Six commissions that changed the course of modern art

Commissioning great art has never been a polite affair.

Picasso embarrassed governments.

Rothko walked away from a fortune.

Rivera caused uproar in Detroit.

Chagall outraged half of Paris.

Warhol transformed portrait commissions into symbols of celebrity.

Hockney proved that a commissioned portrait could be intimate rather than intimidating.

Yet every one of those commissions changed the history of art.

Perhaps that's because the best commissions have never been about decorating a wall. They've been about trusting an artist to create something nobody has seen before.

Here are six extraordinary examples.

Diego Rivera

Detroit Industry Murals (1932–33)

Commissioned by: Wilhelm Valentiner, Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, with financial backing from Edsel Ford.

Before Rivera, huge public murals usually celebrated kings, saints or military victories.

Rivera looked elsewhere.

He turned engineers, machinists and factory workers into heroes.

The result was twenty seven enormous frescoes celebrating modern industry with the same grandeur Michelangelo had once given biblical stories. It was revolutionary. Suddenly everyday working life had become worthy of monumental art. Rivera's murals helped redefine what public art could celebrate and inspired generations of mural painters who followed.

The commission nearly became a disaster.

Rivera was an outspoken Marxist.

Edsel Ford was one of America's richest industrialists, son of the original Henry Ford.

Many Detroit businessmen thought Edsel had lost his mind.

Newspapers attacked the murals.

Church leaders denounced them.

Yet the controversy simply drew bigger crowds.

Thousands flocked to see what everyone was arguing about, and today the murals are regarded as one of America's greatest artistic treasures.

Pablo Picasso

Guernica (1937)

Commissioned by: The Spanish Republican Government for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World's Fair.

For centuries artists painted battles as glorious victories.

Picasso painted terror instead.

There are no triumphant generals. No heroic speeches.

Only chaos, grief, broken bodies and desperate animals.

Guernica changed the role of modern art forever. It proved that a painting could become a moral statement recognised across the world without needing words.

The story behind it is just as memorable.

During the German occupation of Paris, a Gestapo officer is said to have pointed at a photograph of Guernica and asked Picasso, "Did you do this?"

Picasso supposedly replied, "No. You did."

Whether every word is true hardly matters now. The exchange has become part of art history because it captures exactly what the painting came to represent.

Mark Rothko

Seagram Murals (1958–59)

Commissioned by: The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York's new Seagram Building.

Most abstract paintings were still viewed as decoration back then.

Rothko wanted something far more powerful.

His huge canvases were designed to surround viewers emotionally.

To slow them down. To make them feel something rather than simply admire colour.

Then came one of the greatest twists in commission history.

Rothko visited the luxury restaurant where the paintings were destined to hang.

He hated the atmosphere.

According to friends, he joked that he hoped the paintings would spoil the appetites of everyone eating there.

Instead, he withdrew from the commission, returned the fee and eventually donated many of the paintings to museums.

Few artists have ever walked away from so much money on principle.

Marc Chagall

The Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1964)

Commissioned by: André Malraux, France's Minister of Culture.

Many Parisians thought the commission was outrageous before Chagall had even picked up a brush.

A modern painter?

Inside one of France's greatest nineteenth century buildings?

Surely impossible.

Instead of copying the old decoration, Chagall celebrated music itself with floating figures, dazzling colours and tributes to composers from Mozart to Ravel.

The result feels joyful rather than respectful.

Today millions of visitors look up in amazement, often assuming the ceiling has always been there.

The fiercest critics eventually became some of its greatest admirers.

Andy Warhol

The commissioned portraits (1970s and 1980s)

Commissioned by: Collectors, celebrities, film stars and business leaders.

Portraits had always been about recording someone's appearance.

Warhol changed the rules. A Warhol portrait became a badge of belonging.

The bright colours, bold silkscreens and instantly recognisable style announced that the sitter wasn't simply successful.

They had arrived.

Warhol also transformed the business of portrait commissions.

Clients sat for Polaroid photographs (Warhol was never without his polaroid camera with its instant pics)

Assistants handled much of the technical production.

Warhol added the final touches, not dissimilar to the way Rubens ran his Antwerp studio hundreds of years before.

People joked they weren't just buying a portrait.

They were buying membership of the Warhol world.

David Hockney

Portrait of Sir David Webster (1971)

Commissioned by: The staff and performers of the Royal Opera House to honour Sir David Webster on his retirement.

David Hockney - Portrait of Sir David Webster (1971) Photograph by Anthony O'Neil

Before Hockney, official portraits often felt formal and distant.

He preferred observation. Conversation. Time.

Rather than simply paint a distinguished administrator, Hockney created a portrait that quietly revealed personality through posture, surroundings and space.

It helped redefine modern portraiture.

Commissioned portraits no longer had to look ceremonial to become important works of art.

The commission wasn't straightforward.

Hockney later admitted that he struggled because he barely knew Webster at first and found the brief unusually difficult. Only after several visits did he decide to paint Webster in his own studio, producing a portrait that has since become one of his most admired early commissions. (Wikipedia)

Only a few weeks ago, the art world lost David Hockney at the age of 88. Tributes poured in from around the world celebrating not only his extraordinary career but also his lifelong belief that looking carefully at the world is one of life's greatest pleasures. (The Guardian)

One final thought

Looking back across these six commissions, one thing becomes obvious.

None of these artists were asked to produce "something that would look nice."

They were trusted.

Sometimes they shocked their patrons.

Sometimes they shocked the public.

Sometimes they even shocked themselves.

Yet every one of these commissions expanded our idea of what art could be.

Perhaps that's why the greatest commissions are remembered for centuries.

Not because someone bought a painting.

Because someone believed enough in an artist to ask them to create something that had never existed before.