At risk of adding excess to the weight of ’25’ posts, I thought I’d offer the chance for a bit of pure visual culture – your favourite 25 pieces of art – may be famous, may be unknown – but they move you and stir something in you when you see them.
Take whatever medium you like, (I’ve gone – loosely -for classics, landscapes, figures, abstract, sculpture).
I’ve stuck to one piece per artist (otherwise I would have taken 25 Cezannes), but don’t feel restricted yourself.
This is slightly trickier than music, film or television (or games or books – gap in the market, there), as you have to upload and label 25 images – which may seem like too much work. But who knows?
Marvelous idea, Sal. I’ll take at the instructions explaining how you upload your own images.
This thread is going to be a slow burner,
KFD – I think the fuel’s too wet. I ain’t no twisted firestarter.
Some excellent selections here – and nicely sequenced. I like the way row three is bookended by the contrasting styles of Frederic Leighton and Lucian Freud.
Lovely to see @salwarpe but it does look to be a bit of a chore to add them all. I’m not sure I have the patience.
PM me your list of pictures (5×5) and in my free time I can see if I can use my skillz to post4u.
Yep what Hubes said but thanks to you Sal I’m gonna post an image of my favourites, one per day on BlueSky. It’ll make a refreshing change from posting my own efforts and boring the arse off everyone. First one is The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
What pencil says.
I love the idea of your posting Sal but the images are too small.
If you look at The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder as Pencil has posted you wouldn’t see Icarus in the water.
I know we’ve had a few posts on favourite art so I’ll post one here if you don’t mind @salwarpe.
Cueva de las Manos or “Cave of the Hands Argentina
Love Cueva de las Manos.
So many interesting details: a number of the hand prints are missing fingers – no one is sure whether this is due to deformity/amputation, or a deliberate form of sign language used to convey message.
Impossible not to speculate what these people were trying to achieve with their prints, but equally impossible to have any real inkling of what they can have been thinking. It is truly beautiful though.
But is it by Bruegel? 😉
Which one?
Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus.
Yes it’s a painting by the elder.
I thought the original is lost and there are only copies painted by others.
It’s certainly disputed around some heavy overpainting in oil which has raised eyebrows due to Bruegel executing his work in egg tempera amongst other technical issues. However some evidence equally points at it being by his hand. The underdrawing is thought to be genuine and it’s thought that at sometime in it’s life it was transferred from wood panel onto canvas which may be the reason for the overpainting. It’s one of those works that experts like to argue over in other words. It’s one of my favourite paintings and I’m perfectly content to attribute to the old fella and ignore the brouhaha around it.
I pondered over the whole attribution malarkey for some time last night while I listened to some Tyshawn Sorey Trio and I came to the conclusion that I don’t care. I prefer to just enjoy the art and bollocks to the nuts and bolts. I’ll leave that for the historians and nitpickers. There are any number of works that have dodgy provenance. Some are probably outright forgery. I like that idea. It has artistic resonance. Like throwing soup at Van Goghs’. I’m only here for the show. I don’t need to reveal the trick.
The visual impression is the thing, not the physical composition and the attribution, which are secondary at best.
Surely they should be lobbing soup at Andy Warhols though.
It is, indeed, a wonderful piece of art, whoever is responsible
That’s a splendid idea, @pencilsqueezer. I look forward to seeing a whole series of fine art.
I intend it to be just the stuff I find beautiful and interesting. I find those two things are often interchangeable to me.
First one is posted. I’m going to enjoy this. Join in. One can spend one’s time doing worse things.
You absolute star.
Preferred Bruegel the Elders early stuff…
Sold out when he hit the mainstream, did he?
Yup, when he went eclectic.
At the risk of being unbearably pretentious, most of this thread has equated visual art with painting and sculpture – 2-d or 3-d work. Here’s a baker’s dozen of some of most fun, moving and downright bonkers times I’ve had with visual art shows that absolutely doesn’t boil down to a 2-d or 3-d object.
Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle att the Guggenheim in New York – a cycle of five films showing concurrently, obsessed with freemasonry, sexuality, opera and the secret rituals of public life from American Football to evolution.
Nam June Paik’s forests of video multi-screen assemblages also at the Guggenheim.
Peter Greenaway’s installation of 92 suitcases, The Tulse Luper suitcases at Compton Verney Warwickshire.
Live peacocks, haunted phonographs and torture machines in Buren and Cardiff’s installation retrospective at Modern Art Oxford.
A room entirely coated in white chocolate at British Art Show 4 in Manchester, 1995
Hirst’s eerie rotting cow’s head, maggots and flies perpetual birth and decay machine – possibly at Sensation at the Royal Academy.
A working boating lake installed on the room of Hayward Gallery with rowing boat, part of the Psychobuildings show
Bill Viola’s super slow unfolding video pieces installed like icons from a medieval church, at a small art gallery in Sandwell, West Midlands.
Ai Wei Wei placing objects from plastic crabs to stools to guns in what seemed like every room at Blenheim Palace.
Celeste Boursier-Mourgenot’s installation at Barbican which featured zebra finches flying through an installation of wired-up guitars, plucking notes whenever they landed.
Dali’s house cum mausoleum cum museum at Figueres – cadillacs, mae west sofas and lots more in a rioutous display of maximalism.
One that got away:
The Clock – by Christian Marclay, a 24-hour film with 12,000 clips showing the time as depicted in films in real elapsed time. Shown at Tate a few years back, would have loved to hunker down for the full day.
I saw Hirst’s rotting cow’s head at the Saatchi exhibition in the old GLC building near the London Eye.
Cremaster is an intriguing title for a cycle of films. Here is what the cremaster actually, cough, is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremaster_muscle
I visited David Byrne’s Playing the Building at the Roundhouse.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/may/12/david-byrne-london-roundhouse
Great to do and making yourself look like you knew what you were doing.
I’ve also taken part in three Spencer Tunick photoshoots Newcastle/Gateshead Salford/Manchester and Hull (though I don’t think Moosey was there) have the photos and dvds to prove it. I’ll spare you the photographs and the films