In its earliest form in the late nineteenth century, photography was a modern invention that was usually used to capture modern images, such as cities, war, and machines. One notable exception was the American photographer Ansel Adams, whose work focused on the landscapes of the American West, particularly the new national parks. Adams developed the "Zone System" in order to be able to create contrast in his final print to allow for the proper look in his landscape photography.

Claude Monet's massive Water Lilies (in French, Nympheas) series are masterpieces of impressionist painting, showing light and color in his subject through painting on a giant scale, which allows the viewer to see the brushstrokes in the painting. Monet made dozens of paintings in the series, all of which have no horizon or obvious markers of space not covered by water lillies. The most famous examples are housed in the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris, in a round room specially constructed and lit to contain only four mural-sized paintings.

Diane Arbus believed that a camera had an ability to bring truth out in people due to its inherent awkwardness. Arbus' photographs were exclusively in black and white, and typically portrayed "odd" people of various kinds in New York City. Diane Arbus was a mildly successful newspaper and magazine photographer who only achieved artistic fame after her suicide in 1971.

Edward Hopper's painting style was realist to the point of being almost simple, with plain depictions and colors. Where Hopper proved singular was in the way he framed his compositions, revealing an inner depth and detachment to the people in his paintings. Hopper as extremely reclusive and introverted, rarely giving any interviews or clues to any deeper meaning in his work.

Jackson Pollock began his career as a rather "normal" abstract artist, using paint and brushes conventionally. After World War II, he developed his "drip method," which saw Pollock lay a canvas on the floor of his studio, take a paintbrush, and splatter the canvas with the paint from above it. This "drip method" created vivid paintings of different colors and textures that had no traditional forms.

Rene Magritte began his career as a surrealist, but as he grew older began moving from strange shapes to placing familiar images in odd poses. By the 1950s and 1960s, Magritte was focusing on specific images again and again, such as men in suits and bowler hats and green apples. These came together in his most famous work, The Son of Man, which is a straightforward portrait of a man in a black suit and bowler hat, but with an apple obscuring his face.

Frida Kahlo entered the international art world thanks to her marriage to the older painter, Diego Rivera, in 1929. Because of her immense artistic talent and Rivera's appreciation and promotion of her work, Kahlo soon became well known in her own right as a painter. Most of Kahlo's work was self-portraits, featuring only her head, but which she would often surround with indigenous Mexican imagery, allusions to literature, or references to her turbulent marriage and troubled life.

Jean Dubuffet coined the term "art brut" to describe his own personal style, which focused on "low culture" and eschewed traditional culture. While initially inspired by abstract art, such as cubism and expressionism, Dubuffet pushed the boundaries of abstract art to make it be more visceral. Dubuffet believed authentic art was that which engaged directly with humanity, outside of intellectual theorizing.

Mark Rothko essentially took abstract art to a logical place, creating massive canvases that featured only a few large swaths of color. While seemingly simple, these "colorforms," Rothko's own term, feature multi-layered paint and subtle gradations. Rothko developed the style shortly after World War II, and the creation of these paintings made Rothko world famous.

Robert Raushenberg began creating mixed media paintings he called "Combines" in the mid-1950s, after he began collecting found objects and pieces of trash on the streets of New York City. Rauschenberg's use of consumer products lumped him in with "Pop Art" as a pioneer of the genre, while his use of sculptural forms pioneered modern art forms that departed from traditional sculpture or canvas.