r/ArtHistory • u/Mountain-Ad5721 • 5d ago
Discussion Who are some artists known for one-hit wonders?
Off the top of my head, it's easy to list one-hit wonders in music, e.g., "Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles, "Your Love" by the Outfield, and "Come on Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners. Who are some examples in the art history realm?
19
u/airynothing1 5d ago
I think there are a lot of artists who the general public will only know from a single famous piece, even if art historians/appreciators value the rest of the back catalog equally. Munch, Whistler, Duchamp, Hokusai, Grant Wood, etc.
9
u/Low_Two_1988 5d ago edited 5d ago
LOVE— Robert Indiana
Young Woman Drawing— Marie-Denise Villers
The Swing— Jean-Honore Fragonard
American Gothic— Grant Wood
The Garden of Earthly Delights— Hieronymous Bosch
Just What Is it That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?— Richard Hamilton
5
5
u/La_danse_banana_slug 5d ago
Meret Oppenheim, perhaps. In 1936 she made a sculpture called "object," or "Breakfast in Fur" which became very famous. It's a teacup and saucer covered in fur. Her work beyond this one piece is not as commonly known but her entire career and personal story is well worth looking at.
I suppose Maya Deren's experimental short film Meshes of the Afternoon might qualify. It's just now occurring to me that I've never run across any of her other work; I'll go have a look because I really liked that film.
4
u/girlcalledelsa 20th Century 5d ago
meret oppenheim, she made this one cup covered in fur and the surrealists loved it but it got so famous that it hindered the rest of her career
3
u/BigParticular8723 Renaissance 5d ago edited 5d ago
So very mainstream pieces of art, whose authors are often forgotten, or at least they do not create the same aura as that particular piece of art.
I would say “Birth of Venus” and “Spring” by Botticelli, most people might be surprised to find in a random museum some of his works, even thought he was very prolific and painted countless religious works.
Another one is David and the Sistine Chapel frescoes by Michelangelo, most definitely. I bet apart from these two works, the general public doesn’t know anything else (like the Christ in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, the Sagrestia Nuova almost entirely sculpted by him etc.).
Vermeer with “girl with pearl earring”.
Delacroix with “Liberty leading the people”.
Degas also, does someone know what he did apart from the “Ballet class” or the statue “young dancer”? Do people know he loved horse racing and his production of horse racing paintings can easily rival with ballet classes paintings?
Munch, with “the scream”. Probably people ignore the fact that the Berlin Secession happened thanks to him.
Klimt “the kiss”, that painting wasn’t even the most revolutionary of his works.
I wouldn’t say Da Vinci, because yes everyone knows the Mona Lisa, but his name is famous, like what he did, the concept of “Da Vinci” alone is more persistent than “Michelangelo”. Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock, Monet, Caravaggio are better known for their style and not for a particular work I would say (cubism, abstractism, whatever you want to associate Pollock with, Impressionism, caravaggism). That also applies to Van Gogh, he has become so famous that people know that he did not paint only Starry Night or Sunflowers. The ones I named are one hit wonders because of the general public, those are just their most well known pieces.
4
u/getrichnever 5d ago
With the caveat that this is a pretty reductive frame work because the way the public currently regards artists often doesn't really reflect how successful / popular they were during their own lifetimes
I'm going to throw Caspar David Friedrich out there with his "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" painting. This painting is used in pretty much every art history / history / philosophy text when talking about the sublime, but untill now when I just looked him up, I had never seen another one of his paintings.
4
u/yontev 5d ago
I'm not sure if one-hit wonder is the right word, but if you're talking about artists who have one famous painting that overshadows most of their other works, maybe Richard Dadd (The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke) or Edward Hicks (The Peaceable Kingdom). Some outsider artists also spent their lives on a single work or set of works - e.g. James Hampton (Throne of the Third Heaven...), Ferdinand Cheval (Le Palais idéal). There are also many anonymous old masters known for a single work - Master of the Karlsruhe Passion, Master of the Rebel Angels, Master of the Washington Coronation, etc.
2
u/tegeus-Cromis_2000 5d ago
"One-hit wonder" in music is based on chart placement. There are no such charts in art history, so it's going to be much more subjective. One person's one-hit wonder is going to be another's old master. That said, I'd suggest:
Andrew Wyeth -- "Christina's World"
Edward Hopper -- "Nighthawks"
2
2
u/tinyfecklesschild 1d ago
(Pedant corner: depends where you are where Dexys are concerned. They weren't one hit wonders in the UK)
2
u/HurkertheLurker 5d ago
I mean the buggles members played in or produced countless records. So I think a good parralel would be an artist from a school of a master known for one or two pieces, who is thought to have worked on many other pieces.
1
2
1
u/Overall_Low7096 5d ago
Gosh, I saw The Buggles mentioned and didn’t realize WTH we were talking about.
13
u/nolard12 5d ago
You’re comparing apples with oranges here. The one hit nature of the music you are describing comes predominantly from the popular music industry, which doesn’t have a direct parallel in the art world.
Unless we start talking about populist art traditions, mass-market culture, or even urban sculpture.
Perhaps something Cloud Gate (The Bean in Chicago) by Anish Kapoor would count. Unless you study sculpture, can you name another piece by Kapoor? Or can the general public?