At the National Art Gallery in Ottawa I once saw a painting which consisted of a massive canvas the size of an entire wall, floor to ceiling, so large that if you stood in front of it, you couldn’t see either edge. At first glance it appeared to be just a huge mass of red, but as I got closer, I realized that it was made of up millions upon millions of tiny, individual brushstrokes. Standing before it was daunting, giving a feeling of claustophobic oppression as my mind tried to encompass all those countless painstaking paint daubs. Then, on closer inspection, I realized that down in one corner, there was a miniscule section of this gargantuan, overwhelming canvas where the red was a very slightly different shade from the rest of the painting.
When I checked the information on the artist, I discovered that it had taken years to paint, and that he had painted it during the rule of Stalin in the Soviet Union.
The sheer visceral impact of the emotions the painting induced in me just blew the top of my head off.
Has anyone else ever had an intensely personal and emotional reaction like this to a piece of artwork? If so, what was it?