# Favorite Piece of Music, Novel, Artwork, and Film



## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Pick your favorite for each category. Obviously this is extremely difficult and you can put multiple selections for each category, but try to particular. I'm curious to see how people tastes in one artistic medium line up with their tastes in others, and to learn more about TC members' tastes outside of music in general!


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

MUSIC: Ludwig van Beethoven - String Quartet #14 (It is everything that I like in music. It spans all emotions in a style that is so complex and subtle that it is akin to real life)
Runner-ups: Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel, John Cage - Sonatas and Interludes, J.S. Bach - Goldberg Variations

NOVEL: William Faulkner - Light in August (Faulkner's best. I have never read another book so charming and rich with humanity. The final chapter of this novel is the most touching narrative I have ever read for reasons I can barely describe.
Runner-ups: William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury, Yukio Mishima - The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, James Joyce - Ulysses

ARTWORK: Egon Schiele - Portrait of Paris von Gutersloh (I am intimately familiar with this painting as it is part of the permanent collection of my local art museum. Schiele is my undisputed favorite artist and its likely that another painting of his could be my favorite if I were to see it in real life. However, this is the only Schiele I have ever seen in real life and it transfixes me everytime I do see it. On paper or a screen it is not nearly as powerful as in real life. I'm not certain if that's because of the painting itself or if that's true of all of Schiele's works.)
Runner-ups: Max Ernst - Napoleon in the Wilderness, Piet Mondrian - Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, Joan Miro - Blue I, II, & III

FILM: Ingmar Bergman - Persona (I don't feel like I fully understand this film but it is such a beautiful enigma and a piece that I revisit so often that I have to consider it my favorite film. Scenes like Alma's description of the orgy, her pregnancy and abortion, and the boiling water scene are of such unspeakable beauty that trying to explain why only perverts their message and effect)
Runner-ups: Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver, D.W. Griffith - Intolerance, Aflred Hitchcock - Rear Window


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

_Music_ - Wagner: _Parsifal_
_Novel_ - Don't have a favorite. Don't often read novels. Instead I'll offer a poem...
_Poem_ - Robinson Jeffers: _NIght_ https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/robinson-jeffers/night-159/
_Artwork_ - Vermeer: _Girl with a Red Hat_ https://www.google.com/search?q=ver...gdPUAhVY6GMKHUw_BEsQ_AUIBigB&biw=1252&bih=604 or any of several other Vermeer paintings
_Film_ - Hitchcock: _Vertigo_ (thanks partly to Bernard Herrmann)


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

Very tough! Such a list will change weekly for me. And I can go and on forever, so will just limit to 5 each 

*Music:* 
Bach's St. Matthew Passion, 
Mozart' Jupiter, 
Wagner's Parsifal
Verdi's Otello
Beethoven's 32nd sonata

*Novel*
Proust's In Search of Lost Time
Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
Woolf's To The Lighthouse
Mann's The Magic Mountain
Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

*Artwork*
Goya's the whole Black Paintings
Rafael's The Sistine Madonna
Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son
Dali's The Persistence of Memory
Durer's Melencolia 
Would sculpture count? If yes Michelangelo's Pieta top this list.

*Film*
Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar
Bresson's Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer)
Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev 
Kubrick's Barry Lyndon
Malick's Days of Heaven

_--No, that's me being snobbish. I actually enjoy Taylor Swift's Love Story, Fifty Shades of Grey, DC Comics and the recent blockbuster Wonder Woman more than any of the above._


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Music: Berlioz Symphonie, Rite of Spring, Henze Symphony 7
Novels: Lord of the RIngs, 2001, Dune, Planet of the Apes, Brave new World
Poems: By Du Fu, Goethe, Baudelaire, Keats
Paintings: by Van Gogh, Renoir
Films: Shane, 2001, Seventh Seal, LOTR


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

Phil loves classical said:


> Music: Berlioz Symphonie, Rite of Spring, Henze Symphony 7
> Novels: Lord of the RIngs, 2001, Dune, Planet of the Apes, Brave new World
> Poems: *By Du Fu*, Goethe, Baudelaire, Keats
> Paintings: by Van Gogh, Renoir
> Films: Shane, 2001, Seventh Seal, LOTR


Do you speak Chinese, Phil? Du Fu is awesome!


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> _Music_ - Wagner: _Parsifal_
> _Novel_ - Don't have a favorite. Don't often read novels. Instead I'll offer a poem...
> _Poem_ - Robinson Jeffers: _NIght_ https://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/robinson-jeffers/night-159/
> _Artwork_ - Vermeer: _Girl with a Red Hat_ https://www.google.com/search?q=ver...gdPUAhVY6GMKHUw_BEsQ_AUIBigB&biw=1252&bih=604 or any of several other Vermeer paintings
> _Film_ - Hitchcock: _Vertigo_ (thanks partly to Bernard Herrmann)


Love it.
Don't know it.
Love it.
LOVE IT!!!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

silentio said:


> Do you speak Chinese, Phil? Du Fu is awesome!


Not fluently, but get the overall feel for the language. Yeah, those Chinese and Japanese Zen poets are really intriguing to me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

silentio said:


> Do you speak Chinese, Phil? Du Fu is awesome!


Always hanging around and feeling lonely, worried that his hair is getting thin.

Seriously, get a book of the 300 Tang Dynasty poems, with English and Chinese on facing pages, notes included. You can get some idea why these poems (especially Li Po and Du Fu) are so highly regarded.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Always hanging around and feeling lonely, worried that his hair is getting thin.
> 
> Seriously, get a book of the 300 Tang Dynasty poems, with English and Chinese on facing pages, notes included. You can get some idea why these poems (especially Li Po and Du Fu) are so highly regarded.


I speak Chinese, Ken 

My favorite poet is actually Li Po, and favourite poem is _Pi pa xing _ (Pipa song) by Bai Juyi.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

I'm going to add a few categories - I hope that's OK!

Music - Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14
Novel - Mann: Doctor Faustus
Play - Goethe: Faust (yes, I truly am obsessed with the Faust myth!!)
Poem - Mallarmé: Afternoon of a Faun (probably because Debussy's "setting" made me love it...)*
Painting - Van Gogh: Beautiful Starry Night
Film - Godard: Breathless
Sculpture - Rodin: The Thinker
Philosophy - Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

*No, this is NOT a way of sneaking an extra musical work into my list :lol:...I genuinely DO love Mallarmé's poem in and of itself!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I speak Mandarin and read Chinese, but hardly well enough to attack even the most basic poems!


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

*Music:*
1. Symphony No. 9 in D Minor "Choral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1824) 
2. Symphony No. 9 in D Major - Gustav Mahler (1910) 
3. Mass in B Minor - Johann Sebastian Bach (1749) 
4. Requiem - Guisseppe Verdi (1874) 
5. Symphony No. 9 in C Major "The Great" - Franz Schubert (1826) 
6. Tristan und Isolde - Richard Wagner (1859)
7. The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady - Charles Mingus (1963) 
8. Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band (1969) 
9. Rock Bottom - Robert Wyatt (1974)
10. Symphony No. 15 in A Major - Dmitri Shostakovich (1971)

*Film*
1. Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (1941) 
2. Metropolis - Fritz Lang (1927) ["The Complete Metropolis", 147 minutes] 
3. Nostalghia - Andrei Tarkovsky (1983) 
4. Brazil - Terry Gilliam (1985) [The Final Cut, 142 minutes] 
5. The Kingdom - Lars Von Trier (1995) 
6. Underground - Emir Kusturica (1995) 
7. Touch of Evil - Orson Welles (1958) [Restored Welles' Cut, 108 minutes] 
8. The Wild Bunch - Sam Peckinpah (1969) [Director's Cut, 145 minutes] 
9. Persona - Ingmar Bergman (1966) 
10. Werckmeister Harmonies - Bela Tarr (2000)

*Artwork*
1. Sistine Chapel (Ceiling & The Last Judgement) - Michelangelo Buonarroti (1512; 1541) 
2. Peasants' War Panorama - Werner Tubke (1987)
3. The Garden of Earthly Delights - Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1500) 
4. Europe After The Rain II - Max Ernst (1942) 
5. The Beethoven Frieze - Gustav Klimt (1902) 
6. Philosophy, Medicine & Jurisprudence - Gustav Klimt (1907) [University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings; Destroyed in 1945] 
7. The Reminiscences of Judge Schulze (Parts II, III, & VII) - Werner Tubke (1967) 
8. The Battle of Calverhine - Henry Darger (1929) 
9. Metamorphose de Narcisse - Salvador Dali (1937) 
10. The Last Judgement - Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1504-1508)

*Literature/Poetry*
Not an art form I've thoroughly delved into (yet?) so I haven't really thought through any overall rankings, but some examples of my tastes, in no order: T.S. Eliot (such as The Wasteland, Four Quartets), Dante (Divine Comedy), Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth), Kafka (The Trial), George Orwell (1984) ... ...


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Music: Verdi : Don Carlo, majestic in every way.
Novel: Paul Golding : The Abomination/ Alan Hollinghurts : The Line of Beauty.
Film: Cabaret / Dead Poets Society
Paintings...the whole Dutch school .


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

AfterHours said:


> *Music:*
> 1. Symphony No. 9 in D Minor "Choral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1824)
> 2. Symphony No. 9 in D Major - Gustav Mahler (1910)
> 3. Mass in B Minor - Johann Sebastian Bach (1749)
> ...


With the prestigious Scaruffi endorsement and the other things I've read about it, I'm dying to see this film. Unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere except on DVD! Anywhere you know where I can watch it online?

That is an excellent piece, one of my favs


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

AfterHours said:


> *Music:*
> 1. Symphony No. 9 in D Minor "Choral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1824)
> 2. Symphony No. 9 in D Major - Gustav Mahler (1910)
> 3. Mass in B Minor - Johann Sebastian Bach (1749)
> ...


I Looooove Eliot. If i were to add a favorite poem to my list it would be Burnt Norton, Little Gidding, or Prufrock. I don't know Wasteland well


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Music:Vivaldi Stabat Mater ( it was difficult to choose one)
Novel: not novel but works by Omar Khayyam
Painting: Goya Black paintings
Film: The Rule of the game by Jean Renoir 
Ballet: Giselle


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

mathisdermaler said:


> With the prestigious Scaruffi endorsement and the other things I've read about it, I'm dying to see this film. Unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere except on DVD! Anywhere you know where I can watch it online?
> 
> That is an excellent piece, one of my favs


Only on DVD that I know of. Just make sure to do a little research to see if you can find an edition with sharp imagery (the most well-known Facets release is mediocre image quality).

Yes, Beethoven Frieze is _really_ extraordinary  Klimt's _lines_ are a bit of a miracle in that they can look (aside from the unique colors and unusual imagery of the paintings themselves) like nothing particularly special at a glance/from a distance. But look closer and each line is granted an obsessive individuality, each really conveying a "sense of the feminine" -- as if Klimt is experiencing, even overwhelmed by, the curvature and nature of the female form along the movement of his brush and in subtle details of his work. Carefully evaluating this work in detail, with that in mind, I find this sense of feeling and flowing lines of poetic movement along every aspect of it to be quite awe-inspiring, adding a vivid artistry to the overall scheme and its visions.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

mathisdermaler said:


> I don't know Wasteland well


Does anyone?


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

AfterHours said:


> Only on DVD that I know of. Just make sure to do a little research to see if you can find an edition with sharp imagery (the most well-known Facets release is mediocre image quality).
> 
> Yes, Beethoven Frieze is _really_ extraordinary  Klimt's _lines_ are a bit of a miracle in that they can look (aside from the unique colors and unusual imagery of the paintings themselves) like nothing particularly special at a glance/from a distance. But look closer and each line is granted an obsessive individuality, each really conveying a "sense of the feminine" -- as if Klimt is experiencing, even overwhelmed by, the curvature and nature of the female form along the movement of his brush and in subtle details of his work. Carefully evaluating this work in detail, with that in mind, I find this sense of feeling and flowing lines of poetic movement along every aspect of it to be quite awe-inspiring, adding a vivid artistry to the overall scheme and its visions.


Yes Klimt's lines are unique. They do have a poetic quality of smoothness.

Do you like or know Egon Schiele? He was a student of Klimt and was clearly influenced by him, but I find both his style and subject matter to be more raw, vivid, human, and modern. His abstract use of color in his early works before he moved towards versimilitude is also notable.

My old profile picture was a painting of Klimt by Schiele because of how much I love both.


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## wolkaaa (Feb 12, 2017)

Music: Mahler's 2nd Symphony, then his 5th Symphony.
Literature: As a dystopia fan, Orwell's 1984. Some runners-up: Brave New World by Huxley, Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, The Royal Game by Zweig. But I read mostly non-fiction.
Artwork: Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Ivan Kramskoi (most expressive and mysterious to me). What also came to mind: Kandinsky's Composition VIII, Dali's The Persistence of Memory, C. D. Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
Film: A hard one... Not a fan of old classics, shame on me. Probably Cloud Atlas, then Mr. Nobody and Shawshank Redemption.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

if I have to choose one just for the game:

music
Sibelius - Luonnotar

novel
Pessoa - The book of disquiet

film
Ridley Scott - Alien

artwork 
Rembrandt - self portrait at age 51 (1657)


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Music: Almost any late Beethoven
Opera: Boris Godunov (runners up: Vec Makropulos, The Midsummer Marriage)
Art: Monet, Ma Yuan
Novels: Crime and Punishment, Tale of Two Cities, All the Kings Men, Moby Dick
Sculpture: Rodin (esp. Balzac)
Film: ever changing
Theatre: don't know, but Shakespeare is a good default
Poetry: don't know enough to be a real appreciator
Non-fiction: John McPhee


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

I never really thought about whether taste in one arts category might correspond to taste in another. Maybe you'll notice something! Impossible for me to pick just one in any category, but I will limit it to a few. These are in no particular order. 
Music-
Tchaikovsky- Symphony No. 6 "Pathetique"
Stravinsky- The Firebird
Ravel- Le Tombeau de Couperin
Brahms- Symphony No. 4

Artwork-
I admit to being an absolute philistine in this category. I've never had much of an interest in art and have never really bothered to check it out. Some art has resonated deeply with me, however, namely the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the statue of David by Michelangelo, and Thomas Lea's 2000 Yard Stare. 

Novels-
Fiction isn't my cup of tea, but my favorite novel that I've read is The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Another favorite of mine is Gone for Soldiers by Jeff Shaara. 

Film-
"The Sting"- George Roy Hill, 1973
"Patton"- Franklin Schaffner, 1970
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"- Steven Spielberg, 1977
"Interstellar"- Christopher Nolan, 2014
"The Bridge on the River Kwai"- David Lean, 1957


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

wolkaaa said:


> Music: Mahler's 2nd Symphony, then his 5th Symphony.
> Literature: As a dystopia fan, Orwell's 1984. Some runners-up: Brave New World by Huxley, Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, The Royal Game by Zweig. But I read mostly non-fiction.
> Artwork: Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Ivan Kramskoi (most expressive and mysterious to me). What also came to mind: Kandinsky's Composition VIII, Dali's The Persistence of Memory, C. D. Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
> Film: A hard one... Not a fan of old classics, shame on me. Probably Cloud Atlas, then Mr. Nobody and Shawshank Redemption.


If you like Cloud Atlas you should watch Intolerance by D.W. Griffith. It is nearly 100 years older but it uses the same technique of telling multiple thematically related stories at the same time. It is a visual marvel full stop, not just in the context of its age. It has been called the first art film. The film features over 3000 extras and the sets are all spectacular. It is a silent film but many soundtracks have been adapted to it. This is my favorite version and its free to watch on YouTube.






Highlight from Babylon sequence:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Music: Bach Sonatas & Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin

Literature: The Godfather, Mario Puzo

Art: Starry Night, van Gogh


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

Music: Wagner's Ring

Novel: Not a big reader of novels, but I love Moby Dick. But if I could take one poet to a desert island it would be Emily Dickinson; I will now use this thread as an excuse to geek out and post some great poems by her. 

Some things that fly there be -
Birds - Hours - the Bumblebee -
Of these no Elegy.

Some things that stay there be -
Grief - Hills - Eternity
Nor this behooveth me.

There are that resting, rise.
Can I expound the skies?
How still the Riddle lies!

---------

Aurora is the effort
Of the Celestial Face
Unconsciousness of Perfectness
To simulate, to Us

------

I hide myself within my flower,	
That wearing on your breast,	
You, unsuspecting, wear me too—	
And angels know the rest.

I hide myself within my flower.
That, fading from your vase,	
You, unsuspecting, feel for me	
Almost a loneliness.

Other great lines (to not turn this post into her collected poems)
"Perception of an object costs precise the object's loss - perception in itself a gain replying to its price." 
"A Thunderstorm combines the charms of Heaven and of Hell."
"My cocoon tightens, colors tease.... a dim capacity for wings degrades the dress I wear."
On funerals "Putting Love away we shall not want to use again until Eternity."

For years I didn't read her because I don't like those two poems about the horses and the fly (which I'm convinced the school system wants students to believe are the only two things she wrote, that and the corny stuff about birds and books).

Artwork: I actually don't know the name of it (some favorite, right?) I might have first seen it on here actually. It depicts naked figures walking toward a heaven represented by this glowing corridor, but some of the figures are stuck in a void of blackness that borders it. I tend to prefer paintings more for the subject they depict than the technique and that one has always stuck with me.

Film: Not a big movie person, not because I don't like them but because I don't have patience. I love Double Indemnity and other noir movies with snappy back-and-forth dialogue.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I will try to do this just picking one:

Piece of Music - Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection", by Gustav Mahler

Novel - "The Magus" by John Fowles

Artwork - "The Son of Man" by René Magritte

Film - Mulholland Dr., directed by David Lynch

Three of these items seem to reflect my penchant for the surreal. I also write, and what I write is usually quite surreal as well. I've never thought too hard about why that may be, but that seems to be what I'm drawn to.

Now, this isn't a runner-up, but my favorite _book_ is "Labyrinths" by Jorge Luis Borges (also quite surreal). It's not a novel, though, so the Fowles is an accurate answer to this poll.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

mathisdermaler said:


> Yes Klimt's lines are unique. They do have a poetic quality of smoothness.
> 
> Do you like or know Egon Schiele? He was a student of Klimt and was clearly influenced by him, but I find both his style and subject matter to be more raw, vivid, human, and modern. His abstract use of color in his early works before he moved towards versimilitude is also notable.
> 
> My old profile picture was a painting of Klimt by Schiele because of how much I love both.


Yes, definitely admire Schiele. My favorites are possibly Death and the Maiden, Mother With Two Blind Children 2, and Blind Mother.


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

Music: Mozart Horn Concerto No. 1, Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Merle Haggard _40 #1 Hits_, Reba McEntire _Read My Mind_
Novel: _Dune_ by Frank Herbert, The Hand of Thrawn duology by Timothy Zahn
Artwork: I like the work of Dave Dorman and Salvador Larocca
Film: The Sound of Music, Star Wars Saga, The Lion King


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Tristan said:


> Film - Mulholland Dr., directed by David Lynch


Ah, yes, also in my top five list of fav films. For the rest, I absolutely refuse to pick favorites. Or, more accurately, I simply can't.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Music - Beethoven: Symphony No. 9
Novel - Asimov: The Foundation Trilogy, Hugo: Les Miserables
Artwork: This was the most difficult but I'd say Monet's Bridge and water lily series (e.g. Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies)
Film: Monty Python's Life of Brian


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

brianvds said:


> Ah, yes, also in my top five list of fav films. For the rest, I absolutely refuse to pick favorites. Or, more accurately, I simply can't.


Hopefully it's more interesting than _Blue Velvet_, which was a big disappointment for me.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Music: Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde.
Paintings: Marc - Tiger.
Novel: Herbert - Dune.
Movie: Indiana Jones and the last crusade.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> Film: Monty Python's Life of Brian


I'm glad to see everyone is so interested in me, but please note that I am not the messiah.



Chronochromie said:


> Hopefully it's more interesting than _Blue Velvet_, which was a big disappointment for me.


With David Lynch, people either love it or hate it. I happen to be a lover, but I can see why it is not to everyone's taste. When I first saw _Mulholland Dr._ in the theater, something happened that I have never witnessed before: when the film ended, there were a few moments of a kind of shocked silence in the audience, and then spontaneous applause broke out.

The film took my breath away, but do note that it is one of the weirdest and most surreal pieces of cinema ever. I was lucky: a well respected reviewer warned that on first watch, one should emphatically not try to understand what is going on, because just when you think you have a handle on things, Lynch turns the entire universe upside down. So for the moment you just go with the flow and visit the entirely and increasingly bizarre world he conjures up, and then you think about it later.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

brianvds said:


> I'm glad to see everyone is so interested in me, but please note that I am not the messiah.
> 
> With David Lynch, people either love it or hate it. I happen to be a lover, but I can see why it is not to everyone's taste. When I first saw _Mulholland Dr._ in the theater, something happened that I have never witnessed before: when the film ended, there were a few moments of a kind of shocked silence in the audience, and then spontaneous applause broke out.
> 
> The film took my breath away, but do note that it is one of the weirdest and most surreal pieces of cinema ever. I was lucky: a well respected reviewer warned that on first watch, one should emphatically not try to understand what is going on, because just when you think you have a handle on things, Lynch turns the entire universe upside down. So for the moment you just go with the flow and visit the entirely and increasingly bizarre world he conjures up, and then you think about it later.


I'm no stranger to weird films(I love _Meshes of the Afternoon_, _Vampyr_ and Herzog's _Heart of Glass_), I just found _Eraserhead_ and _Blue Velvet_ tame and uninteresting, pretty much the opposite of what I expected.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

brianvds said:


> I'm glad to see everyone is so interested in me, but please note that I am not the messiah.


You're just a naughty boy.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

My arbitrary list:
Music - Schubert Quintet in C (with WTC a close second)
Novel - "In Search of Lost Time" (with about a dozen novels tied for a close second)
Artwork - Michelangelo David (with a Rembrandt self-portrait a close second)

I no longer get all that excited about films. Let me substitute a form that does excite me:
Play - "Uncle Vanya" (with "King Lear" a close second)


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## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> Artwork: I actually don't know the name of it (some favorite, right?) I might have first seen it on here actually. It depicts naked figures walking toward a heaven represented by this glowing corridor, but some of the figures are stuck in a void of blackness that borders it. I tend to prefer paintings more for the subject they depict than the technique and that one has always stuck with me.


Bosch?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I will be very incomplete in my answer, because I like so many things in so many categories that I can't name only a few favorites in most. There are some exceptions:

Novel: for me there is _Moby Dick_, which I have read at least a dozen times, and find something new in it with every return.
Poetry: so many great poems, but, with Woodduck, I find the poetry of Robinson Jeffers resonates far beyond that of any other poet.
Music: here I'll just say the two Brahms piano concertos and the Prokofiev piano concertos #2 and #3, along with many dozens of other works, classical and not.
Art: Van Gogh, Turner, and the 19th Century American landscape artists. And I'll add Rousseau's _The Sleeping Gypsy_.
Film: a weakness for David Lean's _Lawrence of Arabia_ and _Doctor Zhivago_, plus dozens of other films. _Alien_ was superb.


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## Minor Sixthist (Apr 21, 2017)

*Music*: between Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto in Bb, Clair de Lune by Debussy, Arabesque no. 1 by Debussy, Waltz in c# minor by Chopin, Piano concerto in G by Ravel, Gaspard de la nuit by Ravel, and Dvorak's 9th (excuse me, Bettina, for my lack of diacritical markings) 
(non-classical: Hide and Seek by Imogene Heap, Panic! at the Disco's Death of a Bachelor album, and too much broadway to name)
*Novel*: Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
*Artwork*: Chopin by Delacroix







*Movie*: White Chicks or Airplane


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

mathisdermaler said:


> I Looooove Eliot. If i were to add a favorite poem to my list it would be Burnt Norton, Little Gidding, or Prufrock. I don't know Wasteland well


 Actually, on reevaluation of the quartets, I have to say that "The Dry Salvages" is the greatest


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Art Rock said:


> You're just a naughty boy.


I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word. Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not write. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling. I have such a bad headache today and write by return to your longing

P.S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Bettina said:


> I'm going to add a few categories - I hope that's OK!
> 
> Music - Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14
> Novel - Mann: Doctor Faustus
> ...


Nothing to add, now, please, just tell me you have defects...


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

cimirro said:


> Nothing to add, now, please, just tell me you have defects...


My defects would require a whole separate list! :lol:


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## cimirro (Sep 6, 2016)

Bettina said:


> My defects would require a whole separate list! :lol:


Ok, I'll sleep better this evening :lol:


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## Melvin (Mar 25, 2011)

I really feel like such a snob some times...  
Look how snobby and Bourgeois I am!

String Quintet in C major by Schubert

"Portrait of the artist as a Young Man" by Joyce, or "Du côté de chez Swann" by Proust which I am on my way to reading as it is supposed to be read one day. Both were monumental to me in my youth. Right now I am reading "L'etranger" by Camus in the original french, and I'd have to say that it is one of the most perfect novels I've ever read.

For paintings I've always been attracted to the bizarre modernist art from the turn of the 20th century... I like Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Umberto Boccioni, and so on. So many interesting images, I can't choose a single one.

I am also a bit of a film buff and I like lots of variety so this is hard to choose... "Aguire: Wrath of God" by Herzog... but I really like Luis Buñuel, and Michael Haneke, and the brothers Dardenne, and Samuel Fuller, and Abbas Kiarostami, and Aki Kaurismäki..


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

This time I'm not going to whine about the difficulty of making the choices - the premise here is so bold that to complain would be missing the point - but I'm going to give the answers straight.

Music: Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen
Novel: Virgil - The Aeneid
Art: David - Intervention of the Sabine Women
Film: Renoir - La Grande Illusion


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## T Son of Ander (Aug 25, 2015)

Very difficult, but I'll try.

Music- Wagner's Ring
Book- Stephen King's Dark Tower series
Art- Best I can do is the impressionists
Film- Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs trilogy (Bleu, Blanc, Rouge)


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Melvin said:


> I really feel like such a snob some times...
> Look how snobby and Bourgeois I am!
> 
> String Quintet in C major by Schubert
> ...


Almost everything that is your favorite is my second favorite :lol:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Literature:*

*Novels-*

Flaubert- _Madame Bovary_ 
Nabokov-_Lolita_
Lawrence- _Tristram Shandy_
Cervantes- _Don Quixote_
Melville- _Moby Dick_

*Epic Poetry*-

Dante- _The Comedia_
Milton- _Paradise Lost_
Ferdowsi- _Shahnameh_
Homer- _The Odyssey_
Virgil- _Aeneid_

*Lyric Poetry*-

Baudelaire- _Les Fleurs du Mal_
William Blake- _Songs of Innocense & Experience_
Walt Whitman- _Leaves of Grass_
Edmund Spenser- _Amoretti & Epithalamion_
T.S. Eliot- _Collected Poems_ (_The Wasteland and Other Poems_)

*Short Fiction*-

J.L. Borges- _Collected Fictions_ (_Labyrinths, Ficciones_)
Franz Kafka- _The Complete Stories_
Nathaniel Hawthorne- _Collected Tales_
E. A. Poe- _Collected Tales_
Italo Calvino- _Complete Cosmi-Comics_

*Non-Fiction*-

Ralph Waldo Emerson- _Essays_
Michel de Montaigne- _Essays_
Thomas de Quincey- _Confessions of an English Opium Addict_
J.L. Borges- _Collected Non-Fictions_
Jean-Jacques Rousseau- _Confessions_

*Plays*-

William Shakespeare- _Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear, Otello, Julius Ceasar, etc..._
Aeschylus- _The Oesteia_
Sophocles- _The Oedipus Cycle_
Euripides- _Medea_
Goethe- _Faust_
(runners up: G.B. Shaw- _Man & Superman_, Oscar Wilde- _The Importance of Being Earnest_, Tennessee Williams- _Streetcar Named Desire, Glass Menagerie, Suddenly Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, _etc...)

*Other essential works:*

_The Bible_ (KJV)
_One Thousand and One Nights _(Arabian Nights)
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm- _Collected Faerie Tales_
Lewis Carroll- _Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass_

... and so many more...


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## thetrout (Jan 28, 2012)

Music: too hard. Mozart's Jupiter. Ring Cycle. Beethoven and Schubert's 9ths. Just too hard!

Novel: A Tale of Two Cities (runners up: Great Expectations, Treasure Island, Count of Monte Cristo and Hound of the Baskervilles).

Artwork: Goya's Tres de Mayo (runners up, Goya's Dos de Mayo and Hogarth's March of the Guards to Finchley). 

Film: Again, too hard but 39 Steps (original), Notorious, Seven Samurai and I Vitelloni would all be contenders?


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Paintings*

As a visual artist/painter I can't limit myself to one or two... or five favorites... so I'll look at my favorite paintings by genre or subject matter:

*Mythological/Religious Narrative or Allegory*:

Botticelli- _Primavera:_










Michelangelo- _Sistine Ceiling:_


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Painting:*

*Mythological/Religious Narrative/Allegory* cont...

Peter Paul Rubens- _The Judgment of Paris_










Hieronymus Bosch- _The Garden of Earthly Delights_










Pieter Brueghel (the Elder)- _Netherlandish Proverbs_


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Historical Narratives*-

Goya- _Third of May_:










J.M.W. Turner- _Burning of the Houses of Parliament_










Gericault- _The Raft of the Medusa_










Velazquez- _The Surrender of Breda_










Picasso- _Guernica_-


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

I'll limit myself to one, though it feels a bit like "which vital organ is your favorite?"

Music: Sibelius Symphony No.5
Literature: David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
Artwork: Reign by Scott Fraser
Movie: The Groundhog Day


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

thetrout said:


> Music: too hard. Mozart's Jupiter. Ring Cycle. Beethoven and Schubert's 9ths. Just too hard!
> 
> Novel: A Tale of Two Cities (runners up: Great Expectations, Treasure Island, Count of Monte Cristo and Hound of the Baskervilles).
> 
> ...


Great choices. Since you like Goya so much, have you heard Granados's piano suite Goyescas? If not, then you should definitely check it out!


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

20centrfuge said:


> I'll limit myself to one, though it feels a bit like "which vital organ is your favorite?"
> 
> Music: Sibelius Symphony No.5
> Literature: David Mitchell: The Bone Clocks
> ...


As vital organs go, I am quite attached to my liver.

As for the specified list, it's impossible:

MUSIC: Sibelius 6th Symphony (Beethoven 4th PC in the wings...)
NOVEL: Frankenstein
ARTWORK: Dunno. Probably a Whistler etching such as 'Limehouse'
FILM: It's neck and neck between Cabaret and A Matter of Life and Death.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

*Music:* Schubert's String Quintet in C

*Paintings:* 
The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
El Jaleo by John Singer Sargent
The Art of Painting by Vermeer
The Sea of Ice by Caspar David Friedrich

*Novel:* Am I allowed to have George Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London'? If not, then probably All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

*Films:*
Five Easy Pieces
Vertigo
Blade Runner 
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (actually I think this reigns supreme for me)








(El Jaleo)


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Since this is on the Classical music forum, I will stick with classical music.

MUSIC:
Stravinsky - Firebird
Bartok - Music for strings, percussion and celesta
Samuel Barber - 1st piano concerto


NOVEL:

Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantos
Hebert - Dune
William Gibson - Neuromancer

ART:

Dali - Persistence of Memory
Miro - The Tilled Field
Magritte - The Annunciation

FILM:

Coppala - Godfather I and II
Hanson - LA Confidential
Scott - Blade Runner
Jackson - Lord of the Rings
Wells - Citizen Cain
Bergman - Fanny and Alexander
Godard - Breathless


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## Forss (May 12, 2017)

This is an impossible task, of course, but here is my list _as of right now_, in _this_ time and place:

Piece of Music: _Symphony No. 3 in D Minor_ (1898) by Gustav Mahler. (The last movement of this piece taught me to levitate.)
Book: _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ (1921) by Ludwig Wittgenstein. (This book, albeit a philosophical treatise on logic, was an altogether _aesthetic_ experience for me. It changed my life.)
Painting: _Midsummer Dance_ (1897) by Anders Zorn. (Zorn's use of colour corresponds to _my_ world. Also: I cannot help being a Swede, I guess.)
Film: _Fanny and Alexander_ (1982) by Ingmar Bergman. (Bergman is everything to me, and it's _very_ hard to pick out an individual film from his oeuvre.)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Music:
Prokofiev — Piano Sonata no. 8, Violin Sonata no. 1
Shostakovich — String Quartet no. 5, Symphony no. 8, Preludes and Fugues op. 87
King Crimson — Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Lizard

Novels:
William Gaddis — The Recognitions
Mikhail Bulgakov — The Master and Margarita
Cormac McCarthy — Suttree 
Victor Hugo — Notre Dame de Paris (aka -The Hunchback)
Vasily Grossman — Life and Fate
Dostoyevsky — Brothers Karamazov 

Painting:
Bosch and Bruegel (and lots of other Dutch and Flemish art)
Dali — Venus Bust Exploding

Film:
Brazil
Taxi Driver
Twelve Monkeys
The Wrong Trousers
Being John Malkovich


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Forss said:


> This is an impossible task, of course, but here is my list _as of right now_, in _this_ time and place:
> 
> Piece of Music: _Symphony No. 3 in D Minor_ (1898) by Gustav Mahler. (The last movement of this piece taught me to levitate.)
> Book: _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ (1921) by Ludwig Wittgenstein. (This book, albeit a philosophical treatise on logic, was an altogether _aesthetic_ experience for me. It changed my life.)
> ...


That's a great symphony and very underrated too.
I've read about Wittgenstein and the ideas of laid out in that text but have never read it.
That's a beautiful painting, thanks for putting me onto it. Reminds me of this passage from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker":

In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music 
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman 
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie-
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

One of my favorite movies of all time. Love Bergman, but prefer Persona and Through a Glass Darkly.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Two more Religious/Mythological/Allegorical paintings that I can't believe I forgot... especially as I rotate among them for the lock screen on my iPad:









-Fra Angelico- _Annunciation_









-Simone Martini- _Annunciation_


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Portraits:*

There's no way I could limit myself to even five.









Raphael- _Baldasar Castiglione_

It'sd been pointed out that even those who found Raphael "problematic"... too "perfect"... there has never been the least doubt about the merits of this portrait. Rembrandt was inspired enough by this painting to make a sketch of it which ultimately influenced his great self-portraits... including the one included here. Cezanne was enthralled with the solidity of the planes which also inspired his efforts.









-Peter Paul Rubens- _Portrait of Isabella Brandt_ (His first Wife)









-Peter Paul Rubens- Portrait of Helena Fourment (His second Wife)

Rubens has long been my favorite painter. I could easily include a dozen portraits by him, but I decided to limit myself to a single portrait of each of his wives. The first I get to see frequently in my hometown museum. The second... a portrait of his young wife clad in only a fur was inspired by a similar painting by Titian. Rubens' painting, however, is life-size... placing his wife on the same level of any of his paintings of Venus or other goddesses.









-Anthony Van Dyck- _Portrait of Marie Louisa de Tassis_

Van Dyck was Rubens' star pupil and assistant for some years. His portrait of the lovely Ms. Tassis is worthy of his master at his finest.









-Rembrandt- _Self Portrait 1659_

Rembrandt is another painter from whom I might have easily selected a dozen of more brilliant portraits. There is no painter who infused a greater sense of humanity and individual character in his paintings of people. This late portrait is one I have seen in person at least a dozen times in the National Gallery in Washington DC.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*Portraits* (continued...)









François Boucher- _Portrait of Mademoiselle O'Murphy_

Yes, this is actually a portrait... albeit an outrageous one. Mademoiselle O'Murphy was a beautiful young girl pimped out by her own mother to rich and powerful men in 18th France. She ended up the mistress of King Louis XV... and quite possibly the artist as well. She made the mistake of attempting to replace Louis' favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour and was sent away from court with an arranged marriage to an officer without any fortune. In return, she was given a sizable dowery from Louis and became related to Madame de Pompadour through marriage.









Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres- _Portrait of Princesse de Broglie_

Ingres is another by whom I might have seleceted any number of portraits. I have long loved the electric blue of the dress (which must be seen in person) of this portrait. Ingres strove to be the next Raphael... a great painter of multi-figure narratives. He never really mastered this. However... he approached his portraits with the same degree of diligence and attention to detail (often making literally hundreds of studies) as one would expect of a great history painting. His elegance of line and his intentional distortions... abstractions... would inspire artists from Degas to Picasso to DeKooning.









Francisco Goya- _Portrait of the Spanish Royal Family_

Goya famously pulls no punches in painting the ugliness and stupidity of the Spanish aristocracy decked out in the most exquisite and glittering clothing. One can imagine him taking on the Kardashians or the Trumps or such other aristocrats of celebrity with the same embrace of the glorious trappings stupidy masked by wealth.









Edoard Manet- _Portrait of Berthe Morisot_

Manet's portrait of Morisot... his Sister-In-Law... is every bit worthy of comparison with Rubens' portrait of his Sister-In-Law, Suzanna Fourment. His loving portrayal of Morisot captures a charming personality that always reminds me of Audrey Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle. Morisot was a talented artist in her own right... sadly under-recognized.









James Whistler- _Harmony in Pink and Gray (Portrait of Lady Meux)_

Whistler was another 19th century figure, like Ingres, who pointed the way toward Modernism with his emphasis upon the formal abstract elements of the paintings. He commonly gave titles suggestive of musical compositions.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

mathisdermaler said:


> That's a great symphony and very underrated too.
> I've read about Wittgenstein and the ideas of laid out in that text but have never read it.
> That's a beautiful painting, thanks for putting me onto it. Reminds me of this passage from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker":
> 
> ...


Always loved that Eliot passage.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

I didn't pick a movie in my list. It occurs to me that when videocassettes were new, and it became practicable for the first time to own a copy of a movie I asked myself if there was any movie I wanted to own. My answer was Bergman's _Magic Flute_. So I guess that would be my choice.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

mathisdermaler said:


> If you like Cloud Atlas you should watch Intolerance by D.W. Griffith. It is nearly 100 years older but it uses the same technique of telling multiple thematically related stories at the same time. It is a visual marvel full stop, not just in the context of its age. It has been called the first art film. The film features over 3000 extras and the sets are all spectacular. It is a silent film but many soundtracks have been adapted to it. This is my favorite version and its free to watch on YouTube.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Fantastic movie - and it has a classical music connection. The Renaissance "French" story was inspired by Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

thetrout said:


> Music: too hard. Mozart's Jupiter. Ring Cycle. Beethoven and Schubert's 9ths. Just too hard!
> 
> Novel: A Tale of Two Cities (runners up: Great Expectations, Treasure Island, Count of Monte Cristo and Hound of the Baskervilles).
> 
> ...


Dickens, Stevenson and Conan Doyle! Hurrah!


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

All subject to change, and carrying on the tradition of expanding the list:

*MUSIC: *Mendelssohn's _Midsummer Night's Dream_ (but I have "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" in my head)

*OPERA: *_Les Huguenots_ (Meyerbeer)

*MUSICIANS*
Meyerbeer, Rossini, Offenbach, Massenet, Berlioz
Gilbert and Sullivan
Tom Lehrer, Noel Coward and Stephen Sondheim
The Beatles

*NOVELS*
_Our Mutual Friend_ or _Bleak House_ (Charles Dickens)
_The Count of Monte Cristo_ (Alexandre Dumas)
_Notre-Dame de Paris_ (Victor Hugo)
_The Neverending Story_ (Michael Ende)
_Gormenghast _(Mervyn Peake)
_Jurgen _(James Branch Cabell)

(Runners-up: Stella Gibbons's _Cold Comfort Farm_, T.F. Powys's _Mr. Weston's Good Wine_, Salman Rushdie's _Enchantress of Florence_, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, early Evelyn Waugh, early Michael Innes)

*SHORT FICTION*
The Father Brown stories (Chesterton)
The Sherlock Holmes stories (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Saki

*WRITERS
*Charles Dickens, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Gladys Mitchell, P.G. Wodehouse, Gerald Durrell, George MacDonald Fraser, Terry Pratchett

*POETRY: *_The Gates of Damascus_ (Flecker)

*THEATRE: *Shakespeare - especially _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _Coriolanus_, and _Richard II_

*FILM*
The ones that come to mind are...
_North by Northwest_
_The Producers_ (original)
_The Assassination Bureau
Death on the Nile_
The James Bond films

*TV SERIES*
_I, Claudius
Doctor Who_ (Hartnell through Tom Baker, McCoy)

*RADIO: *_The Goon Show_

*ART*
Bruegel, Alma-Tadema, Magritte and Klimt
What about African masks or Amerindian totem poles?
And I like the period rooms at the Met.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

mathisdermaler said:


> One of my favorite movies of all time. Love Bergman, but prefer Persona and Through a Glass Darkly.


Just watched Persona yesterday. Mulholland Drive obviously took some elements from it. Besides Fanny and Alex, Wild Strawberries and Seventh Seal, I found the Magician to be really good.


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## Selby (Nov 17, 2012)

I'm going to make a light-hearted list. Not necessarily the deepest or most profound works of art, but, the works I keep returning to with consistent enjoyment.

Music: Chopin, _Nocturne (No. 2) in E-flat major, Op. 9/2_
Fiction:_ Jesus' Son _by Denis Johnson
Non-fiction: _The Gift of Therapy _by Irvin Yalon
Poetry: _The Gift_ by Hafiz, translations by Daniel Ladinsky
Movie: _I Heart Huckabees_, directed by David O Russell
Televison: _The Office _(US)
Painting: John Atkinson Grimshaw, _City Docks by Moonlight _

My partner gifted me a large framed print of this Grimshaw piece on our first anniversary. It has since lived in my small office. Over the years I have become very familiar with it's nuances. Despite extreme familiarity, I have never bored of it.


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

jegreenwood said:


> Always loved that Eliot passage.


I love every Eliot passage. He is my favorite poet.

Another highlight from _Four Quartets_:

O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination."
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

And another:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away-
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

And one from _The Waste Land_:

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs 
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest- 
I too awaited the expected guest. 
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, 
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, 
One of the low on whom assurance sits 
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. 
The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired, 
Endeavours to engage her in caresses 
Which still are unreproved, if undesired. 
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; 
Exploring hands encounter no defence; 
His vanity requires no response, 
And makes a welcome of indifference. 
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all 
Enacted on this same divan or bed; 
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 
And walked among the lowest of the dead.) 
Bestows one final patronising kiss, 
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass, 
Hardly aware of her departed lover; 
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: 
"Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over."
When lovely woman stoops to folly and 
Paces about her room again, alone, 
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand, 
And puts a record on the gramophone.


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## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

Forss said:


> Book: _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ (1921) by Ludwig Wittgenstein. (This book, albeit a philosophical treatise on logic, was an altogether _aesthetic_ experience for me. It changed my life.)


YES. I wanted to avoid making this list (a rather zen-koan like impulse, I don't want to pin down something that changes everyday and besides lists lack buddha-nature  ) but this one came to mind.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Music: all over this forum

Novel: I actually haven't read a single novel since I was forced to read novels in school. It was almost a traumatic experience because I had to read so much books in a short time to pass for oral exams. I do remember my favorite book: Nooit Meer Slapen (Beyond Sleep), W.F. Hermans

Favorite paintings: Isle of the Dead (Böcklin), Garden of Earthly Delights (Bosch)

Film: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, Blade Runner


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## GOLTZIUS (Jul 13, 2017)

MUSIC: 
Beethoven Seventh Symphony (Bernstein
Wagner's Overture to Parsifal (Kubelik)
Handel's Lascia chio Pianga (PCCB choir)
Bach's Toccata and Fugue (Stokowski)

NOVELS/ BOOKS:
Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy
Conrad's ****** of the Narcissus
Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia & Religio Medici
Ibsen's Ghosts and Othe Plays

ARTWORK: hmm. Again, this ones tricky. Munch, Van Gogh and Goya are the holy trinity but if we're talking about the singular greatness of an artwork rather than a career then I select John Souch's painting 'Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of his Wife








It may seem a rather mannered and odd painting at first but if you linger with it then you'll gradually see that it has a great metaphysical depth. Much is embedded symbolically in this painting

FILM: So many objectively great films.. I guess in terms of my personal favourites I'd have to go with either 
Dr Mabuse The Gambler (1922)
The House is Black (1963)
Or Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyessy

(Griffith's Intolerance has already been mentioned on this board but I'd put that up there too)

POEM: 
Georg Träkl- Foehn (Blind Lament in The Wind)
Walt Whitman- A Child Said 'What is Grass'
John Keats- To Sleep
Gerard Manley Hopkins- The Lead Echo and the Golden Echo

But this is perhaps my favourite Shakespeare from Richard III- the music and narrativity is unmatchable
"CLARENCE: O, I have passed a miserable night,
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such night
Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days--
So full of dismal terror was the time.
Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower
And was embarked to cross the Bergundy,
And in my company my brother Gloucester,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches: thence we looked toward England
And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befall'n us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumblèd, and in falling
Struck me (that thought to stay him) overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wracks;
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvaluèd jewels,
All scatt'red in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls, and in the holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep
And mocked the dead bones that lay scatt'red by.
I passed (methought) the melancholy flood,
With that sour ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger soul
Was my great father-in-law, renownèd Warwick,
Who spake aloud, 'What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?'
And so he vanished. Then came wand'ring by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked aloud,
'Clarence is come -- false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury:
Seize on him, Furies, take him unto torment!'
With that (methoughts) a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howlèd in mine ears
Such hideous cries that with the very noise
I, trembling, waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made my dream."


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