[Closed] Your favourite....

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The Garden of Earthly Delights- Bosch.
Centuries ahead of its time, mildly disturbing, and an AWESOME piece of work.

Whistlejacket, by Stubbs.
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Simply astonishing to look at, especially when one considers the strikingly modern nature of the lack of background. I often pop in to the National and just go straight to Whistlejacket, spend ten minutes or so just looking at it, then walk straight out. It's simply beautiful.

This thread is going to be overwhelmingly art as it is easier to post innit.

Art:

Edward Hopper - New York Movie

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Book:

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If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Exceptional book, which is not about what most people assume it's about

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Art - Dali made a great impression(!) on me as a student

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Can architecture be art? This is beautiful.
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Poem:

[i]I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.[/i]

WB Yeats

definitely TJ 🙂

hell... for the sake of the thread even modern art is classed as art!

Can architecture be art? This is beautiful.

Of course it can. Big fan of that French, name escapes me at the minute, bridge. Watched a making of documentary and it was fascinating.

On the subject of architecture/engineering, I always think this is pretty awesome:

[url= http://i.imgur.com/6oJhs.jp g" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/6oJhs.jp g"/> [/img]
[/url]

for me is moments in les miserables and certain films that are my favourite pieces of art. with films its the use of music, lighting, photography, scripting, acting and all the other elements crafted together to create a scene or moment that hits you like a lorry with no brakes... stunning 🙂

was hoping Dali would get a mention or two as well!

@don simon: have you seen "In Bruges" (film)?

Of the arty end of music - IMO much of it can be rather introverted and self regarding with no real meaning ( rather w*** )

But Ian Dury will always have a place for me as Music as art and sometimes with a real biting edge
Rubbish vid but great song. What a picture painted in words.

Provocative, pointed, stirring

deadly, that's just class

Jamie, that Edward Hopper painting is wonderful, I've never seen that one before.

Got a bit of a thing for this at the mo - not sure why really, but it's so striking it just stops me in my tracks whenever I see it:
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'Jeunesse Dore' 1934, by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst

How about some animation. Always loved Bill Plympton's stuff

I like this.......

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@don simon: have you seen "In Bruges" (film)?

No, is there a connection?

Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving. The photographic quality is astonishing. Look at the glasses of water for example. Stunning piece.

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And Jack Vettriano's Dance me to the end of Love

[img] http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/410/f57/410f57cf-cadc-4f4d-9ebb-28d0228bdd23 [/img]
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Tractor by Ted Hughes - lived this one a few times.

The tractor stands frozen - an agony
To think of. All night
Snow packed its open entrails. Now a head-pincering gale,
A spill of molten ice, smoking snow,
Pours into its steel.
At white heat of numbness it stands
In the aimed hosing of ground-level fieriness.

It defied flesh and won't start.
Hands are like wounds already
Inside armour gloves, and feet are unbelievable
As if the toe-nails were all just torn off.
I stare at it in hatred. Beyond it
The copse hisses - capitulates miserably
In the fleeing, failing light. Starlings,
A dirtier sleetier snow, blow smokily, unendingly, over
Towards plantations Eastward.
All the time the tractor is sinking
Through the degrees, deepening
Into its hell of ice.

The starting lever
Cracks its action, like a snapping knuckle.
The battery is alive - but like a lamb
Trying to nudge its solid-frozen mother -
While the seat claims my buttock-bones, bites
With the space-cold of earth, which it has joined
In one solid lump.

I squirt commercial sure-fire
Down the black throat - it just coughs.
It ridicules me - a trap of iron stupidity
I've stepped into. I drive the battery
As if I were hammering and hammering
The frozen arrangement to pieces with a hammer
And it jabbers laughing pain-crying mockingly
Into happy life.

And stands
Shuddering itself full of heat, seeming to enlarge slowly
Like a demon demonstrating
A more-than-usually-complete materialization -
Suddenly it jerks from its solidarity
With the concrete, and lurches towards a stanchion
Bursting with superhuman well-being and abandon
Shouting Where Where?

Worse iron is waiting. Power-lift kneels
Levers awake imprisoned deadweight,
Shackle-pins bedded in cast-iron cow-shit.
The blind and vibrating condemned obedience
Of iron to the cruelty of iron,
Wheels screeched out of their night-locks -

Fingers
Among the tormented
Tonnage and burning of iron

Eyes
Weeping in the wind of chloroform

And the tractor, streaming with sweat,
Raging and trembling and rejoicing.

Exceptional book, which is not about what most people assume it's about

Looks like it's about Robert Carlisle from the cover...

Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving. The photographic quality is astonishing. Look at the glasses of water for example. Stunning piece.

Reminds me of

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I'm not really a cultured person but Ennio Morricone is a fantastic composer.

This tune kept coming on when iPhone when I was rushing to the hospital to say what I thought may be my last goodbye to my Dad. Even on random it would often come up very quick, heading home with glimmers of hope it would do the same.

When we finally knew he'd survived it came on again and it will always be special to me.

Granted it's the remix but a very good one.

****in hell shouldn't have played that I'm filling up now.

Another of his master pieces, I could post them all day so many.

Of course there's others like Hans Zimmer

I guess the movie industry pays enough and inspires enough to get these great talents.

For its rare subtle qualities

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Have loved this since I was an awkward teen.
[img][url= http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5180/5411400584_c6904f79fe.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5180/5411400584_c6904f79fe.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/24346438@N07/5411400584/ ]The%20Kiss%20(Le%20Baiser%20_%20Il%20Baccio)[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/24346438@N07/ ]nickendeacott[/url], on Flickr[/img]

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Can I add a poem as well?

As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn
The lovers disappeared into the wood.
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
About the weather, next about the war.
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole,
The ploughman said. 'When will they take it away? '
'When the war's over.' So the talk began –
One minute and an interval of ten,
A minute more and the same interval.
'Have you been out? ' 'No.' 'And don't want to, perhaps? '
'If I could only come back again, I should.
I could spare an arm, I shouldn't want to lose
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
I should want nothing more...Have many gone
From here? ' 'Yes.' 'Many lost? ' 'Yes, a good few.
Only two teams work on the farm this year.
One of my mates is dead. The second day
In France they killed him. It was back in March,
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.'
'And I should not have sat here. Everything
Would have been different. For it would have been
Another world.' 'Ay, and a better, though
If we could see all all might seem good.' Then
The lovers came out of the wood again:
The horses started and for the last time
I watched the clods crumble and topple over
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

"As the team's head brass", by Edward Thomas

I've never really been able to cope with having an out and out favourite anything..

I have a very great many things that I love however..

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Can't decide if it's the original or the interpretation.

Need to look out some poetry...

Pass this on M8 through Glasgow and always like it even though I must have seen it thousands of times.

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[i]For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, -- both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.[/i]

William Wordsworth, [i]Tintern Abbey[/i].

What a great thread.

W. H. Davies

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

[b][i]"when the seagulls follow a trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea"[/i][/b]

Don Simon - You can get your own Garden of earthly delights figurine if you want - [url= http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/products/unique_gift_ideas/art_sculptures ]from here[/url]. Must admit that I didn't though, having a "piece" of it seems to detract from it somehow.

don simon - Member

@don simon: have you seen "In Bruges" (film)?

No, is there a connection?

the 2 main characters go and see that [s]picture[/s] tryptich 8) in the film, is all.

http://www.anxioussilence.co.uk/blog/2008/02/16/checkendon-sculpture-the-nuba-embrace/ i like this , it is very haunting

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this was an amazing 3 days.. I'd been over to Nante to see it being built. We were filming a 2-3 minute news piece. Having been absolutely blown away by what they were doing we managed to get a 30 minute program out of it.
I still reckon it was the most spectacular piece of free performance art I'll ever see. To be honest one of the most spectacular pieces of art I'll ever see...

From a railway carriage - by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging alone like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there is a river;
Each a glimpse and gone for ever.

not a big art fan, but this picture moved me quite a lot when I saw it at the National Portrait Gallery... I didn't want to look at it as it stirred something uncomfortable inside, but I couldn't help but stare

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and this poem, yes it's the one from Four Weddings, but I love it none the less; again it evokes uncomfortable emotion and draws you in

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

wow... some incredible stuff in this thread! the art has really surprised me, a lot of it not the kind of thing i'd normally be attracted to but the examples people have posted are fantastic.

bump for the friday-bored-at-work

the 2 main characters go and see that picture tryptich in the film, is all.

Ah OK. Two days of uncertainty and not knowing have now ended, but I guess I'll watch the film amyway, thanks.

The tryptich itself is a thing of incredible beauty and so advanced in its style, it's a shame that I don't really have the opportunity to go to the museums more often as when you come across something like this, there is definitely a WOW factor. Guernica I was less impressed with, but some of his etchings let you see him in a different way.
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Some of Goya's drawings of the Napoleonic war are quite disturbing and thought provoking.
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I'm not one for poems, but I do like the lyrics to Love Song (and many,many more)

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am free again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am clean again

However far away I will always love you
However long I stay I will always love you
Whatever words I say I will always love you
I will always love you

As yunki says, it's almost impossible to choose just one, art is everywhee you look. To quote Toyah Wilcox, "If you think a piece of dog shit is art......." 😕

Alway admired the photgraphy of Ansel Adams, helps that I love Yosemite too....

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One of the most amazing pieces of art I have seen is a marble sculpture in the Prado - it was a bust of a woman wearing a veil. Doesn't sound amazing but how the artist managed to sculpt it from marble so that you could see the facial features below the veil is a mystery and a wonder. I can't remember who the artist was though!