David Hockney ▷
Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy▷
© David Hockney

This is one of a series of large double portraits which Hockney began in 1968. He had painted imaginary couples in such earlier paintings as The First Marriage (A Marriage of Styles) 1963. In the later paintings, the subjects are real couples who were Hockney’s friends.

Martin Parr ▷
The Last Resort 40▷
© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

The Last Resort is a series of forty photographs taken in New Brighton, a beach suburb of Liverpool. Shot with a medium format camera and daylight flash, the photographs are an early example of Parr’s characteristic saturated colour, influenced by the American colour photography of William Eggleston (born 1939) and Garry Winogrand (1928-84).

Andy Warhol ▷
Marilyn Diptych▷
© 2018 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962, having overdosed on barbiturates. In the following four months, Warhol made more than twenty silkscreen paintings of her, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol found in Monroe a fusion of two of his consistent themes: death and the cult of celebrity.

Marcel Duchamp ▷
Fountain▷
© Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018

Fountain is one of Duchamp’s most famous works and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth-century art. The original, which is lost, consisted of a standard urinal, usually presented on its back for exhibition purposes rather than upright, and was signed and dated ‘R. Mutt 1917’.

Vincent van Gogh ▷
The Oise at Auvers▷
Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

This was drawn during the final months of the artist's life, after he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890. It represents a view looking across the river Oise towards Méry and the Paris road. The view is taken from the top of a high and very steep embankment above a railway line.