In the spirit of “desert-island movies”, what if the mass of people lost all interest in artworks and let them deteriorate or even discarded them? You get to save 10 items - without regard to practicality. (If you want to nominate the Statue of Liberty - fine!) Please, no items such as “the Pontiac GTO”.
Just off of the top of my head:
Guernica by Pablo Picasso
The Nefertiti Bust
Water Lilies by Claude Monet
The Pieta by Michelangelo
The Rose Window (stained glass) from the Strasbourg Cathedral
It certainly looks to me like the OP meant visual art (the kind of things you study in the Art Department and not some other department like the Music Department).
What’s not clear to me is whether the OP is hypothesizing that just the originals are destroyed (but we still have reproductions, photos, etc.), or whether all memory of the artworks is completely wiped out.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking of. On the other hand trying to limit a discussion on these boards can be like the proverbial “herding cats”. So have at it.
The originals would be left to deteriorate, or even trashed. And since (in this brave new society) there would be little interest in preserving them - reproductions would be saved by accident, if at all.
Yes, and I fully agree. I saw it in New York in 1979, before it was returned to Spain. It is huge, and it is overwhelming, and it makes a statement. No reproduction in a coffee-table book can ever do it justice.
I don’t know what other nine items I’d save, but one would have to be a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Okay, another would be Handel’s “Messiah.” Okay, seven to go.
I think to have a valid opinion on any work of art, you have to experience it first hand. Any painting, any sculpture, anything. Experiencing them second hand is like having someone describing a cake to you through words and pictures and you deciding that you do or don’t like it.
I heard this said about Rothko paintings-- those sloppily-painted colored rectangles: “you have to see a Rothko in person! The luminosity of the colors is amazing!”
I’ve seen a Rothko or two in person. I still don’t get it.
Sure, though I was careful to say that you need to have seen them in order for you to form a valid opinion, not that seeing them in person guarantees a positive reaction.
I personally dislike any implication that someone should be expected to react in any given way towards a work of art. Art is personal, emotional response is intimately personal.
Oh, and I confess that some of the most deeply moving reactions I have ever had were towards the unexpected, coming to them fresh and unknown, completely divorced from anyone else’s thoughts, opinions and judgements. Also by having seen famous works in the flesh that were so, so much greater than I had anticipated. Van Gogh’s “sunflowers” paintings are a great case in point. Their 3d nature and agricultural construction is amazing to witness at first hand and can never come across either in print or description.
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