I didn’t find this out until recently, but apparently The Kiss is supposed to be a depiction of Francesca de Rimini and her lover, who were murdered by her husband then sent to Hell (where she met Dante and Virgil, apparently).
which all sounds a bit harsh.
What the average art critic knows about art is considerably less than your average museum-goer.
Imho, Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana should be considered a masterpiece on a par with the Last Supper, but it’s hardly as well known:
The Wedding at Cana - Wikipedia
It’s in the same part of the Louvre as the Mona Lisa, but largely ignored.
NB: @Cervaise beat me to it.
I grew near a Grant Wood Elementary School in Iowa (but went to Herbert Hoover 
).
Seeing it in person at the Art Institute, it is a magnificent painting.
Here are a couple of suggestions from my earlier post
Lyonel Feininger Stiller Tag am Meer III
Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler A female patient. Woman with landscape.
I remembering reading that most Greek/Roman sculptures were originally painted in different colors and are only white now because the oaint wore off.
“The Kiss” along with “The Thinker” were originally smaller components of Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell” – something I know only because a copy is at Stanford’s Rodin Sculpture Garden.
Every art critic I’ve read in my life knows more about art than I do. And I like art.
Yes, I knew that. Which is why it was so funny when a Saudi bought a mansion on Sunset Blvd ages ago and had all the statues out front painted in realistic colors. Makes me think of the apocryphal Ruskin story.
Leonardo da Vinci only did a few paintings. But the only two you hear about are the Mona Lisa (famous for being famous) and the Last Supper (which very likely was one of the greatest works of art when da Vinci did it, but now is mostly restorers work).
However, Lady with an Ermine, St. John the Baptist and several others are quite a bit better than Mona Lisa. La Belle Ferronnière is similar to Mona Lisa, but IMHO - better.
I never knew this. Mind blowing.
I think a lot of painting/sculpture/mixed media from the 1920’s through the 1970s is in that sort of limbo area where if you tried to create art in its style, it would seem old enough that people would think that you were passe, but young enough that people would think that you were trying to be relevant. Whereas if you created a classic portraiture (or even a Hudson River School style landscape) or an impressionist painting, people would be more likely to take it on its own merits.
With the exception of pop art, some of which still feels similar to the stuff from last century. Probably because pop art was from the beginning postmodern enough that since it was cannibalizing other art from the start, shamelessly using the style of pop art in turn seems fair game.
I’m not sure if The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard is under appreciated, but I first heard of it only a few months ago. It was wildly erotic in the mid-eighteenth century and was created to be viewed only by a select group. It is beautifully painted and contains numerous visual references.
I love that painting. Besides the original, I think I have 3 or 4 homages that have various famous people in the diner. I’m also a Green Day fan, but I’ve never seen an album cover so I had no clue there.
What’s with all those turkey leg paintings anyway? Was turkey a rich person food since they were native to North America?
Most of these are actually pretty well known works of art, although those presenting them obviously think they’re not properly appreciated. (Although there are several obscure ones mixed in). I’d nominate various works by Bosch, Brueghel, or Hogarth, but I think they’re all pretty famous already.
One that I’d nominate is Joseph Wright’s Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump. The title sounds like a joke, but it’s a real 1768 work lit hauntingly by candlelight. The only reason that I even know about it is that a portion of it was used on one of the Penguin editions of Frankenstein, for which it’s particularly appropriate. Well worth contemplating:
Another is At the Gallery of the Louvre (1831-1833), an impressive and huge painting that is filled with copies of famopus paintings hanging in the Louvre (although re-arranged in the painting so they can be shown), including the Mona LIsa. The artist had to study and copy several styles in order to render them, and he did an impressive job.
It’s all the more impressive because the artist was Samuel F.B. Morse. He thought that this was going to be his masterpiece, the painting tat would tour the US and make his name and fortune. It wasn’t. But then Morse went off and invented the electric telegraph, and that was his contribution to history.
I learned about it from David McCullouch’s book about Americans in the 19th century visiting Paris, The Greater Journey. He also did several lectures about it. Shortly after I read the book, it showed up at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, MA, so I had a chance to see the actual painting myself.
Any painting of dogs playing poker is much loved, but underappreciated. A Friend in Need, for example.
If I’m not misunderstanding you, the Boulevard of Broken Dreams referred to is one of the kitschy homages of Nighthawks. It has nothing to do with the song of the same name by Green Day or any album cover (especially as the album is American Idiot, not BoBD).
It’s this:
I don’t know if it’s more well known than Nighthawks – I can go see the real thing in about a half hour here at the Art Institute (unless it’s out on tour), so my point of reference and familiarity may be different. But I have seen it at diners and bars, so it might not surprise me if the average person knows it better than the original.
My fault, I should have been clearer. I love the original and the homages. I have several that I rotate thru as background art on my desktop. I just thought the Green Day cover art was the original painting, having never seen the actual album art.
One of the ones I have is the Bogart/Monroe one. Another is Alien/Predator. I can’t remember offhand what the others are. I think the diner setting is so iconic you could put just about any recognizable group of humanoids in there and it will resonate with a lot of people. They all work with me.
Speaking of the Art Institute, I went there this summer and amongst other things I saw Figure with Meat by Francis Bacon. I don’t know if Francis Bacon per se is less appreciated these days than previously, but that painting in particular is probably less famous than it used to be since it has been decades since the original Batman reboot with Keaton in which the Joker “kinda liked” Figure With Meat. Nonetheless, at the Art Institute it was behind heavy plexiglass that caused a distracting glare on the painting: quite frankly, unlike most paintings, I actually like it better seeing reproductions than in person. I bet the people at the Institute don’t want to take the chance that someone will go full Joker on it:
Incidentally, here’s the top ten list of the aforementioned 1985 poll. I’m not sure the general public would be familiar with many of these.