What are everyone's favourite pieces of art?

I'm not really into the arts much.

I DO enjoy looking at buildings and unlike most people notice things like roofs, chimney pots, and all those other interesting architectural features. There is something wonderful about a well designed and "fit for purpose" building.

I have never seen a sculpture that has done much for me except maybe art-deco bronzes of young women which can be rather beautiful and a touch erotic.

Artists - Canaletto, Dali, Munch have always caught my eye.
 
willhub said:
Something pathetic, I've been past it sometimes, they've had to fence it off due to those big spikes falling off, I think it will be took down eventually.
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Almost all the spikes have been removed and it should be completely down pretty soon. Drive past it all the time, incredible waste of money.

Oh and, Dali, love his work.
 
Art to me isn't a picture. it's a motorbike on a stand in your front room - a sculpture. ;)

like my t-shirt says - "designed by a genius, built by a craftmen, ridden by a t***' lol
 
Don't mean to be judgemental ( he lied :) ), but what a deafening lack of opinions about "the arts".

Put your computers down people and get interested in some of the other finer things of life.

Some of it is actually rather good, and it is always fun to poke fun at the silly stuff.
 
Caravaggio.

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I really like that. It's quite refreshing to see a modern impressionist, as opposed to the Victorian and rural idyll of the past romantics.

OT: I quite enjoy some of Picasso - namely the blue Nude. I also really enjoy some of Edward Hopper's realism. Paintings such as Nighthawks, Summer Evening, and Automat are just so calming and thoughtful.
 
Nix said:
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I really like that. It's quite refreshing to see a modern impressionist, as opposed to the Victorian and rural idyll of the past romantics.
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Do you mean modern impressionist as opposed to 'old' or original impressionist?
 
2bit said:
Do you mean modern impressionist as opposed to 'old' or original impressionist?
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I mean it's refreshing to see the modern impressionism. When you think of impressionism (as in the original movement) it is quite detached from what we're used to or familiar with and this was often based on the romantic movement (nature, Victorian England, rolling fields of Italy, etc.).

That make more sense?
 
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Nix said:
I mean it's refreshing to see the modern impressionism. When you think of impressionism (as in the original movement) it is quite detached from what we're used to or familiar with and this was often based on the romatic movement (nature, Victorian England, etc.).

That make more sense?
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Ah - ok. Thought that's what you meant.

Very unfair on the impressionists. It's very easy for us to forget now with hindsight how far out the impressionist ideas were. In fact they created a revolution.

In fact I don't think you mean to refer to impressionism at all - I think you mean 'Romanticism' - i.e. Constable
 
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2bit said:
Ah - ok. Thought that's what you meant.

Very unfair on the impressionists. It's very easy for us to forget now with hindsight how far out the impressionist ideas were. In fact they created a revolution.
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Oh, in context yes - it's a good movement. Without the romantics for example, we'd have never had the dark-romantics and thus no Moby Dick, etc. To say the movement isn't important would be to argue a counter-factual.

The problem is that today they are so part of the common experience, that people will often forget that these were ideals that people were aspiring to and rather not the norm. We have evolved from this notion of escapism into thinking that it is actual realism - the ideas are lost and people assume they were simply snapshots of reality. Confusing the escapism as realism and thinking that the world has always been wonderful only justifies people's incorrect assumptions and promotes the detrimental pomp and flattery which we social apes oh do so love; we're fantastic, we don't need to change.
 
Nix said:
Oh, in context yes - it's a good movement. Without the romantics for example, we'd have never had the dark-romantics and thus no Moby Dick, etc. To say the movement isn't important would be to argue a counter-factual.

The problem is that today they are so part of the common experience, that people will often forget that these were ideals that people were aspiring to and rather not the norm. We have evolved from this notion of escapism into thinking that it is actual realism - the ideas are lost and people assume they were simply snapshots of reality. Confusing the escapism as realism and thinking that the world has always been wonderful only justifies people's incorrect assumptions and promotes the detrimental pomp and flattery which we social apes oh do so love; we're fantastic, we don't need to change.
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Isn't the internet a wonderful thing. ;)
 
Nix said:
:p

It's given me a voice I didn't know I had. Maybe that's why those on top are so desperate to control and monitor it, hmm? ;)
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Maybe - I still don't know what you're quote has to do with impressionism?

Romanticism - maybe. But not impressionism.
 
2bit said:
Maybe - I still don't know what you're quote has to do with impressionism?

Romanticism - maybe. But not impressionism.
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I'm not too up on my art history anymore. It has been a very long time since I did any. When I look at the impressionist paintings - rightly or wrongly - I see the same ideals which the romantics gravitated towards (at least on a certain type of impressionism). When I used romanticism earlier, it was trying to be purely descriptive - you understand what I mean by the romantic idyll right [rolling fields, etc. - Naturalism if you will.]? Then again I used the movement as an arguement to back-up a point about the counter-factual.

Impressionist paintings were in sense - hyper-real, as the artist had to insert his/her own 'impressions' of what they were painting. This is where I see the romantic movement as clouding the arena - although (I haven't checked the dates) I am fairly certain that romanticism as a movement probably came after impressionism. Anyway, I'm not sure where this argument is going exactly as I'm sure you're aware that movements, philosophies and ideas are never easily hedged or black and white, they often overlap.

There is of course, no obvious elements of romanticism in work such as Edgar Degas' L'Absinthe - which to me seems to be more opening the doors for realist and expressionist work.
 
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stokecity_m said:
L.S. Lowry
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I've yet to understand the fascination many have with this mans work, slightly pleasing to look at perhaps but nothing worth the huge deal of acclaim it receives.

I like art in general, oils, watercolour etc can be magic in the right hands. I'm a fan of life life oils from previous centuries, in particular.

If anyone hasn't, art galleries are well worth a visit - fans or not - only if you don't mind the pretentious onlookers scrutinising every minor detail, of course. ;)
 
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