Jeff Wall is known for large scale, back lit photographs. Most people think they're pretty cool, until they see them too many times. Milk: 1984. Stereo: 1982.
Credit once again goes to Jenna D. for the Stereo contribution.
So this guy Matthew Barney made a series of films based around this muscle that can raise and lower the scrotum and regulate the temperature of the testis. Kids love it. 1995-1999.
Bonus fun: vote on your favorite lolBarney in the comments thread OR submit your own lolBarneys.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan creates an enormous full room installation just to show the pope being crushed to death by a meteorite. Italians were kind of pissed. Many others sort of chuckled. 1999.
Painter Chris Ofili creates an image of the Mother of Christ complete with cut out pictures of little butts, little female genitals and most famously: petrified elephant dung. Rudy Giuliani tried to take it down once. 1996.
Conceptual artist John Baldessari makes another work showing how he likes to appropriate images and block out people's faces with big dots. Part of a series, available in different colors. 2005.
Heavily influenced by "Viennese actionism", Paul McCarthy erects an enormous forest installation and intimately plants two animatronic men making love to the foliage within. Fun fact: the false trees in the installation were used on the set of popular television program Bonanza. 1991-1992.
Ubiquitous pop artist Andy Warhol silk screens the repeated images of horrifying vehicular accidents on canvas, likening the temporary fame of tragedy to that of the celebrities he painted in the same manner. 1963.
Photographer Andres Serrano takes a snapshot of a crucifix (complete with body of Jesus Christ) submerged in his own urine, causing much hubbub and rabble. 1989.
Known for sculpting pop and political icons in compromising positions, Daniel Edwards delights the world by molding a nude Britney Spears giving birth atop a bear skin rug on all fours. 2006.
The self proclaimed "grandmother of performance art" Marina Abramovic takes a metal brush and a metal comb and destroys her hair for awhile in front of a camera. 1975.
"Young British Artist" Damien Hirst stumbles across a old dead shark that he had lying around, then decides to lay it in a big vatrine and pickle it in formaldehyde. 1991.
The Chapman brothers, Jake and Dinos, purchase a perfectly good series of Francisco Goya etchings, from his Disasters of War series, and proceed to cover them with clowny faces.