Favourite piece of art you've seen

suicide_circus

Francisco Goya's Saturn devouring one of his sons

DoctorEdgeWild

I've been very lucky that most of my travels involved seeing art in one form or another. Some amazing pieces that really thrilled me to see but the best feeling I've gotten was from the Klagenfurt Tree Stadium.

https://nextnature.net/2019/09/forest-football-stadium

Great story behind it (the artist saw a drawing of this when younger and then went on to actually make it real!) It was absolutely amazing to see it, I must have spent 4 or 5 hours there, waiting to see it at night with the floodlights on. Got chatting with lots of locals who couldn't believe I'd come from England just to see it. Was absolutely worth it.

Your Face

Silver Moonlight - John Atkinson Grimshaw

Your Face

Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba - Claude Lorrain

iamstop

Banksy

Ipso

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

For me:

"Taking of the Christ" by Caravaggio



And "Gas" by Edward Hopper. I have this over my fireplace.

Is Nighthawks one of Hopper’s?

Seamai

Breughal's Hunters in the Snow has been my favourite painting since I was a kid, got to see it in Vienna last year and wasn't disappointed.

Church on Tuesday

Too many to mention but Jim Fitzpatrick's Black Rose is stunningly beautiful.

FrKurtFahrt

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/girl-with-a-pearl-earring/3QFHLJgXCmQm2Q?utm_source=google&utm_medium=kp&hl=en-GB&avm=2

Vermeer. He painted very few (relative to many artists) but what he DID give us is sublime. I've seen 'The Girl With A Pearl Earring' twice, and the Mauritshuis in The Hague is very quiet, allowing time to just look at the masterpiece in unhurried quietness. A hypnotic experience.

Muahahaha

spurious wrote: »

I always liked 'Earthmother' by Dick Joynt at Dublin Airport. It used to have a prominent position as you entered the airport.

On the right is an image when it was briefly exhibited elsewhere.



On the left is where Dublin Airport have it now. In the shadow of a multi-storey car park.

It looks like a pile of ****. Dublin Airport do not deserve to have it.

Jesus thats an awful location for it, Ive parked in that multi story several times and dont think I ever noticed it on the way in or out. Placing it there is like its a hassle to the DAA and they dont want it.

Seamai wrote: »

Breughal's Hunters in the Snow has been my favourite painting since I was a kid, got to see it in Vienna last year and wasn't disappointed.

Nice. Is it just me or do those hunters look like they're about to go down to the ice rinks and butcher the locals?! Something a bit dark about it.

Wibbs

Muahahaha wrote: »

My favourite of all is Michelangelos Statue of David in Florence. I was absolutely flabbergasted seeing this, its just breathtaking. Its 17 feet tall and then on a plinth of another 12 feet so it towers right above you. I find it incredibile to think that Michelangelo began this with a single block of marble weighing 5 tonnes and chipped away at it for three years to carve it. He had a 3D map in his head of what he wanted to create from it. Heres an idea of the sheer scale of it

What's even more incredible is he designed perspective into the statue. If you note from head on the head is too big for the body. He did that so that viewing from below the proportions looked correct(though he made the hands larger to emphasise them). Yeah it was originally outdoors in the weather, though the original plan was to have it up on a roof, but the locals thought it too beautiful to be stuck up high. The block of marble itself had been rejected by two previous sculptors and had lain unused for over thirty years before Mick had a crack at it.

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

For me:

"Taking of the Christ" by Caravaggio

Caravaggio was a pure genius with light. He would have made one helluva cinematographer.

Sculpture wise Laocoon and his Sons is incredibly impressive. It's a Greek statue(by three sculptors) commissioned by a rich Roman.



It impressed Michelangelo very much. As luck would have it he was hanging out in a friend's house(another sculptor) and this friend was summoned by the pope to view the digging up of it(found in a papal vineyard IIRC). The son of Mick's mate, yet another sculptor, who was a small child at the time remembered Mick always around the place and how excited he was to see it. The right arm of the central figure was originally missing when found and they added in an outstretched arm, but our Mick thought that was wrong and suggested it was more likely folded back on itself. Fast forward to the early 20th century and someone digging in the general area found the right arm(or most of it) and Michelangelo had been right. Big shock.

Of other works of art I've seen I dunno if I could make a choice tbh. Too many to love. Early European palaeolithic cave would be in the mix too.

HalloweenJack

https://revistaindiscretos.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/accidente.jpg

I tried linking the painting as an image file but it was massive so I'll leave the link.

It is a painting by Alfonso Ponce de Leon called "Self-Portrait". It was such a striking image and so beautifully painted. The tone of the colour captures the nighttime but the lights of the car draw our focus onto the painter in the middle of it.

It's in a museum in Madrid that is home to modern art and is surrounded by the likes of Dalí, Picasso and Miró. I'm familiar with all those but I had never heard of this guy and he didn't get to paint much (He died when he was 30). I know others will come along and point out more well-known masterpieces that are probably better or more evocative but this is one painting I'd like to bring to people's attention because it immediately knocked me back when I saw it.

Almost any painting of Francis Bacon's that I've seen in the flesh is incredible.

irishguitarlad

HalloweenJack wrote: »

https://revistaindiscretos.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/accidente.jpg

I tried linking the painting as an image file but it was massive so I'll leave the link.

It is a painting by Alfonso Ponce de Leon called "Self-Portrait". It was such a striking image and so beautifully painted. The tone of the colour captures the nighttime but the lights of the car draw our focus onto the painter in the middle of it.

It's in a museum in Madrid that is home to modern art and is surrounded by the likes of Dalí, Picasso and Miró. I'm familiar with all those but I had never heard of this guy and he didn't get to paint much (He died when he was 30). I know others will come along and point out more well-known masterpieces that are probably better or more evocative but this is one painting I'd like to bring to people's attention because it immediately knocked me back when I saw it.

Almost any painting of Francis Bacon's that I've seen in the flesh is incredible.

The creepy thing about that painting is that he died in a car crash afterwards.

Say Your Number

Be right back

Closer to home for me, 'men of the South'. I must start going to international art galleries!

Yester

Christ of Saint John of the Cross by Salvador Dalí. I saw it in Glasgow and it's incredibly powerful.

storker

Quite a few of my favourites have already come up so, being a Napoleonic Wars buff, here is a favourite from that period, and one from the Wars of the French Revolution...

The Charge of the French 4th Hussars at the Battle of Friedland (1807) by Edouard Detaille:





The Battle of Valmy (1792) by Horace Vernet:




Link to a really big version of the Valmy painting. Lots of lovely detail.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Valmy_Battle_painting.jpg



.

Rows Grower

It's not there yet but I'm optimistic my favourite piece of art will be adorning the gable of my shed pretty soon.

1o059k7ewrqj3n

I saw this Rene Magritte painting back in 2011 in Portland, Maine at the Portland Museum of Art.

There was a lot of amazing art on display but this painting in particular caught my eye, and I still think of it today.

I've no idea how to define it or how to interpret it, and part of me wants it to remain that way. I love the mystery of it, what could it mean? I am sure I oculd find out the meaning in less than 5 minutes but I'd rather it exist as it did on my first viewing, looking at this painting baffled yet completely engrossed.

Anesthetize

+1 for The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, which has already been posted. An incredible piece of art.

I really like John William Waterhouse paintings. Some of his work is very atmospheric.

The Lady of Shalott (1888)



The Magic Circle (1886)

Seamai

Muahahaha wrote: »

Jesus thats an awful location for it, Ive parked in that multi story several times and dont think I ever noticed it on the way in or out. Placing it there is like its a hassle to the DAA and they dont want it.



Nice. Is it just me or do those hunters look like they're about to go down to the ice rinks and butcher the locals?! Something a bit dark about it.

It does have a certain darkness to it. The hunters haven't had a good day returning with only what looks like a scrawny fox between them so there would be no feasting that night. The landscape isn't real, it's clearly set in the low countries where there are no mountains of any significance.

Seamai

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, although there is some doubt as to who “actually” painted it, in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Brussels.



A wonderful “piece” held on an unassuming part of the wall, you could easily just stroll past it. Which would be a tragedy.

I've seen it in the flesh, it was one of my main reasons for going to the Musee des Beaux Arts and your right, I almost missed it.

Yester

I also saw this one in the Kelvingrove, Glasgow. I forget it's proper title but it was somethign along the lines of "portrait of the artist upon breaking his mother in laws best china"

jester77

Angels blowing bubbles

Seamai

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

For me:

"Taking of the Christ" by Caravaggio



And "Gas" by Edward Hopper. I have this over my fireplace.

Caravaggio's works always stop me in my tracks, unlike many other artists many of his painting have remained in the sites they were painted for, mainly in churches. Saw his Seven Acts of Mercy in Naples last year in the chapel of a charitable foundation, it bizarrely features a young woman breastfeeding an old man through the bars of a prison window.

LeYouth

I'm hardly too cultured, but I love Gustav Klimt's stuff. Man, check it out if you haven't seen it.

Nigel Fairservice

I think Laocoon and His Sons. I did Classical Studies for the Leaving Cert and we learned about this piece for the art section of the course. Our book was called A Handbook of Greek Art. I remember seeing the picture of Laocoon in it and thinking how imposing it looked.

I went to the Vatican a few years ago and just stumbled upon it. I didn't know it was in the Vatican before I went there but I recognised it straight away when I saw it. It's even more imposing and impressive in person.



The Scream by Edvard Munch is also very impressive in person.

Flavour Diaper

I recently rewatched The Mask after many years

lozenges

Another vote for Caravaggio here. David With The Head of Goliath.



Monet's waterlilies in MoMA. You see images of them everywhere but in person they're absolutely breathtaking.

Also the tiny Qur'ans in the Met museum. So intricate, so colourful and so tiny. Absolutely stunning.

Yester

Flavour Diaper wrote: »

I recently rewatched The Mask after many years

I have never seen The Mask. Is it good?