Works of Genius (any discipline)

Cafe Society
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I’m talking about the stuff that just blew your mind, made you say “wow”, and just marvel at the genius of it’s creator(s)

Plus, I like to think that I can appreciate artistic genius no matter what form it comes in, so here’s a list of great works in a few different disciplines- feel free to include others- I ain’t nearly as cultured as I’d like to be, and I freely admit to huge gaps in my knowledge, especially in areas such as poetry, photography, and others. So, in no particular order of preference…

Music

Marvin Gaye- What’s Goin’ On?
It’s all there- love, friendship, sadness, mourning, frustration, desire, joy… all human emotion fitted into 35 minutes of music- simply genius.

The Beatles- Revolver
Heard any cutting egde dance music recently? From, say, The Chemical brothers? Now go back to 1966 and listen to Tomorrow Never Knows. Sound familiar? the Beatles- nearly 40 years later and other musicians are still trying to catch up.

Nirvana- Nevermind
Porbably just the work of one man trying to face his demons- but just for a second there it did sound like a man who was speaking for a whole generation.

Radiohead- O.K Computer
Love them or loathe them, you must admit Radiohead are a band that have musical ambition like no one else. Some bands make music which is the aural equivalent of going to the corner shop and buying a loaf of bread. Radiohead make music which is like scaling the Himalayas without oxygen supplies.

Bjork- Debut
Lots of bands can make albums full of really depressing music. Misery is easy. but it takes a bonkers elfling from Iceland to make music that is all about euphoric joy and life’s simple pleasures.
Books

Virginia Woolf- To the Lighthouse.
I think that she, more than any other writer that attempted it, captures the workings of the sub- conscious mind. It’s there in the almost poetic language, and in the objects and images that come to represent something not quite tangible.

Angela Carter- Nights at the Circus
One of the most technically accomplished writers I’ve ever read, but her real gift is for filling the readers head with amazingly vivid and beautiful (or terrible) imagery.

P.G Wodehouse- Any Jeeves and Wooster or Blandings stories
So the plots are all just variations on one or two basic themes, and the minor characters all seem the same after a while, but no one living or dead can write such beautiful, featherlite comedic language. Comfort food for the soul.

Vikram Seth- A Suitable Boy
The Indian War and Peace.

Leo Tolstoy- War and Peace
Duh.
(o.k- so you really wanna know? Well many better writers than me have tried to sum it up, but I’d say it’s a meditation on life, death, love, loss, the meaning of existance, the arbitrary nature of life, war, peace, good, evil- that general sort of thing.)

OK, well my boyfriend is calling me to the pub, so this is just to get the ball rolling, I’ll be back with more disciplines later.

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Music:

Beethoven, Ninth Symphony, fourth movement (“Ode to Joy”)

Mozart, “Marriage of Figaro,” finale (“Pace, pace, mio tessoro” [sp.])

George Gershwin, “Rhapsody in Blue,” opening notes

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Well, that was a shorter than usual trip to the pub, so on with the role call of geniuses.

Film (I guess the principle genius in each case is the director, though I’ll try to name check other people worthy of mention)

Apocalypse Now
This film’s visual style really blew my fragile little teenage mind- and I was only watching it on a medium sized TV. Must mention the director of photography- Vittorio Storaro, as well as director Coppola.

Bladerunner
Another film with amazing visual style. The whole world they created was just totally mesmerising to me, and was helped immensely by the haunting music by Vangelis. My boyfriend the film geek maintains that although Ridley Scott is a so-so director, he would have made a world beating cinematographer, and on this evidence you can see what he means.

Rear Window
One of those films that makes you say “They don’t make them like that any more!”. The main plotline is full of the usual Hitchcockian touches, but what really makes the film for me is the wonderfully detailed insight we get into the lives of the other building dwellers, and two beautifully played central performances from James Stewart and Grace Kelly.

Amelie
I’m always bowled over by what an amazingly sweet and fantastical world Jean-Pierre Jeunet has created. The little touches are the best thing about the film- the sad looking crocodile patient, the skimming stones Amelie keeps picking up, the talking paintings and photos, the cat that likes listening to children’s stories…

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
From the very opening scenes, with Cate Blanchett’s portentous sounding voiceover and that stunning flashback sequence that neatly told the history of the ring in 5 minutes flat, I was awestruck, and remained so for the following 9+ hours. Watching the special edition DVD’s with all the extras that explain how the films were made leaves one with an even stronger impression of just how huge an achievement this was, for many poeple, but one man in particular. Peter Jackson: officially- quite good (to use the understatement for which we Brits are so famed)

Fine Arts

The paintings of Mark Rothko.
All of them, I have no particular favourite. I fell in love with these pictures in reproduction, but was lucky enough to come across a whole room of them in the Tate Modern in London. It’s hard to put into words just what’s so good about them- I guess it’s the mixture of beautiful colours, in seemingly solid, simple blocks, that slowly reveal with each viewing, more and more layers of detail and fantastic subtlety and lightness of touch.

The paintings of El Greco
Do you realise, this guy was painting in the 16th Century? The 16th! It’s just mind blowing how far ahead of his time he was. Plus viewed in person, his paintings have a raw physical presence that I’ve seldom felt with other artists, and really amazing colours.

Michelangelo’s David
I saw the plaster copy in the V and A in London about a year before I saw the original in Florence, but by then it was too late, my heart had already been stolen. If you want to know the powerful feeling of standing in front of one of the greatest art works ever, go and stand in front of the David (I’ve also stood in front of the Mona Lisa, and was distinctly under impressed- though that could have been due to the scrum of people fighting to take a photograph that kept obscuring my view)

Monet’s Waterlilies
These pictures exist in many forms, but I’m specifically referring to the two rooms full of paintings that are in the Orangerie gallery in Paris, where I had an almost Zen feeling of relaxation and peace descend on me, looking at some of the most vibrantly colourful and beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen .

Turner’s Paintings in the Clore Gallery, London
Another painter years ahead of his time, with some of his more daring pieces being forerunners of Abstract Expressionism. He has a wonderful sense of light and space, as well as colour, which makes his paintings feel like dreamscapes.

Ok, I can think of a few more disiplines, but I’m all typed out for now. More choices please!

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Tool - Aenima (released in 1996)

The band itself, and this album especially, I know, has been inspirational to many and in my opinion is pure clarity and genius.

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LIT
LOTR & Hobbit world created by Tolkien

Edgar Rice B,:
Tarzan, John Carter of Mars et al.

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My Name Is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok.

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Stanely Kubrick.

Marc Chagall’s stained glass works.

Claus Oldenberg’s gigantic ice bag. :smiley:

Starship Trooper, by Yes.

Michelangelo’s David.

Michael Graves’ Whistling Teapot.

Bresson’s Man Stepping Into Water.

Can’t think of more right now, but these immediately rose up in my mind.

Cartooniverse

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Poetry: “anyone lived” by ee cummings Every time I read this, I go “Wow.” Even if it seems to made up of almost randomly connected words, it . . . I can’t even explain the why of it. It just strikes a cord with me and I let it wrap around and through my mind. I really like the frickin’ poem.

Music: Anything I’ve ever heard by Copland. His music fills me up with joy.

We talked about this in my English class last semester: how you can be confronted so often by the “glory and splendor” of a painting through photography/writing, that when you finally see the real thing, you’re underwhelmed. I think the advantage of Impressionist paintings in this is that the canvases can be enormous. You see this itty-bitty recreation in a book and when you see the real thing, Madame Monet is practically life-size and you’re rocked by it. Who knows what impact the Mona Lisa had when it was first seen, before the hype?

I’m slightly disconcerted by the massive amounts of exposure we have to famous works of art, without benefit of the original. I’m not saying it’s bad, but it does take some of the wonder away.

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I guess I know a little about film, so I’ll stick with that. I’ll try and cover a few different areas.

Battleship Potemkin - Eisenstein was one of the most famous students (or at least earliest) of montage, there are some brilliant scenes in this movie that reflect that. I suppose a lot of this is opinion, this is mine. Also, the Odessa Steps scene is probably one of the most famous scenes in cinema.

Adaptation - Specifically the script. There’s just so much going on.

Modern Times - Timeless, evertime I watch this I just bust a gut. I guess this would be comic genious.

21 Grams - Brilliant acting, phenominal editing. The movie has such great pace and all three main characters are out of this world good. I left this movie more affected than any I’ve seen in a long long time. Sean Penn was robbed of a second nomination and Naomi Watts was unbelievable.

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Newspaper Comics:

Little Nemo in Slumberland by Windsor McKay: I have some of the original pages, preserved by my great grandmother. Forget the stories, these are visual masterpieces.

Krazy Kat by George Herriman: One basic plot, repeated over and over again for decades. A rumination on race relations, relations between the sexes, the class struggle, all done within that one basic plot, all with that wonderfully evocative dialog.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson: Peanuts is grownups in little bodies. Dennis the Menace, the Family Circle, and most other kid oriented strips look at children from an adult perspective. Calvin and Hobbes is the only strip to really get inside the mind of a child and look at the world through his eyes. Add to that that it is also a rumination on existintialism and the nature of perception, and at the same time consistently funny, and you have possibly the greatest comic strip ever.

Comic books:

Maus by Art Speigelman: Nobody suspected that avant garde Speigleman had this in him. It tells the story of his parents, specifically his father’s, experiences in Nazi occupied Poland, and the process he had to go through to get the story. It is among the most moving things I’ve ever read, in any medium.

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Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
Doestoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”
Roberto Benigni’s film “Life is Beautiful” (which I’ve yet to watch without crying)
Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (who says a film needs to follow the rules governing structure?)
Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”

Those are all I can think of right now; it’s early.

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Well, since you mentioned poetry and photography, I’ll mention:

Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Auden’s Septmeber 1, 1939

Richard Avedon’s In the American West series

Walker Evans’ photographs

Outside of poetry and photography, I’d like to add Mozart’s 20th Piano Concerto and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.

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Henry Miller’s “The Collosus of Moroussi”
Renoir’s “Odalisque”

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Nearly anything by Johann Sebastian Bach. In particular, I’ll single out the Six Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin, especially the Chaconne from the Partitia #2 in D minor. Generally regarded as one of the most challenging works ever written for the violin, the Chaconne explores a full range of emotion, from melancholy to triumphant, in only 14 minutes and on a single instrument.

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Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas Hofstadter

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Since we are clearly being loose with the term “genius” (Tool albulms in the same thread as Mozart? Marvin Gaye with Chaucer? Please stop people) then I’ll go for George Best for Manchester United v. Benfica in the European Cup, 1968. Give him a ball and a yard of grass…

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Bernini’s David

The Cistine Chapel

Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, Paris.

Ghiberti’s panels on the baptismal font in Florence, Italy.

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Sorry, didn’t realize the David photo was a reproduction statue. Here’s a better one of the real thing.

In my opinion, Bernini outclassed and outsculpted Michelangelo. He was a true prolific genius of the medium.

Brunelleschi’s Dome was a masterpiece of engineering. He literally conceived and designed the mechanisms to lift the stone to great heights. I recommend the biography on him titled “Brunelleschi’s Dome”, strangely enough.

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Eliot’s “The Wasteland” has already been mentioned, but I’d like to nominate its slightly more reader-friendly cousin, “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Absolutely beautiful. Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is tremendous, and though it may not be everyone’s choice, I think Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” is worth mentioning.

I’ve noticed there’s no plays on this list. May I suggest Angels in America by Tony Kushner; Fiddler on the Roof by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein; The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe; and the Oresteia by Aeschylus? And Shakespeare, of course.

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Mozart, Symphony #41, 4th movement. 'Nuff said.

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Well, maybe not…

Bach’s “Great” fugue in G-minor, BWV 542. Not a big fan of the Fantasia, but I love the fugue. Also his Passacaglia and Fugue in C-Minor, BWV 582.