5 essential artworks heading to Melbourne

1 Vincent van Gogh: ‘Portrait of Joseph Roulin’, 1889

One of the earliest works on display, this postimpressionist work is one the artist himself hailed as the birth of “the modern portrait”.

2 Pablo Picasso: ‘The Architect’s Table’, 1912

One of the most dynamic examples of cubism in MOMA’S collection, the fractured composition incorporates references to Picasso’s personal life.

3 Marcel Duchamp: ‘Bicycle Wheel’, 1951

This is the first of Duchamp’s so-called ‘readymade’ sculptures, paving the way for found object and outsider art as legitimate forms of creative expression in the 20th century.

4 Roy Lichtenstein: ‘Drowning Girl’, 1963

Like many of pop art’s most important exponents, Lichtenstein made appropriation the cornerstone of his practice, lifting his compositions wholesale from comic books.

5 El Anatsui: ‘Bleeding Takari II’, 2007

One of the most recent pieces on loan from MOMA, this sheet of drapery by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is made from bottle caps, representing centuries of European colonisation.