I'm always curious about the art that matters to people. Without limiting the media, what is your favourite piece of artwork? Bonus points for pictures. Mine is a painting by Andrew Wyeth entitled "Christina's World." It invokes feelings. Nostalgic, sad, longing, familiar. I feel differently about it each time I see it. And since I have a print hanging in my bedroom, I see it often. What's yours? Any media goes - so long as it can be called "art," it counts.
I'll come back to this after I've thought more about it, but off the top of my head. The Rolling Stones - Sway. Spoiler I struggle to articulate what it is about this song that just blows me away every time I hear it. Part of it is the lyrics; for anyone with a history of friends who have delved too deeply into drugs and never found their way out, Ain't flinging tears out on the dusty ground For all my friends left on the burial ground Can't stand the feeling getting so brought down just resonates. Strongly. After a few years have passed by, is it healthy to dwell on the stupid choices people made as kids that totally fucked their own futures? This should make the song incredibly depressing, and yet (a large) part of the Stone's genius was in transforming otherwise sad, almost maudlin songs into uplifting expressions of... something. (See also: Wild Horses, Shine A Light, etc) One day I woke up to find Right in the bed next to mine Someone that broke me up with a corner of her smile It's been a while since I've had that feeling, but in the back of my mind is the hope that it will happen again. Also, the instrumental section at the end of this song is one of the most evocative, heartfelt, and generally amazing pieces of music I've ever heard. I lack the vocabulary to properly talk about music, but Christ Mick Taylor does something special with a guitar here.
Robert Williams is my favorite artist. His colorful hotrod art made an impression on me since I was 8, when I saw the back cover of Guns n' Roses "Appetite for Destruction." (I have it on vinyl! That doesn't mean much, but I've been admiring the artwork ever since.) I especially like the long titles for his works. Here are some tidbits: Carne De Amore (Meat of Love) Museum Catalog Title: "How Romantic, The Lure Of An Illicit Liason With A Pepper-Hot Contessa Garnished With Guacamole And Frijoles In a Smoke-Filled Adobe Honky-Tonk." Snuff Fink Museum Catalog Title: " The Exuberance of Youth Bordering on Self-Destruction Lends Romance to the Notion That Acne Is Never Really Cured, It’s Just Thrilled into Remission" I'll be back with more later.
Is Snuff Fink different then Rat Fink? FOCUS: I'm not a big art guy, but there are two that are done in drastically different mediums that I always come back to This one makes me feel a little bummed, but not necessarily in a bad way And this one because I am just blown away that its freaking marble. I'm not religious at all, but this one is on my bucket list.
I just bought this print from Byroglyphics. One of my favorite paintings from my favorite artist. Wow and Flutter: Spoiler This song fucks my eardrums like nothing else I've ever heard. Triad Spoiler There are songs I like to listen to more than this one, but I still consider Triad the most artistic song Tool has ever written, and that is saying a lot.
The Winged Nike of Samothrace- a.k.a "Winged Victory" is my favourite piece of art I have ever seen in person. It is a single-piece marble sculpture that's about 2200 years old. It doesn't look like much, even as you come up the incredible hallway to see it, but despite being heavily and visibly damaged by vandals, this thing stands alone as the most remarkable piece of art in the Louvre. I walked around it at least ten times just to marvel at the insanely detailed etchings it the wings. Alex Grey's The Net of Being is my favourite art piece of all for obvious reasons. You just have to look at it (and it's as big as Rembrandt's The Night Watch to boot) I have part of it tattooed on my back.
Spoiler Spoilered for size Spanish has had a profound effect on my life. When I was questioning my long held beliefs about God and the universe my Spanish 4 teacher exposed me to this image and to the idea that the painter Goya had when creating it - essentially that the Spanish Civil war he was watching unfold before him with all of its atrocities was like God devouring his children. It was man's inhumanity to man and it was the first thing that made me question. For that it was highly significant. The second is Cliff Burton's face melting solo. It showed me what was possible from an instrument I'll spend the rest of my life trying to master:
Whenever I think of "my favorite piece of art," Ophelia comes to mind: I took two art history classes in college, and they spanned from cave man art to modern art. I saw a lot of really amazing pieces. I'm still amazed that people have so much skill and talent. How someone can recreate what their mind's eye can see is astounding. I'm really fond of physical structures as art--whether that be a sculpture or something else. I run across a lot of pages on Stumble Upon that show me interesting things. For instance, there was a guy who specializes in stick water art. He creates these amazing structures out of sticks, popping out of the water, and then when the sun rises and hits the water just right, he gets a photo. There's also this guy named Getty Dalton who carves pencils. It's fantastic.
Spoiler I used to stare at a poster of this painting for hours. I'm not sure what it is, but it's mesmerizing.
Spoiler John Steinbeck's East of Eden. There are other authors that have a grasp on the writing itself better than Steinbeck; they can make the prose sing. What these guys invariably fail at is emotion. The breadth of the human spirit from it's very worst to it's best is in those pages. It is never melodramatic, never contrived. Sickeningly real. Steinbeck absolutely nails the sickness of being rejected by paternal love, self loathing, confusion of youth, how difficult it is to accept and give love, and addressing the motives of good and bad. I don't think anyone has ever done anything like this so adeptly. Spoiler Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Taken from the saint's autobiography which was making the rounds at the time, it depicts the blurred line between the pain/passion of Theresa as an angel penetrated her with the fire of the lord. She's in agony and orgasm at the same time. Imagine a giant hunk of coarse, jagged rock. Now imagine turning that rock into the sculpture in the above picture with primitive tools: a chisel, a hammer, sandpaper. That's about it. I have a hard time believing a man could do something like that, could make stone billow and float, could capture an expression so complex. To me, that's a divine hand. Spoiler Bosch was the first painter I got into. The Garden of Earthly Delights has always stuck with me. It's 7 feet tall and 12 feet wide. You could spend hours analyzing the messages, symbols, old Belgian riddles. The main consensus is it is an allegory for the wages of sin leading to retribution in the left panel. Seriously, it would take pages to describe everything going on. That's part of what's so neat, figuring out what means what and why.
The Great Mongol Shahnameh, or Genghis Khan's Book of Kings. A poet by the name of Ferdowsi had created an epic poem of the history of Iran, starting from the world's inception to the Arab conquest. That alone had taken 30 years, and is one of the longest epic poems in the world. The story of the Mongol Shahnameh goes like this: Genghis Khan wanted a copy of Persian history that he could keep in his pocket when he went on campaigns, but he needed it illustrated because he did not fully understand the language. The demand resulted in some of the most incredible art I have ever seen, and the advent of Persian miniature painting. Each painting is no more than ten inches tall, yet no detail is lost. All of this, done before the 15th century. The first is a full painting, the second is a close-up of the detail. You can see on the eyes, the lines are so fine because the artists literally used a brush with a single hair. Just impossibly cool. Spoiler
Sadly, I've never had an eye for art. And I can't fathom picking a single favourite song, so I'll give you several. All of these have moved me to tears, for different reasons. Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
My favorite type of art is paintings from the Hudson River School. One of my favorites is by Thomas Cole and it is the Falls of Kaaterskill.
This is my favourite song of all time, and I would regard it as art. It has this aura of tragic melancholy I've never heard in a song, it completely altered my perspective on music forever. Strippers, please stop using this as your "third song".
I didn't really have anything to contribute to this thread until I found these just now. They're amazing 3D drawings--and not the hokey red/blue glasses kind, either. Definitely one of the coolest things I've seen.