Favorite work of art?

Care to post some images of your favorite artwork(s)? Here's mine, first glimpsed at a Tate Gallery exhibit called "The Swagger Portrait" in 1992. It's an oil-on-canvas by Thomas Gainsborough: "Giovanna Baccelli," first shown to the public in 1782.

 

Photography is art, of course. Art equal but different than painting, if that makes sense.

I have dozens of photographic images that I would consider "favorites", but this one popped right into my mind when I read this thread.

Arnold Newman's portrait of composer Igor Stravinsky.

Nothing short of brilliant. It's perfect. Just perfect.

Dan C

 

I do like all kind of digital art...

 

Van Gogh - "The Night Cafe" Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Ct.

I never get tired of looking at Van Gogh's "night cafe", I got upset when it was loaned out for a show at another museum.

More than any other Van Gogh painting, I feel it gives you a look into his mind. Or maybe it's my mind!

Gaze deep, and the world stands still, and you are taken to a moment in the artist's life. You may think it's ugly at first, but keep gazing...

The single reason you wouldn't be sorry for taking the time to visit the Yale Art Gallery. There's other stuff there, too.

Another painting that by itself, makes a visit to a museum worthwhile:

Grant (American Gothic) Wood's painting of a car coming around a bend, about to be in an accident...Williams College Museum of Art, in Williamstown Mass.

 

Bith of Venus....

Sandro Botticelli



famous.. and beautiful...

 

Probably "La Parade" (The Side-show) by Seurat. Something I've found endlessly evocative for my whole life. Tends to show up on classical album covers a lot too (not to be sneezed at, really -- good color reproductions!) especially for Prokofiev and Debussy...

 

isn't it interesting that we defin "art" and all choose paintings? Are we limited to paintings ro can we choose music, sculpture, photography, film,or som other media?

 

I didn't choose a painting.

Dan C

 

No you didn't... I was merely making an observation about most of us.. I should have been more clear.

forgive

 

Anything you choose.

 

Frank Loyd Wright did some wonderful architecture that truly is art. Florida Southern's campus is wonderful as is his famous house Fallwingwater

 

ok guys, lets push it.....


I am not into "best of" or "fave", but....
I was in NYC last week and visited the Guggenheim...
The present show, by Matthew Barney a 30+ artist was pretty shocking to me. Now, I am not easily shocked as i see a lot of wild stuff, but man was I blown away.

Sometimes art, like music (which is art) pushes beyond our boundaries.
this show did me. It does not happen often.

I ask all the forum members in "The City" to check this out and report back. I also recommend visiting members to NYC to check this out.

It is rare that such an event happens. this is the most aggressive show/intervention that has ever happened in the multiple generationional history of the Guggenheim. It is serious, and it is not in 99% of the public's taste. It is not my taste, but I know it is important.

I love this sort of thing.

 

Well, this is tough... I have so many favorite paintings! One of my very favorites is Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

 

that is a favorite as well....

 

I took several classes in art history in high school and those were some of my favorites. I'm going to go with the Nike of Samothrace but I wish this were a pick one per hour thread:

 

Beautiful...

great post!

 

"Flaming June"

By Lord Frederick Leighton

 

Alfred Stieglitz's "Icy Night" from 1893:

 

I've always loved that image.
Dan C

 

I'm on a bit of a Max Ernst thing at the moment, so either Celebes or The Robing Of The Bride, although I've always loved Metamorphosis Of Narcissus by Salvador Dali.

 

Taj Mahal:

 

You know how people say "you have to see it live to enjoy it," whether they're talking about kabuki theatre, opera, or any other refined art that normally puts you to sleep? I believe it, because once I sat and looked at a Claude Monet water lily painting -- one of those wall-sized mural jobs -- for almost an hour. In a book, I'd flip right past it, but looking at it "live," I was pretty entranced.

As far as looking at books, I've always been partial to James Whistler -- who did not paint anything called "Whistler's Mother" -- and Joseph Turner. Unlike their French cousins, these English painters applied the impressionist technique to industrial and man-made objects, like trains stations and ship docks, rendering them as beautiful as any tulip field or starry night.

 

Comtesse D'Haussonville

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' "Comtesse D'Haussonville"