Top 10 Most Iconic Sculptures of the 21st Century

What are the most iconic sculptures of the 21st century so far? It is not an easy question, especially as sculpture today moves freely between monument, installation, public intervention, and conceptual gesture. Some works became iconic because of their visual power, others because of their scale, circulation, controversy, or the way they entered public consciousness. In this selection of ten works made since 2000, we look at sculptures that did more than stand in space: they helped define the visual culture of their time.

1. Louise Bourgeois — Maman (1999)

The first work in this anthology is also its one deliberate exception. Maman was created in 1999, yet it marks a symbolic point of departure for art since 2000, having become the defining work of Tate Modern’s opening in 2000 and setting the tone for culture in the new millennium. The sculpture is Louise Bourgeois’s (1911–2010, French) largest spider: monumental, elegant, threatening, and tender at once. Its title, Maman, the French word for “mother,” shifts the work away from pure menace and fear toward protection and ambivalence. That tension is what gives it such force and is quintessential to Bourgeois’s broader oeuvre.

“Like a spider, my mother was a weaver.  My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.” Bourgeois’s Maman appears as a misunderstood figure: a caregiver, laborer, and bearer of psychic complexity and strength. This is characteristic of her autobiographical practice, which deals with personal trauma, often associated with her abusive father, and with a family held together by the strength of her mother. “The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.” 

2. Anish Kapoor — Cloud Gate (2004-2006)

Arguably one of the most recognizable public sculptures of recent decades, Anish Kapoor’s (b. 1954, British-Indian) Cloud Gate (2004–2006)—widely known as “The Bean,” much to Kapoor’s initial despair—is made of 168 welded stainless-steel plates, measures 33 by 66 by 42 feet, weighs 110 tons, and is located in Millennium Park, Chicago. Its highly polished exterior has no visible seams, giving the sculpture its distinctive mirror-like appearance, which reflects its direct surroundings while also transforming them through its shape—a key strategy in Kapoor’s practice.

The design was inspired by liquid mercury, which helps explain the sculpture’s fluid and reflective form. Its surface captures and distorts the surrounding skyline, the clouds above, and the people who approach it. Visitors can walk not only around the sculpture but also beneath its 12-foot-high arch. On the underside is the so-called “omphalos,” a concave chamber that multiplies and warps reflections. In this way, Cloud Gate offers a more immersive visual experience, in which its reflective properties truly transform our experience of space, form, and environment.

3. Mona Hatoum — Hot Spot (2006)

Mona Hatoum’s (b. 1952, British-Palestinian) Hot Spot (2006) is a large globe made of stainless steel and neon tube, tilted at the same angle as the Earth and measuring 234 by 223 cm—approximately the size of a tall person’s height and arm span. Its structure outlines the continents in red neon, bathing the surrounding space in a vivid red glow. Delicate in material yet intense in effect, and seemingly dangerous, the work derives much of its force from its fierce neon glow. It appears charged with energy, as if the world itself were set ablaze.

The sculpture continues Hatoum’s ongoing interest in boundaries, conflict, and contradiction. The title refers to the term “hot spot,” meaning a place marked by political upheaval or war. Yet Hot Spot suggests that such conditions are not limited to specific territories or contested border zones, as the light radiates far beyond its structure. Instead, it presents the world as a whole as a site of tension and instability, echoing Hatoum’s description of a world “continually caught up in conflict and unrest.”

4. Damien Hirst — For the Love of God (2007)

Damien Hirst’s (b. 1965, British) For the Love of God was produced in 2007 and consists of a platinum cast of an eighteenth-century human skull set with 8,601 diamonds. At the center of the forehead is a 52.4-carat pink diamond, bringing the total weight to 1,106.18 carats. Considering this exorbitant abundance of carats, one can fully understand why his mother said, “For the love of God, what are you going to do next!” when hearing about his plans, which in turn inspired the title of the work.

Hirst takes the old memento mori tradition and pushes it into the language of branding and excess, turning mortality into something polished, theatrical, and market-ready. One could argue that this tension is precisely the work itself, as is often the case in his broader practice. It is at once a reminder of death and a monument to wealth, vanity, and overproduction. Whether one sees it as profound or hollow, genuine or cynical, it quickly became one of the unmistakable images of 21st-century art.

5. Pierre Huyghe — Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) (2012)

Pierre Huyghe’s (b. 1962, French) Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) (2012) combines a concrete cast of a reclining female nude, likely based on a sculpture by Max Weber from the 1930s, with a living beehive that gradually covers the figure’s head. Growing as a living mask, the hive is formed by a gentle breed of bees that build wax and honey as they move between the sculpture and the surrounding area, fulfilling a similar visual and symbolic function to his brass-programmed LED masks, which often appear in his films. As a result, the sculpture is no longer fixed or inanimate, but lives, changes, and interacts with its environment. 

The sculpture Untilled gained further significance through its presentation as a site-specific installation at Documenta 13, where it was placed in an abandoned—or untilled—park in a hidden corner of the Karlsaue in Kassel. There, it appeared among other animal and organic life, including a dog with a pink leg named Human, which also featured in Huyghe’s film A Way in Untilled (2012). In this minimally prepared space, living and non-living elements were allowed to unfold according to their own rhythms. This reduction of artistic control and the decision to let the work live underscore the celebration and fascination of vitality. After all, life is at the very center of the Huyghes’ artistic quest.

6. Ugo Rondinone — Seven Magic Mountains (2016)

Ugo Rondinone’s (b. 1964, Swiss) Seven Magic Mountains (2016) rises from the Mojave Desert ten miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a colorful anomaly in the landscape. The large-scale, site-specific public sculpture consists of seven towers of vertically stacked limestone boulders, each standing between thirty and thirty-five feet high. The stacked stones recall naturally occurring hoodoos, cairns, and even acts of meditative rock balancing, while their fluorescent surfaces give them an unmistakably artificial presence. 

As such, Seven Magic Mountains brings together several recurring concerns in Rondinone’s practice, especially his interest in natural phenomena and their reformulation in art. It consciously positions itself in relation to the history of Land Art, not far from the sites of earlier works by artists such as Michael Heizer and Jean Tinguely. Since opening on May 11, 2016, the installation has drawn remarkable public attention, attracting roughly a thousand visitors each day and prompting efforts to keep it on view beyond its original two-year timeframe. Nearly a decade later, the fluorescent boulders still stand tall in the desert.

7. Simone Leigh — Brick House (2019)

Simone Leigh’s (b. 1967, American) Brick House (2019) is a monumental 16-foot-tall bronze bust of a Black woman. The sculpture was first unveiled in 2019 as the inaugural High Line Plinth commission in New York City, and a later edition was installed at the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. Brick House belongs to Leigh’s Anatomy of Architecture series, in which she brings architectural forms from across Africa and the African diaspora into relation with the human body. Here, the figure’s torso expands into a skirt-like form that resembles a clay house. Crowned with cornrow braids ending in cowry shells, the figure brings together the body, architecture, and cultural memory in a single form.

In Brick House, Leigh continues her broader exploration of how the body, society, and architecture shape and reflect one another. The sculpture has been described as renegotiating the politicized and often erased Black female body within the urban North American landscape, while also introducing a different idea of beauty into public space. Its title refers to the expression for a strong Black woman who stands with the strength, endurance, and integrity of a house made of bricks. In doing so, Leigh opens up conversations about Black identity, femininity, and the role of architecture in expressing social values.

8. Wangechi Mutu — The NewOnes, will free Us (2019)

Wangechi Mutu’s (b. 1972, Kenyan-American) The NewOnes, will free Us (2019) was created for the historic facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, filling four niches that had remained empty since the building’s completion in 1902. The site-specific installation consists of four bronze sculptures—The Seated I, II, III, and IV—each larger than life and individually distinct. The figures are at once humanoid and celestial, with their own hands, facial features, ornamentation, and patina. 

Sheathed in horizontal and vertical coils that function like both garment and armor, and marked by polished discs on their faces that allude to lip plates, they bring together references from both Western and African art traditions. In making these works, Mutu reimagines the caryatid, the sculpted female figure traditionally associated with bearing weight, whether in classical architecture or African royal objects. Here, however, the figures are no longer burdened by that supporting role. They are freestanding, seated, and self-possessed, occupying the museum’s facade with authority rather than service.

9. Maurizio Cattelan ­— Comedian (2019)

Maurizio Cattelan’s (b. 1960, Italian) Comedian (2019)—a real banana, meant to be replaced periodically, taped to a wall—has become one of the most widely circulated and controversial artworks of recent years. First presented by Perrotin at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, the work quickly became a viral sensation. Its fame reached a new peak in November 2024, when one edition sold at Sotheby’s New York for $5.2 million, or $6.24 million with fees, after a seven-minute bidding war. As absurd as the work may seem at first glance, Cattelan described it as a “sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value,” playing within the system of the art market, but on his own terms. 

Cattelan reportedly spent about a year developing the concept, first experimenting with bronze and resin versions that would arguably align more closely with his broader sculptural practice. Yet those versions felt unresolved, until, as he put it, he realized that “the banana is meant to be a banana.” Comedian may not have the same sculptural weight, technical refinement, or visual power as his other iconic sculptures, such as Him (2000), the kneeling wax figure of Hitler, La Nona Ora (1999), showing Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite, or Ave Maria (2007), with its three disembodied arms performing a Roman salute. Still, precisely through its banality, Comedian became an unexpected, perhaps even unwanted, icon. One can almost imagine the artist grinning at the fact that this, of all works, is the one that achieved such visibility. The real authors of its iconicity are not Cattelan or Perrotin, but all of us, whose fascination and outrage exposed our own complicity through the very mechanisms the work appears to mock. The Comedian’s joke is on us.

10. Tracey Emin — The Mother (2021)

Tracey Emin’s (b. 1963, British) The Mother (2021) is one of the most significant public sculptures by one of the most significant artists of the 21st century. At nine meters high, it is, quite literally, her greatest—read: largest—work to date. Permanently installed next to the Munch Museum in Oslo, the monumental bronze sculpture presents a kneeling nude woman facing the fjord, visible from afar over land and water. Emin described the figure as sitting “like a Sphinx,” waiting for the tide, looking out to sea. At once vulnerable, erotic, and protective, the sculpture becomes a monumental image of femininity and motherhood without losing intimacy.

The subject of the mother runs deep in Emin’s work—a personal dimension meets her long admiration for Edvard Munch, whose own mother died when he was still a child. The mother is a central and recurring theme in her practice, bound up with love, grief, and the often-complicated yet utterly powerful nature of the maternal bond. Emin underwent two abortions in the 1990s, the first of which was traumatic and nearly killed her, and she lost her mother five years before completing this artwork and just two years before submitting the proposal for this public sculpture. Doing so, we open and close the article with a monumental ode to our mother—I hope to do the same one day.

Cover: Ugo Rondinone, Seven Magic Mountains, 2016. Stone, paint, threaded rod — variable dimensions. Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper © Ugo Rondinone / Photo: Gianfranco Gorgoni

Last Updated on March 29, 2026