Greatest Paintings of All Time (Incomplete / In Progress) - Lounge

AfterHours

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To Skinny, Hayden and craola:

I've posted your recommendations on "My Criteria for Art / Recommendations Page" (in the Music Diaries Forum) here: http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...187#465187

I'll honor your recommendations and post the results as soon as I can.

As noted on that page (specifications can be read on the second post of the page), I take on a maximum of 6 "To Newly Assimilate" selections at a time, and another max of 6 "To Revisit" selections at a time, per user. If you recommend me more than 6 at once, I'll simply add the rest later (again, in max increments of 6) as I "honor" the initial ones.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Skinny wrote:

Photographs don't do it justice, but the best painting I've seen (or at least the one that has most impressed and fascinated me) is Boccioni's The City Rises. Some of these are OK too.

I re-evaluated The City Rises: https://media.timeout.com/images/102089347/image.jpg

Such a great work that I really enjoyed looking over for the first time in a good while.

The main bullet points that I noted:

-One of the seminal works of the futurist movement
-Depicts several male workers making a power plant
-Metaphorical depiction of city(ies) of Italy becoming idealized, modern as opposed to stuck in the past
-A "call to action" of its citizens/workers
-The painting is a "force of nature" of productivity
-Depicts the workers in "impossible" angles/physical feats as if they're "superhuman"
-Depicts them as much more prominent than that which they are building
-The main horse is larger than life, exploding from the canvas, perhaps also a metaphor of a "force of energy" surging through the middle of the action, perhaps a representation of the "horse power" or "communal energy" being produced by the workers. There are other horses in between the workers, presumably assisting their work
-Each figure is emanating bright colors and filled in with hundreds/thousands of energetic brush strokes, making them appear in constant movement -- both the figures as a whole, which seem to almost spiral around and through the painting -- and also the lines running through the figures, which buzz with energy
-Every stroke is an "energy particle" so to speak. The closer one views the figures the more they represent the wavelengths and energy particles of bodies/objects in motion as opposed to actual parts of their anatomy (arms, legs, etc).
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Images and Links updated through the 7.5/10s now (from the top down). I spent a ton of time a couple years ago tracking down the best images and links for all these, which is what you see (with some exceptions where such links/images were no longer available). I haven't done a new search since then, so I may have missed some newer, better ones so if anyone finds larger, higher quality pics of these, please let me know/provide a link.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

AwaitingAndrew wrote:

Meanwhile, the Mona Lisa is kinda underwhelming.

To AwaitingAndrew and anyone else interested, I have been posting images and links for the rest of the paintings, gradually. Included in this, I posted my analysis of Mona Lisa (below its image). This analysis is a few years old and I haven't reviewed it recently, so it may need some updates/revisions -- which, if so, I'll handle at a later time. In any case, it features both decisive analysis points and suggestions from the painting that lead to several possible conclusions -- so hope it helps with anyone that might be wondering what the big deal with the painting is.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

All the 7.3+ "Greatest Paintings" images and links are now posted -- with the occasional exception of a few that no longer appear to be working, and which I'll try and find replacements for soon.
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Just though I'd drop the names Ernst, DeKooning, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Kandisnky, Bacon, Malevich, Frida, Pollock, Warhol, Twombly, Guston, Mehretu, etc into this thread, since these are just a few of the painters of the past century who've changed art as we know it.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

meccalecca wrote:

Just though I'd drop the names Ernst, DeKooning, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Kandisnky, Bacon, Malevich, Frida, Pollock, Warhol, Twombly, Guston, Mehretu, etc into this thread, since these are just a few of the painters of the past century who've changed art as we know it.

Yes!! You are absolutely correct!! Ernst especially is one of my all time favorite artists -- so many great works! In addition to Europe After the Rain 2, several of his others populate my "extended" list, which I'll start recreating next (from a crashed website, listology.com). All the rest you list each have works I enjoy, some more than others. Bacon has some of the most haunting since Goya's black paintings... I am curious if you have a specific set of, say 10 paintings, that you'd most highly recommend amongst these artists? I am only somewhat familiar with Mehretu, but between quite familiar and very familiar with the rest.
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

I've never been great with the names of paintings beyond the obvious ones. And regarding the bulk of fine artists, it's their body of work that impresses me more than specific works. At this point, my favorite artists generally work in large scale installation, and/or mixed media (Serra, Smithson, Barney, Burguoise, Kusama, Kara Walker, Cattelan, Sehgal, Weiwei, etc)

But here are some paintings that I think are masterpieces.

Julie Merhetu "Empirical Construction, Istanbul"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Wassily Kandinsky. "Transverse Line"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Gerhard Richter, "St John"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Frida Kahlo "Girl with Death Mask"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Wangetchi Mutu

When I have some time I'll try to post more.

Was wondering if you're basing your judgement of all these works from seeing them in person or on a screen? When I lived in New York, I spent a massive amount of time at the MOMA, Guggenheim, Whitney, MET, various galleries, etc and can definitely say that it makes a huge difference. I also worked at a bunch of art magazines. No matter how hard we tried, the photos of the art never perfectly matched the art itself. Something was always lost.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

meccalecca wrote:

I've never been great with the names of paintings beyond the obvious ones. And regarding the bulk of fine artists, it's their body of work that impresses me more than specific works. At this point, my favorite artists generally work in large scale installation, and/or mixed media (Serra, Smithson, Barney, Burguoise, Kusama, Kara Walker, Cattelan, Sehgal, Weiwei, etc)

But here are some paintings that I think are masterpieces.

Julie Merhetu "Empirical Construction, Istanbul"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Wassily Kandinsky. "Transverse Line"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Gerhard Richter, "St John"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Frida Kahlo "Girl with Death Mask"

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Wangetchi Mutu

When I have some time I'll try to post more.

Was wondering if you're basing your judgement of all these works from seeing them in person or on a screen? When I lived in New York, I spent a massive amount of time at the MOMA, Guggenheim, Whitney, MET, various galleries, etc and can definitely say that it makes a huge difference. I also worked at a bunch of art magazines. No matter how hard we tried, the photos of the art never perfectly matched the art itself. Something was always lost.

Wow, thank you for those pics. Wangetchi Mutu, especially, is very impressive to me and quite a surprise, as I am not at all familiar with her work. I looked over a number of her works and my immediate impression was that she must be one of the best current visual artists that I've seen. I will evaluate them a bit further and hope my impression remains the same or even improves. I also liked the pics you posted of the others.

As regards seeing so many works in person, I am quite jealous of you now! Surprised

For the most part I've used the internet and very high quality image art books, to "traverse the world" for these. There is no other realistic way to do so, unless one is constantly travelling, or works at many museums, etc. Seeing them in person would no doubt have a certain perspective advantage that I would urge anyone to include if they could. In all cases with the works listed, I've compensated for this as much as possible, by viewing them from many many different images (not just the ones posted and linked to) on the internet and in HQ art books -- as well as live or professional video or direct photos/pics straight from the museum site -- and ensured through comparisons that I post the highest quality possible and as physically accurate image as possible. From an analytical/evaluation standpoint, in many cases the internet is completely necessary as it gives one access to the works in a way that only would be available to a select few professional art historians or to one that is cleaning/restoring them. By this I mean that I have often posted images that bring one very up close with the work and for as long as one wants to view the work, over and over again, that would be far less feasible in real-life. That said, I would love to see all of these in person and feel this would only improve the appreciation. I'm not sure it would really improve the resulting evaluation or analysis except in the rare case of a work hardly being available for view on the internet (such as Darger's Battle of Calverhine, for which I've personally compensated for by looking over it in a couple HQ art books that I was lucky enough to discover). But in most cases, the internet access dramatically improves the potential for analysis.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

TESTING SOME IMAGES THAT AREN'T WORKING ON THE MAIN LIST...

CAMP AT KARASULI (NORTH WALL MURAL):
[img]http://gateway.ntpl.org.uk/lowres/ntpl/3/00000000026/979344.bro[/img]

RIVERBED AT TODOROVO (SOUTH WALL MURAL):
[img]http://gateway.ntpl.org.uk/lowres/ntpl/3/00000000026/979345.bro[/img]

Why aren't these producing images? They work perfectly fine when entered into my browser.
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