favorite works of art?? [Caution: 56k heavy]

[miss djax]

hi there,

anyone a fan o' art?? i love museums, i collect, can't get enough, ya da ya da

this is my favorite painting of all times -

the suicide of dorothy hale by frida kahlo

i just love it

it's at the phx art museum and i go all the time tocheck it out

http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kahlo/kahlo43.html

[dug_down_deep]

Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth has always been a favorite, but there's no one work of art I would call the favorite.

[Monad]

Paul Klee - pretty much anything
Rothko's last "black" paintings (in particular)
RB Kitaj's portrait of Walter benjamin
Leon Golub's Nicaragua series
Braque's Black Rose (together with his last studio paintings are possibly some of the most sublime works of 20th C art)
Anything by Georg Baselitz, Frank Auerbach, De Kooning is awesome
Helen Frankenthaler is sublime

[Master Taran]

David Mann (http://home.att.net/~knucklehead-47/dmann.htm)

Ed Roth (http://www.ratfink.org/)

[David B]

If I had a big house, with room for an art gallery, and the money to indulge my tastes, I'd have some Roy Lichtenstein, some Miro, and some Bridget Riley.

And also Warhol. I remember many years ago going into Basle Art Gallery, looking round to see what caught my attention, and homing in on Warhol, and being astonished. At the time, I'd gathered from the press that he was a talentless poseur, but seeing his work full size blew me away. The car crash stuff, and the Marilyns.

Then again, there is the pottery of my friend Simon.

I like his crystal glazes in particular.

http://www.simonrich-narberthpottery.co.uk/

David

[Barefoot Bree]

This painting (OK, a print) hung in my Grandpa's office till he retired, then he took it home and put it in the hall, where I saw it whenever we visited. He died when I was nine, and Grandma went into a nursing home. I have no idea what happened to the print, but years later I found another one and bought it. I've carried it around with me from place to place for 25 years, and will have it till I die.

It is by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and called The Corn Harvest. It's an interesting painting, because of the perspective: take a look at the man sleeping against the tree. From most distances, he looks crooked. But if you view it from just the right distance, he's straight. That would be the distance that matches the painter's perspective as he painted the scene.



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder-_The_Corn_Harvest_%28August%29.JPG

[Monad]

Of course I have a ton of original artworks by me - not sure if they are "favourites" though

[lex]

"You yankees* are so silly about matters of the heart,
Dont you know that women are the only works of art?"

Don Henley-Driving with your eyes closed.

*Taken as poetic license

[Danhalen]

My favorite painting is Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Duchamp_-_Nude_Descending_a_Staircase.jpg).

[Tangiellis]

Van Gogh's cypress trees. I look at them and get entirely blissful.

[Anne]

Botticelli and Magritte.

I also like Edwin Dickinson and Franz Marc.

And Miro and Klee.

we own some original art. I'd like to own more. We own a landscape by Anne Hopper, a surreal work by Ron Haas, and a Japanese painting my aunt brought home when she was stationed there after WWII. I don't know the artists name, however. Our house is an EB Green, does that count? ;)

[Brianna]

http://www.globalgallery.com/prod_images/600/sw-1844.jpg

And some very sad and weird picture of Mary Madalyn in the San Diego Art Museum

[Jobar]

Some of the Lascaux cave art, notably the horses, I find as potent as any work I've ever seen. Though I admit that knowing their age is a factor in their appeal to me.

[Christina]

It's not particularly original but I could happily spend the rest of my life locked in the Musée d'Orsay looking at impressionist art or even more so at Giverny wandering through Monet's gardens. It's like a massage for my eyes.

[Berthold]

Where to start, where to linger, and where to end?

Considering the rich diversity, I can't even fix some place and/or period.

[dug_down_deep]

We recently found a textured canvas print of this work by Leroy Campbell in a junk/antique shop. Paid too much as we thought we were discovering an original by some unknown genius folk artist, but still love it. (Duh down deep.) It's called "Carefree".

http://www.artisanartsonline.com/images/BTAV547.jpg

[BWE]

Drawings of Picasso.
http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd44/donheff/femme.jpg
http://damgoodespresso.com/images/posts/2008/picasso_don_quixote.jpg

I spent a year in art school trying to learn to scribble out a masterpiece. It's very zen.

Sculpture by Rodin and Michelangelo.
http://www.museum-replicas.com/images/productimages/small/Rodin%20Thinker-red.JPG
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/print/2007/4/pieta-michelangelo.jpg

I also shouldn't forget Alexander Calder.
http://www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum/luce/Top50/50/images/Calder_jpg.jpg

And MC Escher, and Salvador Dali and lots of others.

[Anne]

Drawings of Picasso.

http://damgoodespresso.com/images/posts/2008/picasso_don_quixote.jpg


I have that print.

[Utu]

...
And MC Escher, and Salvador Dali and lots of others.
Yep. I loves me some Escher.

http://www.theintellectualdevotional.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/escher-relativity.jpg

http://www.headwaysoftware.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/chris.headwaysoftware.com/photos/uncategorized/escher_ascending_cropped_1.jpg

http://rbinkley.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/escher-lizard22.jpg

http://www.whitelake.k12.sd.us/elementaryComputers/DayandNightTessellation.jpg

Optical illusions in art rock!

[dug_down_deep]

Hey BWE, is that Don Quixote piece by Picasso something that was commissioned? It's on the cover of the paperback - I was just wondering why it was created.

[Matty]

i like a quite lot of the group of seven stuff, lawren harris (http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/Lawren-Harris.html) particularly.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/images/small_LawrenHarris-North-Shore-Lake-Superior-1926.jpghttp://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/images/small_LawrenHarris-Mount-Robson-from-the-Northeast-c1929.jpghttp://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/images/LawrenHarris-Maligne-Lake-Jasper-Park-1924.jpg

[BWE]

Hey BWE, is that Don Quixote piece by Picasso something that was commissioned? It's on the cover of the paperback - I was just wondering why it was created.

I don't know.

[dug_down_deep]

Well figure it out. Chop chop.

[Ray Moscow]

Renaissance Italy FTW, especially Botticelli -- e.g.,
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/7366/botticellibirthvenus.jpg

but I like the classical period, too.

Most modern art sucks in comparison.

Philistine Ray

[Oolon Colluphid]

I'm a big fan of Joseph Wright of Derby. Not only do some of his subjects appeal, I love his use of light.

Obviously, there's this:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/WebMedia/Images/72/NG725/eNG725.jpg

It's smashing the way he's presenting a scientific experiment as if it were a religious work.

But he also did stuff like:

Matlock Tor by Moonlight

http://www.dia.org/art/comping/1941_1960_300ppi/48.4-S1.jpg

Cottage on Fire

http://www.artsmia.org/mia/e_images/00/mia_380e.jpg

Moonlit Landscape

http://visitors.ringling.org/eMuseum/media/full/sn906.jpg

An Eruption of Vesuvius, seen from Portici

http://imagecache.allposters.com/images/pic/BRGPOD/72367~An-Eruption-of-Vesuvius-Seen-from-Portici-circa-1774-6-Posters.jpg


Not earth-shattering stuff, I know, but I just think he's fucking brilliant.

[Lugubert]

I like the Breughel stuff where he assembles lots and lots of details into one theme, like the proverbs (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Breughel_proverbs.jpg).

But my #1 favourite is the Didarganj chauri bearer (http://www.shunya.net/Pictures/NorthIndia/Patna/PatnaMuseum01.jpg), especially before she lost her nose on being on loan to Britain.

Among the ones I own, favourites are two small wooden sculptures by a Swedish artist, Calle Örnemark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calle_%C3%96rnemark). They're each some 50 cm tall, which is an extremely rare size for his works. His Indiska reptricket (the Indian Rope Trick), for example, had to get clearance from the Board of Civil Aviation and fitted with a beacon on top because of its height.

[Eudaimonist]

Just about any of the romantic realist works from these sites:

http://www.michaelwilkinson.com/

http://www.cordair.com/

Also, the pre-Raphaelites, especially William Bouguereau (sp?):

http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/William%20Bouguereau%20-%20Nymphs%20and%20Satyr%20-%2073.jpg


eudaimonia,

Mark

[nygreenguy]

Judy Chicago

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/archive/images/376.1288.jpg

The Dinner Party elevates achievement by women in Western culture to a heroic scale traditionally reserved inequitably for men. A massive ceremonial banquet in multi-media art, laid on a triangular table measuring 48 feet on each side, The Dinner Party combines the glory of sacramental tradition with the intimate detail of a social gathering. Thirty-nine guests of honor, mythical and historic women whose accomplishments were largely erased from male-dominated histories, are represented by individually symbolic, china-painted porcelain plates and intricately needleworked table runners. Each plate is essentially an independent work of art and features an image based on Chicago’s vulvar and butterfly iconography, a symbolic representation of the female core intended by the artist as an affirmation of empowered female agency. The plates reside atop elaborate runners decorated with historically significant details associated with the women honored. The first name of each woman begins with an illuminated letter magnificently incorporating a small symbol or motif that references the subject’s importance.
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/judy_chicago.php?i=1288

[Oolon Colluphid]

Ooh, Pre-Raphs! Yesss! Alma-Tadema and his Victorian porn masquerading as scenes from Roman bath-houses! And Burne Jones and Millais! The only one I don't 'get' is Rossetti, and that's because that alleged great beauty Jane Morris looks so like a transvestite...

[Ray Moscow]

On Sunday we went out to the Watts chapel (http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/Northdowns/gallery_image.asp?PageId=21&ImageId=32)near here, which is a great work of art. (Unfortunately Watts gallery nearby was closed for rennovation, but you can find several of his paintings in the National Gallery and one in St. Paul's.)

And I met a guy there who was going on about a pre-Raph designed chapel he had found in Herfordshire.

[court and spark]

frida kahlo


I love Frida Kahlo, sadly I couldn't get to see the exhibition of her work when it was shown in my area last year.

I saw the Salvador Dali exhibit a few years back, and just loved everything, including his studies and notes, as well as his mixed media.

I have a real soft spot for Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. One of Van Gogh's Sunflowers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflowers_(series_of_paintings)) is in my local museum:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Van_Gogh_Twelve_Sunflowers.jpg/482px-Van_Gogh_Twelve_Sunflowers.jpg

I'll be seeing it again this Sunday, in fact...

Along with Monet's Poplars:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Claude_Monet_-_Poplars%2C_Philadelphia.JPG/464px-Claude_Monet_-_Poplars%2C_Philadelphia.JPG

In addition to the classics, I really like local/unknown art. I don't get a chance to see everything I'd like to see, it's just a coincidence that I'm planning a museum visit this weekend. I'm rather open to many artistic styles, not just impressionists and surrealists. I like it all.

[dug_down_deep]

Hey BWE, is that Don Quixote piece by Picasso something that was commissioned? It's on the cover of the paperback - I was just wondering why it was created.
Some things you just have to do on your own...

The drawing was made on August 10, 1955 for the August 18-24 issue (No. 581) of Les LETTRES françaises, a weekly French journal directed by Aragon, in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, Part I.

I found this fact in an article presenting a hypothesis on A Possible Source for Picasso's Drawing of Don Quixote (http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/CERVANTE/csa/artics92/lo_re.htm). Pretty interesting stuff.

[hecaterin]

El Greco is amazing, I especially love the light over Toledo. The image can't do it justice.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/El_Greco_View_of_Toledo.jpg/535px-El_Greco_View_of_Toledo.jpg

I'm also partial to Van Gogh. And in modern art, the works of Fiona Hall.

http://qag.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0012/7005/006-Lotus-Fiona-Hall.jpg

[Gooch's Dad]

Oolon, those Wright paintings are absolutely fantastic! I hadn't heard of him. Thanks for sharing those.

I saw this Bernini sculpture, Apollo and Daphne, on a high school trip to Europe in 1979, and I still remember how amazing it was. Many of the details are so thin that the light from the nearby windows makes them translucent.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/ApolloAndDaphne.JPG

[Monad]

I've always loved Bernini - his sculpture was so passionate, ecstatic even, and such a good observer of how emotion sculpts the body:

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln482/Images482/Bernini-Teresa.jpg

[Oolon Colluphid]

Oolon, those Wright paintings are absolutely fantastic! I hadn't heard of him. Thanks for sharing those.

Cheers! Here's a few more then:

The Funeral Pyre

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.916620.533424/23440.JPG

Two Boys Fighting Over a Bladder (c.1767-70)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.135570.533424/72352.JPG

A Moonlit Lake by a Castle

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.837030.533424/27559.JPG

Landscape with a Rainbow (1794)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.989650.533424/53810.JPG

A Girl Reading a Letter by Candlelight, with a Young Man Peering Over Her Shoulder (c.1760-62)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.925570.533424/72350.JPG

Snowdon by Moonlight (1792)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.992050.533424/47120.JPG

Rydal Waterfall (1795)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.678530.533424/32697.JPG

Widow of an Indian Chief (1785)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.145570.533424/72362.JPG

Vesuvius

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.830580.533424/81859.JPG

A Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno, Sunset (c.1780-81)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.9036210.533424/123130.JPG

The Dead Soldier (c.1798)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.0371020.533424/198551.JPG

A Hermit Studying Anatomy (1769)

http://www.lichfieldrambler.co.uk/Picture%20003.jpg

Two Girls Decorating a Kitten (it's a tough job but someone's got to do it :dunno:)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.42350.533424/2145.JPG

And his more famous ones:

The Iron Forge (1772)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.04740.533424/1561.JPG

The Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher's Stone (1771)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/JosephWright-Alchemist.jpg

Three Gentlemen Observing the 'Gladiator'

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Three_Persons_Viewing_the_Gladiator_by_Candlelight .jpg

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (1766)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.14470.533424/4262.JPG

... and the Ray Harryhausen-esque Old Man and Death (http://www.outofprintlibrary.com/stacks/index.php?title=Aesop%27s_Fables/The_Old_Man_and_Death)

http://www.lichfieldrambler.co.uk/Picture%20001.jpg

ETA: Worth clicking the 'enlarge' bar on this one: the resized version doesn't do it justice.)

[Oolon Colluphid]

And if we're doing sculpture, as a lapsed classicist, I'll mention that I really got into Greek sculpture, especially the Hellenistic (post- Alexander the Great) stuff. Classical sculpture was all about ideals, generic perfect forms; as time wore on, the emphasis became more and more on individuals and individuality.

Here's the famous one of the Trojan Laocoön, being attacked by the snakes sent to do him in for trying to reveal that the horse the Greeks had offered was a bit dodgy. (Moral: don't look a gift horse in the mouth.)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.7646110.533424/113288.JPG

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.1750420.533424/237392.JPG

And there's this amazing thing: a Gaul committing suicide after killing his wife, presumably rather than fall into the enemy's hands: noble and so full of pathos...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Ludovisi_Gaul_Altemps_Inv8608_n3.jpg

I should note that much of what we know about Greek sculpture comes from Roman marble copies of things that were originally in bronze. The tensile strength -- and, being hollow, the lighter weight -- of bronzes meant that sculptors could do designs that are much tougher to do in marble, so many marble copies were done with strategically-positioned bits of tree. We students had a short-hand for identification: "He's got a treetrunk up his arse, so it's a Roman copy of a bronze." Actually, that's not always true; the Greeks sometimes did it too, for the same reason, but it's a good rule of thumb.

Thus:

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.2319510.533424/155953.JPG

And that reminds me of another one, and it links back to Wright of Derby -- the 'gladiator' that the 'three gentlemen' are studying was (a version of) the Borghese Gladiator:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Borghese_Gladiator_Louvre_Ma_527_n1.jpg

(Note the treetrunk up his arse... yet that was deliberate, as it isn't a marble copy of a bronze (AFAIK).)

[Lisa0315]

This is the best thread evah!

[Ray Moscow]

Yes to Bernini and Greek sculpture!

I always go see whatever I can of Bernini, including those posted here so far.

[Anne]

Snowdon by Moonlight (1792)

http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.BAL.992050.533424/47120.JPG


I could soooo stitch that...

and the moonlit castle one--- I fell in love with that years ago, never knew who did it. thanks!