Also because it was “famous” in another era (when I was growing up). That first parody is from 1974, but most of the references I remember were in TV shows in the 50s and 60s. It was used as the epitome of stuffy old representational art. You might have heard references to it on Our Miss Brooks or The Lucy Show (I have someone in my head saying “Gainsborough?” in Gale Gordon’s plummy voice).
Much more well known in the U.S.
I also live outside the U.S. but grew up with the original Masterpiece board game that used paintings on display at the National Gallery in London. A subsequent edition features paintings on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. Good candidates all, multiple Van Goghs, and another painting much more well-know in the U.S.: Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (often seen as Gottfried Helnwein’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams.)
I’m also O.K. with “people naming obscure paintings to signal their status as art cognoscenti…” since that’s not much different than the game being played between the rich, the museums, and the art dealers that manufactures this fame and value. Win-win-win!
Edit: forgot to signal! Duchamp, Marcel - Paysage fautif (1946)
What’s that one of the people in the diner? Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. I don’t even know why it gets parodied so often, I don’t like it all that much, but I see it a lot.
ETA: Oh, eunoia just mentioned it. D’oh!
One complication is that fame fluctuates. Gainsborough’s Blue Boy would have been a decent contender in the 1920s but its fame has since mostly faded. Similarly, one painting that no one has yet mentioned which is currently famous for much the same reason is Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi. In both cases, it wasn’t merely that they had been sold for record-breaking prices; it was that the prices paid seemed remarkable even in comparison to other very expensive paintings. The fame of the Salvator Mundi will doubtless fade in due course.
Also, in the cases of The Scream, Sunflowers and Napoleon Crossing the Alps, there is the complication that the artist produced multiple versions. That most people don’t realise this underlies how famous they are merely as decontextualised images.
Whoever told you that was talking nonsense. The Mona Lisa is painted on panel, so to be ‘cut from the frame’ would have needed a saw! When Vicenzo Peruggia stole it in 1911 he actually took the frame as well, but having lifted the panel from it, then discarded the frame as he fled. Also, art historians disagree about whether the panel has ever been cut down. That’s because some of the many early copies show more of the columns. But even if that argument is accepted - and, as I say, many experts don’t do so - those early copies equally demonstrate that the original was only ever slightly bigger. The losses would be a matter of millimetres rather than inches.
As for the answer to the OP, I would say that it is probably The Last Supper.
Certainly The Problem we all Live With is Rockwell’s most important painting, and it might be his greatest, but I doubt it’s his most famous. That might be his self-portrait in front of the canvass, or possibly the boy sitting at the soda counter.
Another one that you see a lot of pieces of, but which nobody (probably including the artist) is familiar with all of, is Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights.
As an aside, does anyone else find that this question is made more difficult by their local museum? The Cleveland Museum of Art is a very fine museum, but it’s not even close to “the best museum in the country” sort of level. So there are a number of paintings there that I think probably seem more famous to me than they actually are. Jacques-Louis David’s Cupid and Psyche, anyone? John Linnell’s The Eve of the Deluge? OK, probably not.
Here are a couple of other very famous ones that I’m not sure have been mentioned yet. The Son Of Man and The Treachery Of Images both by Magritte
Tell that to all the people who’ve copied the Infanta time and again and again, starting with Picasso. I totally agree with you, mind you, but the Infanta should still be getting “image rights”* despite being dead all these years.
- hope that’s actually the right expression. What you get paid for letting people use your likeness for commercial purposes.
Guernica. Some people may even remember its official name is Los horrores de la guerra, The Horrors of War or The Horrors War Brings.
That was the painting that popped into my head on reading the thread title.
Weirdly, on reading the thread title, Guernica was my first thought. It’s pretty obviously wrong, there’s no way it’s more famous than Scream or Making of Adam, but it’s what popped into my head. It may be the most famous painting from a Spanish painter, though (I still think Meninas is nowhere in the running).
Not a painting, but an artwork that is instantly recognizable:
Albrecht Durer’s Praying Hands. Somewhere in time it became clip art and is now ubiquitous. Church bulletins, news articles, tee-shirts, you name it. If prayer is the subject, this image will show up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albrecht_D%C3%BCrer_-_Praying_Hands,1508-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Dogs Playing Poker is not obscure. It is more well known than many paintings mentioned in the thread.
Pretty sure Riemann was making a joke regarding art cognoscenti, not a statement regarding the obscurity of the painting.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure if his comment was joking or not. But in case it’s serious, “Dogs Playing Poker” may very well be one of the most famous paintings for an American who has absolutely no art history knowledge, as it is (or at least was) ubiquitous kitsch art. I don’t know if there is one specific “dogs playing poker,” though, or if it’s a whole series of similar images. (Actually, looking online, there appear to be eighteen versions of it from 1894-1910.)
If I had Mona Lisa hanging in my living-room, I’d want Starry Night in my dining-room.
The Scream was the first painting I thought of, but The Last Supper is probably the correct answer.
Cut from its frame? The Mona Lisa isn’t a canvas, it’s painted on a plank of poplar. That’s one reason why it’s kept in temperature- and humidity-controlled conditions, variations in either can make the wood swell or shrink and crack the paint.
I thought there was some humor in Riemann’s statement but it is quite well known. Nighthawks was also mentioned, another image well known beyond the fine art crowd, although not so many may even recognize the painting’s title.
I don’t know what would win a “name a painting other than the Mona Lisa” contest, but The Last Supper is probably the only other painting pretty much anybody could correctly name if they saw it.
I am so surprised at the votes for The Last Supper. I encounter references to it much less often than I encounter references to some of the others mentioned. Even if we just look at religious artwork, The Creation of Adam seems much better-known.
But this may get to the question of what constitutes fame: if we’re going by ability to name the painting, The Last Supper may win, just because its name is so straightforward.
The Hands Resist Him?
Agreed. I think Creation Of Adam is so iconic that it would likely win if fame were defined as describe the most famous painting you know after Mona Lisa".