. Freud makes the official decor a test of carnal truth.
Editorial visual: mutualart.com
mutualart.com
#99
Wangechi Mutu
Yo Mama
2003
Mutu represents Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti as a warrior and hybrid figure, standing on a snake. Collage, ink and painting invent a heroine whose body refuses quiet categories.
Artnews editorial reproduction
ARTnews
#100
Thornton Dial
Ninth Ward
2011
Strings, metal, fabric and paint form a dense relief dedicated to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Dial gives the debris a power of testimony: the material seems to have survived even before becoming an image.
Artnews editorial reproduction
ARTnewsWhat this century is doing to painting
The ranking shows a medium very far from having disappeared. Painting absorbs photography, maps, advertising, collage, the street and the screen; then she slows it all down just enough for the gaze to catch its breath.
The portrait takes a central place, but with new subjects and new power relations. Abstraction becomes cartographic, bodily or political. Even the landscape, which we thought was comfortably seated in its armchair, comes out to walk with Hockney, Wong and Doig.
Why start in 2001?
The 21st civil century begins on January 1, 2001. Works dated only from 2000 have therefore been excluded, even when they appear in certain editorial reports of the new millennium.
Is this a definitive ranking?
No. Notoriety, research and collections are evolving. This list is a reasoned state of the canon in formation, not a verdict sent since 2099.
Why don't some cards display the image?
The majority of works of the 21st century remain protected by copyright. When a properly sourced editorial reproduction was not available, the page links to an external notice instead of using a fake or pirated image.
Are these paintings sold by Alpha Reproduction?
Not necessarily. This article is a cultural guide dedicated to the world-renowned paintings of the century. Links lead to sources and not to invented product sheets.
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