What is your favourite piece of Art ??

Nice thread, especially as it's included some stuff that just leaves me entirely cold alongside some pieces that I really like too.  It's good to see the diversity.

There are a few pieces I adore.  Pete T15 already mentioned Starry Night by van Gogh, and The Scream is of course GraemeH's avatar here.  I saw (one of) the latter at the national gallery in Oslo, along with some other wonderful stuff.  It was a moving experience.  As was the Munch exhibition at the Tate a couple of years ago.

Saturn by Goya has long had a deep effect on me.  Something about confronting and assimilating parts of our psychology rather than hiding from them.

Hanging above my desk is a copy of David's The Death of Socrates, which I've been lucky enough to see twice at the Met in New York.  It's romanticised, of course, but it's a model of indomitability that I find inspiring.

When I went to see the above painting at the Met, I was a bit stunned when I came across an artist/painting I hadn't heard of before, Nymphs with Satyr by William Adophe Bouguereau.  The thing that stopped me in my tracks was the depiction of light.  It really is breathtaking in person.

I was so taken by that that my partner in crimes against music and I used a treated part of another of his images entitled Dante and Virgil for the artwork for our last album.

There are numerous others, but just one last one.  Francis Bacon's Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X.  My aforementioned partner in crime is somewhat obsessed with Velazquez.  In fact we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna last weekend so he could see their collection (a lucky coincidence that we'd played a gig in the city the night before).  And I've long felt that this picture is a kind of nod to his love of the original artist and my taste for the disturbing.

Innocent Bystander posted:

Visual art is not something that has ever turned me on, quite the opposite of music. Whilst I can appreciate some paintings for being excellent portraits, or moody subjects, or stunning landscapes, I'm really likening to a photograph and generally would rather have a good photo of the subject than a painting. Of course paintings have a real place recording images from before photography, while paintings whose imagery depicts more than just capturing a scene can be much more engrossing. As for a modern art, just as with modern orchestral music, to me a lot of it tends to come across just as noise.

That said, from time to time individual paintings have had a certain je ne sais quoi that has in some way captivated me, and maybe, just maybe I could look at them for hours.  Contrast that with music, where there are a lot of albums I could repeat over and over again without getting bored, and repeat again the next day. 

But just what paintings have had that effect currently elude my memory - I'll come back and post if I recall any.

Having had time to think:

Stroking the keys by Alfred Gockel is a picture that caught my eye online, unusually for me an abstract image that I could happily have at home - not for any deep meaning, and not something I would stare at for any length of time, but very evocative of music. I may yet go for it, as a triptych with two other similar ones of his as printed facings for sound absorbent room treatment panels in the music room...

Pathways at night by Roger Dean. Seen at an exhibition last year, to me it presents an other-worldly fantasy that is reminiscent of early Yes albums without being an album cover. The simple colours are oddly appealing - and the vividnesss of the blue when seen 'in the flesh' is quite something. I would happily have this on the wall at home, though it would have to be full size, which I guess is about 4-5 ft long by maybe 3ft tall.

Seeing classics in museums for me often is rather boring - many of them are much of a muchness, and while it is possible to look at them and think 'wow that's clever', or whatever, I can cope with only so many portraits or religeous scenes or still lifes (or should that be lives?), but some do stand out from the crowd, for example Botticelli's Birth of Venus, which I found truly stunning when standing in front of the original in all its glory. However, I'm not sure I'd bother with a print at home, though maybe if I had a grand hallway I wouldn't say no to a full size reproduction...  Iis huge, with the figures about life suze, which is part of the impact - small it is simply a quaint picture. I doubt I'd study it for hours, but I think I would stop and look at it from time to time.

Painted in about 1425 for the Brancusi chapel in the church of Santa Carmina in Florence, The Expulsion of Adam And Eve by Masaccio (1401-1428) is one of the most powerful portrayals of torment in the history of Western art. In the late 17th century Cosimo de' Medici had fig leaves painted over it and it wasn't until the 1980s, when the work was sympathetically restored, that we got to see it in all its glory.

Living in Cambridge I can't help myself by a little mention of Kettles Yard.   A reclusive escape from everything. A real Arty den.

Dave***t posted:

... and my taste for the disturbing.

- often the world just doesn't understand.

I do like a bit of Andy...

Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn), 1967 (hot pink)

"Andy Warhol (1928-1987) remains one of the most influential visual artists of modern times. With a background as a highly successful commercial artist, Warhol reinvented himself as a famous Pop Artist. Warhol went from creating images for advertising to using advertising and media images to make his fine art. He quickly became renowned as one of the artists who defined the Pop Art."

I ought of course to pay homage to my avatar. 

Albrecht Durer 'Young Hare'. He produced a range of beautiful drawings and paintings, from grand religious studies to detailed botanical and anatomical studies as well as delicate pastoral scenes. A genius of Mediaeval art.

Bruce

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

 

Albrecht Durer 'Young Hare'.

I have several of that image tattooed on my head.

From a distance they look like rabbits. 

Asking what is your favourite work of art is as difficult to answer as any question about your favourite piece of music - it depends so much on the moment and one's state of mind at the time. But Victorian British art always works for me, particularly that of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their followers. A late follower of the Pre-Raphaelites, John William Waterhouse's work 'The Lady of Shalott' is one exceptionally beautiful work, which depicts the end of Tennyson's poem of the same name. I just cannot help feeling for her, wondering if she knows her fate. I love all the symbolism too. Beautiful.

I was a student in Bristol and always stopped to stare at this painting in the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery whenever I was passing through. It's David Inshaw's painting entitled "our days were a joy and our paths through flowers". Such a sad picture, but uplifting too in some strange way.

One of the most prominent C20th female artists - and one of the century's great colourists - was Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979). This enormous mural, Propellor (Air Pavilion) was painted for the 1937 Paris Expo. It's now in Lund, Sweden.

My favourite artists:

Hieronymous Bosch: You gotta admit the guy had a sense of humour.

Francis Bacon:  

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: I love many of his posters. Love his bold graphic style and sens of composition.

Giorgio de Chirico: Always loved his strong afternoon sunlight.

Anna Mahler: Her own tombstone is simply brilliant.

I would find it very difficult to nominate "a favourite " picture or work of art, I can identify which pictures I would not want in the house, but to accommodate my favourite pictures I would need a gallery, A lot of the nominated works of art I have seen or have seen other works by the artist and have developed an appreciation opinion of  it.

Can't upload at work but do like some of David Shepherd's work.

I own this. I bought it to celebrate the lives of my parents when they both passed away (which is a very good thing to do, and something a friend recommended). I love it very much.

Zaria Forman - Maldives #3, 2013

Soft Pastel on Paper, 30" x 60"

I agree that Klein's paintings are not such a great image. As it's just a single monotone colour. IKB 79.  That has later been officially named as Pantone 286 c .  But to see a klein blue in the flesh is a totally unique experience, which you would struggle to see in any other situation.  This was the start of conceptual art where it was not just about an image but also an idea. 

No one really knows how the paintings were made. They are usually very thick and dense of layers that deform the shape of the canvas. And has a quality of richness that even seems to suck in light.

Then he decided to put his invented colour and paint on objects.

Wow this is great topic, whenever I travel I go to museums, I've taken lots of art history courses. 

Richard Deibenkorn from Bay Area Figurative group went south to Santa Monica and taught at UCLA. Great abstracts. The thin layers underneath don't really show up well.

Richard Serra created this room at DIA in upstate NY. The show was mainly minimalists and environmental works. I was caught 2x with my phone taking pics.  What amazed me in this space was the different colors of light, warm from bulbs and cool blue from the rainy weather outside. He played with your sense of balance those black areas were like tar scrapings, they don't  line up and the sofits are structural. Light , shadow and reflections.  Friend with me was greatly dissappointed except for a few pieces or artists.

Here's a close up of my Matisse copy, painted for a resort, the consignment shop also had The Dance which is in upper left.  I happen to have a small Mattise book and the original is in Hermitage and about 2'x3'. This is 6'x8' , book said The Dance was an abstract design project, then he liked to actually do still lifes of his rooms.  Here he did a design no-no, an object right in the middle and that black spot just above. However he was the master.  The colors just send me a twitter, lightly painted, not labored the way I would.