Good point. I nominate
Il Duomo, Milan
Statue to Victor Emmanuel II, Rome
St. Paul’s Cathedral, London
Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright
Sydney Opera House
Getty Museum, LA
Hoover Dam
The Giant Marble Typewriter? I like that, too. Big n’ scary.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ukulele Ike *
**
Oooh–it looks like the sphinx if you squint at it. And I’m cracking up over the accompanying text: “The silhouette of the Justice Palace perceives without difficulty when one is to a big distance of it.” And just what kind of events does Justice throw in a palace?
I’ll always be glad I didn’t miss out on this painting, Franz Marc’s “Blue Horses,” at the Walker in Minneapolis.
Chas.E: I am sorry I am not as learned or fancy as you. See, something doesn’t have to be made in Japan 4000 years ago for me to enjoy it. I think you might enjoy ‘The Dharma Bums,’ but because it wasn’t on your list, you probably wont. Your loss.
peace,
JB
quit yer bitchin’ jabe. I enjoy kerouac, I even used to work in an office that was formerly Kerouac’s old apartment in SF. His work is definitely literature, but essential? I doubt it. You present Austin Powers and Dharma Bums as your entire list of essentials? Excuse me if I don’t take your suggestions too seriously.
Let’s get back to the OP. Architecture? Some good sites were listed, I’ll add:
The Stone Buddhas in Afghanistan (non-extant)
Fishdance Restaurant, by Frank Gehry (you ought to see the inside of this building, all I can find is an exterior shot)
http://www.pritzkerprize.com/gehry/gehrypg.htm
The Eiffel Tower
Church of St. Ignazio, Rome
Horyuji
Hey, while poking around the web, I found another cool list of “essentials.”
And for architecture, I found this:
Don’t bother with anything of René Magritte. (The floating people in bowler hats guy.) They look so cool as posters, and amateurish 6’ tall and close up. The brush strokes are not even throughout the work, etc. Clearly intended to be seen a prints, not as paintings.
The Mona Lisa is small and hard to view. Not worth waiting for a chance to see it up close with dozens of others elbowing you.
I can only take one of each to a desert island:
Book: Moby Dick
Religious Book: King James Bible
Non-fiction: Thucydides
Music: in DVD Audio when available
Classical: Beethoven’s 9th symphony
Popular: Layla and Assorted Love Songs
Sculpture:
La Pieta (the one at the Vatican, Michaelangelo. I cried.
Drama:
Romeo and Juliet
TV:
Rockford Files
Architecture
Taj Mahal
Painting
Sistine Chapel
Movie on DVD
Casablanca
I agree. I was there and grew tired of looking over someone’s shoulder, so I turned around and found my favorite painting: The crowning of Napolean.
There’s always something you remember just after you hit ‘submit’…
Hiroshima by John Hersey
When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller
Literature & drama:
I could go on forever, but this is a selection of my personal choices:
English is not my first language, so some transcription of names, translation of titles and names of works might be erranous. Sorry for that.
Literature:
Homer: The Illiad & The Odyssey
Aeschylus: Agamemnon
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
Euripides: Media
Virgil: The Aenied
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Arabian Nights (NOT the European version, find a translation of an Arabic version)
Dante: Divina commedia
Chaucer: Canterbury tales (try original spelling version)
Sidney: The countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
Marlowe: Tamburlaine
Will Shakespeare: Richard III, Henry VI, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, The tempest
Milton: Paradise lost
Goethe: Faust
Keats: Ode to a Grecian urn
Shelley: Ode to the western wind
Bronte: Wuthering heights
Wilde: Salome
Zola: Nana
Dostoyevsky: Notes from the underground
Gorky: The trilogy about his life. (The English titles should translate to something like “My childhood”, “My universities” and “Out in the world”)
Solochov: Quiet Don
Baudelaire: Les fleurs du mal (Should translate to “The evil flowers”)
Eliot: The waste land
Joyce: Ulysses (If you can’t stand it, try Portrait of the artist as a young man.)
Borges: The library of Babel
Mishima: The sea of fertility tetralogy (Spring snow, Runaway horses, The temple of dawn, The decay of the angel)
Eco: Faucault’s pendulum
Art:
The statues from Parthenon, Acropolis
Michelangelo: David
Raphael: The school of Athens
Rembrandt: The night watch
Picasso: The girls of Avignon
Marcel Duchamp: The birde stripped bare by her bachelors, etc & Nude figure II
Kandinsky, Miro, Kienholtz
The great spider in the entrance of Tate modern
Architecture:
The great pyramids & the valley of kings
The Chinese wall
Parthenon at Acropolis in Athens (most of the statues are at British Museum though, called "the Elgin marbles)
Colosseum, St Peter’s cathedral & Sixtine chapel in Rome
The temple mosque in Jerusalem
The city of Petra in Jordania
Th castle/mosque in Alhambra in Spain
Taj Mahal
The Mediveal castles in Central Europe and UK
The Mediveal towns in Morocco and Syria
Notre Dame, the Alexander garden & Chatelet les Halles in Paris
The Kremlin & Vassilev cathedral in Moscow
The Winter palace in St Petersburg
La sagra familia in Barcelona
The Macintosh house in Scotland
The city of Prague, in Czech Republic
The city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sydney Opera house (and the acoustics are great, too)
Music:
Gregorian church song
The Novospassky cloister choir (regarded as best male choir in the world - unfortunately they don’t tour a lot)
Bach’s Brandenburg concertos
Chopin’s Nocturnes
Mussorgsky’s Boris Gudonov
Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto
Sibelius’ Finnlandia
Tchaikowsky’s Manfred symphony & 1st violin concerto
Puccini’s La Traviata
Shostakovitch’ 5th, 7th, 10th, 11th and 12th symphony
Tibetan traditional singing (sounds like contemporary Western classical music - imagine a crossing between Lygety and Schnittke!)
Film:
Eisenstein: Potemkin
Kurosawa: Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Throne of blood
Kubrik: A clockwork Orange
Leone: Once upon a time in Amercia
Bergman: The seventh seal
The city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan.
The city celebrated it’s 2500th anniversary some 30 years ago.
Alexander the Great visited the city. It has belonged to both Mongol Gengis Khan and Persian Tamurlane (The guy in Chris Marlowe’s play). It was a major trading point at the Silk route. The city is full of well preserved buildings from the 14th and 15th century.
Something for you Americans 