# (Visual) artwork that made you cry? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 2, 2008, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932 "2008-02-02T00:37:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/1 "2008-02-02T00:37:31Z")
I saw this on a poster at school and it reminded me. It was 1986; I was 13 years old and visiting the Louvre in Paris. I walked into a room and was stopped in my tracks by something. I started to cry. Not because it was sad, but because it was so beautiful. It was the [Winged Victory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace) statue of the goddess Nike. I was very familiar with the image from countless pictures I’d seen. I mean, hell it’s one of the most famous statues in the world. But I was **completely** unprepared for the impact it had on me seeing it in person. For one thing, it was bigger than I had pictured it (over 10 feet tall). But it just has a presence that I can’t explain at all, that doesn’t even begin to come through in photographs. I still get chills remembering it, all these years later. So have you ever had a piece of artwork just knock you on your ass, emotionally, and make you cry? ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/2 "2008-02-02T01:15:06Z")
In the Chicago Museum of Art there is a room full of Monet. I’m not sure I cried so much as lost my ability to stand and breathe. I had to brace myself against the door frame. It was crazy. My two favorite artists are Salvador Dali and Claude Monet, but I’ve been in a roomful of Dali and never had that sort of emotional response. ---
**Author:** ![Proudest\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/proudest_monkey/32/13257_2.png) [@Proudest\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Proudest_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/3 "2008-02-02T01:28:35Z")
Your OP spoke to me, Opal. The first time I went to Paris, we visited the Musee d’Orsay–home of many of the most recognizable Impressionist pieces in the world. (I LOVE the Impressionists.) I gasped, I oohed and aahed and even choked up at some of them. We had a splendid visit and I treasure the photo of my family taken on the outdoor deck with Paris splayed out in the background. But my second trip to Paris, I dragged my husband to L’Orangerie–a smallish museum at the foot of the Tuilleries. I wanted to see the Monet Waterliliies there. I knew they would be beautiful, but I was unprepared for the size and scope and presentation. They fill the space. They surround you. They were painted specifically to be viewed there. I felt embarrassed as I sobbed upon seeing them. Each was more beautiful than the last. I tear up even now as I think back on the sublime perfection of those long minutes I spent soaking in the Waterlilies. Husband took a picture in which I’m framed by the paintings, tears running down my face. I love Paris, and am not done visiting/loving it yet. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/4 "2008-02-02T01:41:27Z")
I’ve posted about this before, but the first time I saw _Guernica_ in person, I felt sick and had to leave the gallery and find someplace to sit down for a few minutes. Easily the most profound reaction I’ve ever had to a work of art. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/5 "2008-02-02T02:45:35Z")
I’ve told this story on the board before. My wife had to flee the Rothko Chapel in Houston it affected her so strongly. “It’s all about death,” she said. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/6 "2008-02-02T02:51:11Z")
My favourite painting in the world is _The Return of the Hunters_ by Bruegel (I have also seen it referred to as _The Hunters In The Snow_). Last year I booked a trip to Vienna without knowing this painting is on display there. In fact, by extraorindary coincidence, I ended up staying at a hotel just ten minutes from the Kunsthistoriches Museum, where the painting is on display. As soon as possible after checking in at the hotel, I raced to the Museum and found the painting on the third floor. It was a wonderful moment. I have loved this work for about 20 years, and at last I could see it ‘in the flesh’ so to speak. A painting dated to around 1565, and still looking magnificent, still managing to evoke so many moods and complex emotions. It didn’t make me cry, exactly, but it did create a sort of whirlwind of feelings inside, and overwhelmed me. There was a bench just in front of it, and I sat there for a long time just admiting the painting and falling in love with it all over again, trying to come to terms with all the emotions it coaxes out of me. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/7 "2008-02-02T03:36:52Z")
When I unexpectedly ran into Goya’s Saturn at the Prado, eye level, close up, I felt very queasy. Almost got sick. Great painting. Otherwise I usually just feel awe when I experience something really. . . awesome, like the Ghent altarpiece. ianzin-- I love that painting too. Breugel’s great. Those peaks in the background of Hunters-- you wonder what this boy from flat-as-a-pannekoek Breda, Netherlands, must have thought while headed to Italy and hitting the alps for the first time. Also I’m terribly jealous (that’s an emotion!) of the fellow who’d commissioned that series of seasons in the first place for his dining room outside Antwerp. . . lucky bastard. The “Fall” one is splendid-- just as atmospheric as the winter scene. I especially like the version of Babel that’s in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, too–terribly detailed and clever. ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/8 "2008-02-02T06:25:33Z")
Guernica ---
**Author:** ![SparrowHawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@SparrowHawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SparrowHawk)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/9 "2008-02-02T07:02:26Z")
Another vote for _Guernica_. Also, I was once wandering through the Met in New York and I walked into a room that took my breath away. Before I even had time to register what was in it, I was instantly aware that I was in the presence of a collection of the extraordinary. It was full of Rembrandt portraits. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/10 "2008-02-02T07:08:15Z")
Guernica, but only 'cause I know what it’s about. Vincent van Gogh’s [_Wheat Field with Crows_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vincent_van_Gogh_%281853-1890%29_-_Wheat_Field_with_Crows_%281890%29.jpg), > [@](#): > > … It is commonly and mistakenly believed that this was Van Gogh’s last painting, or even that he shot himself while he was painting it: this is how it was portrayed in the film Lust for Life. … > … Van Gogh did indeed commit suicide in the same month that he painted this picture. It is generally agreed that he went for a walk in the fields on the evening of July 27, 1890, and shot himself with a revolver, then made his way back home. He was in bed for two days before he died, with his brother Theo at his side. …[RIGHT][CITE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_Field_with_Crows)[/RIGHT] So not his final work, but, his painting of the place where he would end his life. I can see him in that painting, standing on that middle road, the crack of the pistol shot, the crows suddenly rising from the field, darkening the sky… . As with Guernica, knowing the back story changes the emotion evoked by the work for me. CMC +fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/11 "2008-02-02T07:37:35Z")
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds] Vincent van Gogh’s [_Wheat Field with Crows_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vincent_van_Gogh_%281853-1890%29_-_Wheat_Field_with_Crows_%281890%29.jpg),So not his final work, but, his painting of the place where he would end his life.] [/QUOTE] I’d never heard of that painting before I saw it at the Van Gogh Museum, but it really struck me. I don’t think a painting has ever moved me to tears, but when I was in college, an exhibition of art by concentration camp prisoners came to campus and my magazine writing professor took the class to the museum so we could each write about it. I was particularly moved by two drawings - here’s a link to the exhibit. [http://tle.northwestern.edu/exhibition\_fr\_search.html](http://tle.northwestern.edu/exhibition_fr_search.html) > [@](#): > > Downstairs on the first floor was a sadly ignored “Satire and Irony” portion of the exhibit. There were lighthearted items like holiday cards, but much of the humor was of the direst gallows kind. In one series of sketches, a skeleton plays the violin, clarinet, and drum. The sketches were created by an artist in hiding in Brussels in 1944. They were for a larger work called Death Triumphant. In a sick epitaph, the plaque on the wall says the painter was taken to Auschwitz and died before he could finish it. > On the opposite wall, in Breaking News in Theresienstadt, stands a remarkable depiction of an SS Officer. The officer is greeting a disgusting, squat King of Switzerland and the Pope’s Wife, who have come from the Red Cross. The officer is bowing slightly and extending his hand, but he is not really there. All that is visible of this man are his black boots, the profile of his face, and his hand. The rest of his presence is only suggested; the outline of his body blocks the crowd behind him, but is not drawn. It is as if the artist has done to the SS officer what the SS was trying to do their victims: he has erased his image, turning him into a Kommandant-shaped block of nothing; an unperson. You can find “Breaking News” at that link, it was done by Pavel Fantl. This one, unfortunately, wasn’t online: > [@](#): > > The most haunting work in the gallery is an unassuming pencil sketch on pink paper called Self-Portrait. In the center of the page stands Peter Edel as a prisoner, his shaved head making his ears loom large on his skull, his eyes clouded by impossible suffering and impossibly large, dark bags. He looks 50. He stares grimly ahead and points to himself. Behind this Peter Edel and to the right is a younger version of the same man. He is nattily dressed in a suit and tie, and eager professional of not much more than 20. He is also pointing at himself. The motto that stood on the iron gates of Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Makes You Free,” which George Orwell twisted into “Slavery is Freedom” in 1984), hangs hellishly off to the left. Below those words is a dialogue between the two Peter Edels: “Who is there? You. Me? Yes!” ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/12 "2008-02-02T13:01:28Z")
A number of years ago, the Cleveland Museum of Art hosted the “Treasures of the Vatican” exhibition. I was raised Catholic but had long since ditched Catholicism, and I approached the exhibition with a fair amount of disdain and eye-rolling as I looked at elaborately embroidered vestments and the like. One of the showpieces was Caravaggio’s “[Deposition from the Cross](http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/x-Schede/PINs/PINs_Sala12_01_049.html).” Growing up, we had lots of art books in the house, so this was a piece I was familiar with – as a 3 x 4 inch black-and-white reproduction. So I wound my way through all the altar cloths and jewel-encrusted what-nots, turned a corner into a very dark gallery, and was walloped by the Caravaggio piece. The painting was HUGE – the figures are life size. I think I literally gasped when I saw it. It was overwhelming. As other posters have described, I was in no way prepared to have that kind of reaction to a piece of artwork. ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2008, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/13 "2008-02-02T15:02:16Z")
[Sunday Morning in the Mines](http://examiningushistory.tripod.com/mines.jpg) I can stare at it for a long time, pondering things ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2008, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/14 "2008-02-03T23:50:59Z")
Bearflag, that link just goes to an “image hosted by…” placeholder. ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2008, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/15 "2008-02-04T06:35:12Z")
[QUOTE=OpalCat] Bearflag, that link just goes to an “image hosted by…” placeholder. [/QUOTE] Right-click it, click copy link location, and paste the URL into the address bar. For future reference: this is standard procedure with sites like tripod. You can’t access images from links with those sites. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2008, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/16 "2008-02-04T07:42:20Z")
Talon: That was the first thing I tried, because I know that many sites block like that, but it still didn’t work. Possibly it was cached… ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2008, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/17 "2008-02-04T09:06:43Z")
[QUOTE=Talon Karrde] Right-click it, click copy link location, and paste the URL into the address bar. For future reference: this is standard procedure with sites like tripod. You can’t access images from links with those sites. [/QUOTE] right click, & go to properties, then you can copy the URL from there. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2008, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/18 "2008-02-04T12:28:58Z")
Yes, which takes more steps than just right clicking and choosing “copy link location” so why would you do that…? (In IE it’s something stupid like “copy bookmark”) ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/19 "2008-02-04T15:09:14Z")
My art history teacher, upon viewing Winged Victory, fell down the stairs and hit her head. No lie! ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2008, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-artwork-that-made-you-cry/435932/20 "2008-02-04T15:57:51Z")
[QUOTE=Pochacco] I’ve told this story on the board before. My wife had to flee the Rothko Chapel in Houston it affected her so strongly. “It’s all about death,” she said. [/QUOTE] Simon Schama’s excellent “Power of Art” series ran on PBS–& will probably run again. [His Rothko episode](http://seanmorrisseycarroll.blogspot.com/2007/07/little-too-bleak-for-him.html) focused on paintings in London. But he also came to Houston: > [@](#): > > where the host insists “lots of ink has been spilled trying to convince people these paintings are not as dark as they appear” Wikipedia on [The Rothko Chapel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko#The_Chapel): > [@](#): > > Rothko’s procedure of “breathing paint on canvas” required considerable physical stamina that the ailing artist was no longer able to muster. To create the paintings he envisioned, Rothko was forced to hire two assistants to apply the chestnut-brown paint in quick strokes of several layers: “brick reds, deep reds, black mauves.” On half of the works, Rothko applied none of the paint himself, and was for the most part content to supervise the slow, arduous process. He felt the completion of the paintings to be “torment” and his inevitable goal was to create “something you don’t want to look at.” He succeeded. And he died by slitting his wrist, only a few years later. I visit the nearby [Menil](http://menil.org/) (built by the patrons who financed the Chapel) often. But rarely revisit the Chapel.