1. Mark Rothko, Red on Maroon, 1959
In 1958, Mark Rothko was commissioned to produce a series of works for a restaurant in New York’s Seagram Building. In 1960, after more than two years of work on the project and with a studio of completed paintings, Rothko withdrew from the commission. He felt the exclusive environment of the restaurant was an inappropriate setting for his artworks. He later presented the series to Tate.
- On display in Mark Rothko, In the Studio, Room 10, Natalie Bell Building Level 2
2. Andy Warhol, Marilyn Diptych, 1962
When the actor Marilyn Monroe died, Warhol was shocked by her death. He found a publicity photo of Monroe from the 1953 film Niagara. Cropping her face, Warhol made a series of graphic screenprints based on the portrait. He painted over some of them by hand, then reprinted Monroe’s face on top of the colour.
- On display in In the Conservation Studio: Andy Warhol, In the Studio, Room 14, Natalie Bell Building Level 2
3. Joan Mitchell, Iva, 1973
Iva is named after Mitchell’s black and tan German Shepherd dog. In a 1974 interview, Mitchell declared of Iva: ‘She’s a total extension of me, or I am of her. I don’t know which way you want to put it.’
- On display in Joan Mitchell, In the Studio, Room 9, Natalie Bell Building Level 2
4. Arahmaiani, Burning Country, 1998–2020
Arahmaiani sees her performances as healing rituals that nurture connectivity between individuals, communities and nature.
A commitment to environmental issues runs throughout Arahmaiani’s work. The artist identifies as an ‘ecofeminist’ and often draws links between the plundering of nature for capitalist gains and the exploitation of women’s bodies.
- On display in Arahmaiani, Artist and Society, Room 10, Natalie Bell Building Level 2
5. Meschac Gaba, Art and Religion Room From Museum of Contemporary African Art, 1997–2002
This artwork is composed of 12 room installations that can be shown individually or in groups. Through the work Gaba invites conversation about how museums in Europe and North America show and collect African art. It is a provocation to acknowledge contemporary African art and its exclusion from the Western art historical canon. Gaba has said that ‘my museum doesn’t exist... it’s only a question.’
- On display in Meschac Gaba, Materials and Objects, Room 9, Natalie Bell Building Level 4
6. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, replica 1964
This work, signed with the pseudonym ‘R. Mutt’ in black paint, is an example of what Duchamp called a ‘ready-made’ sculpture. These were everyday mass-produced objects presented as artworks. Duchamp’s use of a pseudonym, the title, and the reorientation of the urinal from its usual upright position, all point to his interest in double meanings, words and role play.
- On display in Around the Fountain, Materials and Objects, Room 7, Natalie Bell Building Level 4
7. Nalini Malani, In Search of Vanished Blood, 2012–20
Nalini Malani’s ‘video shadow plays’ combine video, shadow and sound to tell multiple stories. In this work, she creates a tribute to women’s lives forgotten throughout history. Each cylinder is reverse painted and features images of dispossessed people, mythological figures and surgical instruments.
- On display in Nalini Malani, Materials and Objects, Room 5, Natalie Bell Building Level 4
8. Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? Update, 2012
The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous activist group made up of women artists and art professionals. They formed in 1985, in response to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which featured only 13 women out of 169 artists.
- On display in Guerrilla Girls, Media Networks, Room 5, Natalie Bell Building Level 4
9. Cildo Meireles, Babel, 2001
Babel 2001 is a large-scale sculptural installation that takes the form of a circular tower made from hundreds of second-hand analogue radios that the artist has stacked in layers. The radios are tuned to a multitude of different stations.
In describing this work, Meireles refers to a ‘tower of incomprehension’. The installation manifests, quite literally, a Tower of Babel, relating it to the biblical story of a tower tall enough to reach the heavens, which, offending God, caused him to make the builders speak in different tongues.
- On display in Cildo Mireles, Media Networks, Room 6, Natalie Bell Building Level 4
10. Pipilotti Rist, Lungenflügel, 2009
Presented across three screens, Lungenflügel (Lobe of the Lung) 2009 is an immersive video installation. It depicts a luxurious valley in which the two main characters, a naked woman and a pig, wander. The human and the animal are put on the same plane, each appearing on one of the facing screenings.
- On display in Pipilotti Rist, Performer and Participant, Room 9, Blavatnik Building Level 3
