That’s what I came in here to post. Magnificent, evoking profound emotion.
I am privileged to have seen Picasso’s Guernica when it was in New York. One summer while I was in high school a college-aged cousin of mine was visiting from California. We went into NYC and walked everywhere, hitting I think every art museum (and there were a lot). There was a color plate of the painting in my Lit textbook the previous school year, with a caption about symbolism and such. My reaction was “So What”. When I saw the painting in person - it. Was. So! HUGE!! It just hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything in that lame little caption of the wimpy 8.5x11" image in my Lit book was true in the giant real life painting: This was Murder! Slaughter! Panic! Disaster! And all made by Men! It’s 35 or so years later and I’m still amazed. Art as a source of emotional impact, rather than of beauty.
I’m not a huge fan of Picasso, but the man was brilliant. If he did nothing else, this would make him great. He did many other great things as well, enough to make him one for the ages.
Links:
http://blog.oilpaintingandframe.com/?p=1192
Scroll down and see the people standing in front of the painting - this ain’t no Mona Lisa.
Nothing on a computer screen does Guernica justice. It’s like the Grand Canyon in that regard.
Is Guernica my favorite piece of art? No, but it is the greatest I’ve seen. I would not want to have it in my house, or even a copy. It’s too upsetting. For a single person to own it seems so antithetical to the point of the work as to be almost criminal. It belongs to humanity, as a stark reminder of the horrors of which we are capable. In terms of enjoyment and ownership it’s not even my favorite Picasso. I have a lithograph of his “Don Quixote” - worth barely more than the poster that was all over college dorms. Also a wonderful work - done with a few lines. I like the whimsy of it - one must remember to tilt at windmills now and again.
For me, it’s Marc Chagall’s I and the Village. I don’t know if it’s considered a great painting, but when I stood in front of it, I just about swooned. Absolutely glorious.
I have to say that my favorite is “The Family of the Infante Don Luis” by Goya. I saw it in the National Gallery in Washington a few years ago, and it really grabbed me, mostly because of the guy with the bandage on his head who’s looking out at you. It seems more like a snapshot than a posed painting, and it always delights me.
Have you read Headlong, Michael Frayn’s novel about a Breughel painting? It’s a great read, and contains some really clever analysis of Breughel’s work.
I like Hunters in the Snow also and Tissots The Ball is up there but Manets Bar At The Folies Bergeres is my favourite.Ok its technically incorrect but who cares.I would love to know where her thoughts are.
What a treat this thread is !
I’ve been reminded of things that I’ve liked but allowed to slip back into the recesses of memory.
Dalis Last Supper, Breughal, and a couple of pre Raphaelites.
I love it.
If I work out how to do links I might post mine, which is called “S” and is by V.G., not too tricky a question eh ?
I am not a connoisseur of art, I have no training in it, and I know virtually nothing about how it’s created or what makes for “good” art. Just establishing that I have no credentials to speak of whatsoever.
However, in 1991 I was dating a girl who lived in Philadelphia, so we went to the Art Museum to see the Renoir exhibition, and I found myself just standing and staring at Renoir’s Portrait of Mademoiselle Legrand. It was the first painting I’d ever seen that actually captured something of a living, breathing human being. In fact, I loved that painting so much that I’ve actually remembered the name all these years later. I couldn’t tell you anything about any other painting in that exhibit, but that one just completely captivated me.
I remember spending a lot of time in front of the Pieta, mostly because the marble actually looked fluid; it looked like it had ben poured into place. I just found that utterly fascinating.
“Favorite work of Art” is a tough call, but two of my favorites are Hieronymous Bosch and Piter Brueghel the Elder. It’s become something of a xcliche to like The Garden of Earthly Delights, which I think is one of the most misinterpreted and misunderstood art works ever, but it’s alsdo undoubtedly one of Bosch’s best, so I’ll elect that one.
We actually know quite a lot about the work’s inspirations and meanings. There are contemporary parallels for many of the motifs in existing artwork. Wilhelm Fraenger, with his fantasies about an Adamic Brotherhood, ought to be shot. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” wasn’t even used as a title for the work until centuries after Bosch’s death. The earliest title we have for this is “The Strawberry Plant”
I wrote an extensive essay about the symbolism in this work, but haven’t tried to get it printed anywhere.
For me, it’s Guernica, and I think I laid out enough verbiage on why in that Picasso thread. Suffice to say I agree with everything Typo Knig said about it.
And again, like I said in that other thread, it’s not my favourite - I think my overall favourite painting is Van Gogh’s Starry Night, although Night Hawks, I & The Village, Hokusai’s Great Wave, Breugel’s Dulle Griet, Beardsley’s Peacock Skirt and Wyeth’s Christina’s World could easily fit in that spot too. ETA - and no portrait has ever done it for me like Wyeth’s Braids
It definitely is considered such - that’s why it’s in MoMA.
Tricky…
Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers?
Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers?
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear?
Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe?
Still Life with Pottery, Beer Glass and a Bottle?
The Sower?
The Sheaf-Binder?
Still Life: Vase with Violet Irises Against a Yellow Background ?
Stone Bench in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital?
The Smoker?
and that’s just off the top of my head…
Assuming you mean the very first, here’s a link
I don’t know what the “greatest” work of art is. There’s no way I could possibly make that judgment or pick just one.
I can give you my favorites, though.
Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles and Autumn Rhythm
Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition IV
Mark Rothko’s Number 14.
Van Gogh’s Starry Night and also Starry Night Over the Rhone.
Gerhardt Richter’s Ice series
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Pretty much any Rembrandt portrait.
I’m gonna say The Banjo Lesson.
Yep that was it, doesn’t look so great as a plate, but in the flesh its breathtaking.
As to the clue I was going for the obvious, as in blindingly .
Probably Tubgirl.
Ah, the Peacock Skirt by Aubrey Beardsley! Salome and St. John the Baptist. http://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/3.html I was obsessed with his art years ago and had three hardcover collections I painstakingly sought out at bookstores and used bookstores.
I just noticed that the OP asked if we have seen the work of art in person. Yes, I’ve seen Ophelia twice, once in the Tate Britain (but back when it was still called the Tate Gallery) in London where it is usually on display and once on tour in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Here’s a larger picture of it:
I’ve seen most of the works in this thread, but this is the one that just totally blew me away, considering its complexity. I just stood there and stared, then observed it from different angles, and was just amazed that anyone can create this out of a block of stone . . . with the tools available a couple thousand years ago.
And the issue of seeing a work of art live, as opposed to reproductions: This is especially true with the paintings of Klimt, especially the ones with gold paint. Absolutely breathtaking.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich
I’m not a big fan of romanticism but this one gets me all the time.
Third on* Guernica*. I didn’t realize, when I was at the Reina Sofia, that Guernica was there.* When I walked into the gallery where it hangs, not expecting to see it, I was overwhelmed by it. My legs went watery and I felt sick to my stomach, and I had to leave the gallery to find some place to sit down for a minute.
I don’t particularly like the painting. I don’t think you’re supposed to like it. On some level, I’m not entirely convinced its possible to like it. But no other painting or sculpture has ever had that sort of effect on me. There was a thread recently where someone was going on about how Picasso was a fraud. All I know is, if that’s the fraud, I’d hate to see what the genuine article would do to me.
*What’s weird is that I knew the painting was in the museum, but somehow had utterly failed to link up the fact that Guernica was in the Reina Sofia, with the fact that I was in the Reina Sofia, and therefore, the painting and I were in the same building. I’ve previously had the same problem during a week long stay in London, where I entirely forgot to go to British Museum, despite the fact that I spend one evening there watching a lengthy program on television about the Elgin marbles controversy.