[Moderating]
I’ll allow that as an example of a reference to the painting, but any further discussion of that work would be too political for CS.
That would be on 31-inch by 21-inch postage stamp. That is one hell of a postage stamp!!!
(77cm x 53cm, excluding the frame)
If you want the second most famous painting that people will be able to NAME, it has to be “The Scream”
If the criteria is “I’ve see than before!”, then either Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” ( Creazione di Adamo )
or Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” (but i guarantee damn few know it by the correct name of 神奈川沖浪裏, by 葛飾 北斎)
Same here, except it was the credits for Green Acres…
Mona Lisa is a mural compared to Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. I was searching for it at MoMA, expecting a large painting and large crowd and was disappointed to find the tiny (9-inch by 13-inch) painting hanging on a side wall with a bunch of other paintings (compared to The Starry Night, which in addition to being alone on a central wall in its gallery is larger than I expected).
My expectations were set by the posters I bought for my freshman dorm room - identically sized prints of each painting. I subconsciously must have been expecting the two paintings to be similarly sized when I finally saw them in person almost 40 years later…
A lot of paintings are surprisingly small when you see them in person. One that springs to mind, mentioned in this thread, is The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It’s only 10 inches by 15 inches. I was surprised when I saw American Gothic in person, I’d expected it to be quite large, but it’s about 25x30, which isn’t tiny, but I’d expected something far grander. By contrast, Whistler’s Symphony in White, no. 1: The White Girl, probably known to only a few, overwhelms you with the sheer enormity of it, at 84x42.
Hmm, one way we could do this is count the number of entries in their wiki page under “Influence” or "in popular culture>
The Wave has 11 entries, the Scream 17.
However, The Starry Night has no such category. American Gothic lists only the half dozen of so well known parodies.
Except Pollocks. Those are fucking huge. And all the neoclassic stuff by David, and the like.
Although if he used a white canvas, the paint didn’t cost much.
I’m not entirely sure on #2, but I know what I think the most unappreciated painting is that should be more famous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death
It’s basically a painting of an amazing D&D campaign from mid-1500’s.
Seeing it in person is on my bucket list.
Some are surprisingly huge.
For example, Washington Crossing the Delaware is roughly 12 ft. by 20 ft.
Oath of the Horatii: about 10’ x 14’
Monet’s Water Lilies series are all enormous, they take up entire walls.
Around 250 paintings, and not all of them are wall-sized.
Regarding OP, I’d go with the Last Supper, but I wonder if that’s because I’m (1) interested in art (2) religious and (3) have read too much Mad Magazine. It probably wouldn’t be so well known in China or India.
Regarding the USA, I’m surprised no one has mentioned Willard’s “Spirit of '76”. Sure, you’ve never seen the painting, but surely you know that the pictures are based on a painting?
Regarding Aus, I’d say “the Ned Kelly picture”, except that’s not a painting: it’s an image from a series of paintings. Which leaves me with McCubbin’s “The Pioneer”
The Wave is still a print and thus disqualified. It is likely that the original woodblocks printed around 5,000 copies.
Take a look at that section for Hopper’s Nighthawks. Kinda why I mentioned it, seconding MrDibble. Very surprised it isn’t a frontrunner on a U.S. message board.
Just north of you it could be Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire (1967) This once again to point out that “fame” varies with locale, and in the case of Voice of Fire, how “fame” is manipulated by the players in the “art game” like the National Gallery of Canada who took a work “not worth $1.8 million” to “in excess of $40 million” in 28 years, and “fame” from pretty much zero to sixty.
Somewhat tangentially, but I’m also surprised this Youtube video is not more famous. Art + Taxes = The Dirty Truth - YouTube
In looking up a Simpsons Nighthawks reference (the Wiki article only has one screencap, but it wasn’t the one I remembered), I foundthis articleon their art references. Makes for quite a list.
Well, that’s just your opinion, the Op hasnt weighed in on other art forms that the casual viewer would call a “painting”.
But yes, Nighthawks is used a LOT in the USA.
Google it’s images.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings of flowers seem surprisingly small when you see them in person. The flowers take up the entire canvas, and seem huge, but are on rather small canvases.
I can’t name an individual painting that would be on this list, but her entire body of work is so distinctive that many people could easily recognize it.
Nighthawks is very famous, and one of my favorite paintings.
But I wouldn’t cast a vote for it being the second most famous painting. The top choices for that have already been mentioned.
The ones at l’Orangerie and MoMA are huge, but there are about 250 Monet water lily paintings. Musee Marmatton alone has 17. Most of these are not the big murals (although none of them are particularly small, either).