# Great Visual Art You've Seen Personally!



## Chi_townPhilly

I had this idea when looking through _Cosmos_' "Art Thread." If I had pursued this idea there, it would have deflected from that topic- so I'll forward it here...

_What are your favorite significant works of Visual Art that you've *seen personally*??_ List as few as 5, or as many as 12! Maybe our European friends who've been to the Louvre or the Prado will have something _really_ interesting to add! As for me, I grew up around Chicago- so my list will be weighted towards that location.

O.K.: here goes--

*Chagall*- _The Four Seasons_: a mosaic outside the First National Bank Plaza in Chicago.
*Monet*- _The Old Saint-Lazare Station_: the Art Institute of Chicago
*Seurat*- _Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte_: (inspiration for Sondheim's musical 
'Sunday in the Park with George')- Art Institute of Chicago
*Van Gogh*- _Sunflowers_: once made a fortuitous appeareance at the Philadelphia Museum of Art 
*Dali*- _Echo from the Void_: sighted at the travelling Dali exhibition, Montreál, QC Canada.
*Duchamp*- _Nude Descending a Staircase_: Philadelphia Museum of Art


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## michael walsh

Faithful unto the Last. I think that was its title; in Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery when not on loan. It depicted a soldier of Rome standing on guard whilst - I think it was Vesuvius erupting in the background. Incredibly evocative.


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## michael walsh

The first time I set eyes on this sculpture, several decades ago, I was enchanted. I always vowed I would bid for it if I ever came into big money. The photograph of course doesn't do it justice.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ladylever/collections/snowdrift.asp


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## bdelykleon

Venus de Milo - Louvre
Nike of Samothraki - Louvre
Jockey of Artemision - National Archeological Museum, Athens
Virgin Mary and Saint Elizabeth, Master M.S. - National Gallery of Budapest
Coronation of the Virgin, Fra Angelico - Louvre
Le Stanze di Rafaello - Vatican
Apollo and Daphne - Bernini - Galeria Borghese, Rome


but surely, the most impressive piece of art I've ever seen is the Alexander Sarcophagus in Istanbul.


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## Air

Venus de Milo - Louvre
Liberty Leading the People - Delacroix - Louvre
Nike of Samothraki - Louvre
Mona Lisa - da Vinci - Louvre
Water Lilies - Monet - Orangerie (Paris)
Apollo and Daphne - Bernini - Galeria Borghese
Rape of Prosepina - Bernini - Galeria Borghese
Sacred and Profane Love - Titian - Galeria Borghese
Upper Chapel - Saint-Chapelle
Woman with a Parasol - Monet - National Gallery of Art
Girl With a Watering Can - Renoir - National Gallery of Art
Lavender Mist - Pollock - National Gallery of Art 
Four Dancers - Degas - National Gallery of Art
Sistine Ceiling/Last Judgement- Michelangelo - Sistine Chapel


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## Elgarian

I don't think I could make a list, no matter how much I tried. But this little engraving of a Swiss valley by Turner, made in the 1830s (here on the desk in front of me) is as lovely as anything I know. It's about 3 inches wide.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Among those that have made the deepest impact upon me I would include:

The great sculptural reliefs of Mesopotamia/Persia:



















Any number of Persian/Islamic miniatures... which have profoundly inspired my own art... but this is a particular favorite from the Met:










Among non-Western cultures it is the Japanese after that of the Middle-East which has been most continually inspirational. I am especially fond of the sophistication of design and the elegant mastery of line, color, and texture in the prints of Utamaro:



















continued...


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## StlukesguildOhio

The brilliant colors of Giorgione's _Adoration of the Magi_ almost single-handedly led to my own return to figurative art and color after some 5 years of experimentation with abstraction.










I have seen almost every painting by Vermeer in real life. Photographs don't even come close. The richness of the surface and the colors are astounding. One almost feels as if they were painted with liquid jewels:



















Rembrandt, by comparison, is unrivaled for his ability to convey a sense of a real human being. I think of him in this regard as akin to Shakespeare who was also the master of inventing characters more real than life itself. Rembrandt's Lucretia has always left me stunned... and it is this painting and those of Vermeer that are ever the last things I look at before leaving the National Gallery, Washington:










Lucretia is perhaps only rivaled by Rembrandt's great Self Portrait from his final years in which one can sense all the angst... the sorrow... of a man whose wife and only child have died before him... whose art is nearly ignored... and who now looks death in the face:










continued...


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## StlukesguildOhio

Ingres always stuns me with a realism that is more real than reality itself... and yet the distortions and abstractions abound. His works are so carefully designed and polished that one feels a sort of icy eroticism... a frozen fire:










The electric blue of Madame's dress and the cold marble perfection of her skin sends chills down my spine:










In Degas' late pastels, by contrast, one can almost feel the warmth and the humidity of the woman's bath:










Perhaps my single favorite painting of the 20th century by perhaps my single favorite 20th century artist is this magnificent view of the artist's wife at her bath by Pierre Bonnard:










The light devours all... as it does in the paintings of J.M.W. Turner... another beloved artist I might have included (having seen endless paintings... especially at the huge retrospective two years ago). Solid form melts away or is shattered into a thousand shards of glittering color... like a Byzantine mosaic. The simplest intimate scene... something the artist must have seen everyday... is transformed into something magical.

Modigliani is another master of sensuality and the female form who has been a profound impact upon my own art. His paintings combine the warm, sensual colors of Titian with a simplicity and elegance of line worthy of the Japanese:










continued...


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## StlukesguildOhio

Rousseau's Snake Charmer is beyond charming... this dark seductress standing beneath the moonlight glows with an eerie iridescence:










After Bonnard, it is perhaps Matisse that most consistently speaks to me among the Modernists. No one conveys such a Joie de Vivre and such a hedonistic pleasure in color. His Music exudes an almost brutal primitivism and daring that matches Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Matisse would have been a better stage designer for Stravinsky's ballets than Picasso... as much as I love the Spaniard.










Matisse brings a sensual joy in color and pattern that is rooted in the Mediterranean... but also in the art of the Middle-East:










At the darker side of Modernism there's the German Expressionist, Max Beckmann, whose fantastic scenes smolder and glow... like medieval stained glass. His _Bird's Hell_ gives allegorical form to the rising tide of the Nazis and mindless violence... and yet it glows with the most riotous color. The artist was a clear heir to Bosch if not Goya:


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## starleaf

Liberty Leading the People - Delacroix - Louvre
Mona Lisa - da Vinci - Louvre
Apollo and Daphne - Bernini - Galeria Borghese
Sacred and Profane Love - Titian - Galeria Borghese
Woman with a Parasol - Monet - National Gallery of Art

It is an interesting thread, it is very nice of you sharing this!


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