Paintings to see before you die

Seeing as Tut, Moses, the Elgin Marbles and the Chagall extend the criteria a little beyond painting, I’d throw in the Pergamon Altar Frieze in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. It raises all sorts of questions about colonial art-robbery, etc., but aside from that (and maybe because of that) the experience is unforgettable.

I’ve also seen about a quarter of these paintings, but most of the ones I’ve seen are unmemborable. Presumably if you “shuffled past” a painting at the Louvre, but can’t remember whether you’ve seen it or not, it shouldn’t be on a list of paintings you have to make a special trip for!

Its simply a bad list, relying much to heavily on European 20th century art and old masters. Note that the “San rock paintings” in Capetown are thrown in to give the list some impression of balance. I’ve actually been to the South African National Museum and these are not the highlights of the collection. They are safely obscure enough and far enough away that no one is going to call the compiler on them. No Chinese or Japanese paintings make the list at all, nor do any of the ancient Greek vases, no Indian or ancient near eastern art, no Byzantine art or Russian icons, there is nothing produced by Precolumbian Indians. San rock art is on the list but nothing produced by the Inuit.

Even viewed from the twentieth century European perspective the list is bad, most people would include Monet’s waterlilies. There is nothing by Braque, no Dada, the only Picasso is Guernica.

Only the last three items listed, and maybe “Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer” really belong on a list of artwork to see before you die. I also agree with the above commentator on the Pergammon Altar.

I am the last to find an excuse for cultural tourism but given excellently lit reproductions in books or online, many originals often are not impressive. The Mona Lisa is tiny, as is Dürer’s Hare. Da Vinci’s dull and dark Last Supper was a major disappointment (at least pre-restoration).

Go see them, but lower your expectations. We are too used to Photoshop effects.

No Turner? Pah.

I have always been a little curious as to why you can’t get, if say you’re a museum, high-quality copies of all the other works of Leonardo da Vinci costing a thousand pounds each to hang beside their one original da Vinci.

I know that prints tend not to come close to the original, but it seems odd that there’s nothing between the £20 print and the £20,000,000 original … I’m thinking of machined-plastic backing in the shape of the front paint surface of the original, onto which you ink-jet a high-resolution copy using a wide range of inks to try to get the spectrum right.

For non-painted works, I’d include the primary stained glass window in St Peter’s Basilica – not a very original choice but very impressive.

More personal nomination I’d have to recommend Caravaggio’s ‘The Calling of St Matthew’. Goya too, though I’d have trouble recommending one specific piece…

As I see it, what we’re talking about is what works of art must be seen *in person* for the full effect. Not necessarily the “best” works. Large scale sculpture and architecture would dominate that list. To take an obvious example, one can hardly begin to appreciate the “David” until you see it in person. For a more recent example, Frank Wright’s “Fallingwater” is rather ho-hum in photographs, but overwhelming and breathtaking in person.

How could they leave out Sargent’s Madame X? Bah. By the way, a poster of Madame X is now in print and for sale in the Metropolitan’s store, after too many years of unavailability.

Well, FWIW, Sargent thought Madame X was his greatest work. I read somewhere that part of the scandal of the painting requires some familiarity with Victorian underwear– the knowledgeable viewer will recognize that the lady isn’t wearing anything under her dress.

Why are we hung up on the notion that reproductions have to be photographic? What about the practice of having painters copy, with paint, paintings? Hell, many of these works were painted by “the help” and not the master himself.

If inspired translation is a good enough methodology for the Septuagint and the Vulgate, it’s got to be good enough for true believers in Art.

Well, FWIW, Sargent thought Madame X was his greatest work.

True, and I’d agree with him (and you) that it’s a terrific painting. He’s also the fellow who thought it would be a good idea to spend the latter part of his career largely painting landscapes, though, and I don’t know anyone who agrees with that. So there’s only so far I’ll take what the artist thinks. Madame X has always been known for her revealing attire, though I’m not sure about the underwear story (in the catalog for Americans in Paris, for instance, Erica Hirschler refers to her as “sophisticated, perfectly groomed, elegantly dressed”, which suggests a different view.) She did formerly have a strap of her dress off the shoulder until Sargent repainted it. I’m more inclined to the view that the scandal over the painting was a sort of perfect storm, building on resentment toward both the painter and the sitter (which had been expressed in the contemporary press long before the painting was shown), as well as other factors. In any case, scandal is no measure of a painting’s quality.

The city of Guernica deserved a better memorial than the one Picasso coughed up.

Can someone tell me why Pollock’s One: Number 31 is considered great art? It looks like 1970s-era wallpaper.

(Note I said “great art,” not “attractive art.” Aesthetics and artistic talent are not the same thing. I’ve seen a lot of homely and adult-looking Baby Jesuses in otherwise well-painted Madonna-and-child paintings such as this.)

I’m trying, but I can’t imagine a better memorial for Guernica than the one Picasso `coughed up’. What did you have in mind? It’s not only an important painting, but I’m quite certain it’s also the reason so many people know the name of the town. Granted, probably more people know the name of the painting…but that doesn’t change anything.

Presumably if you “shuffled past” a painting at the Louvre, but can’t remember whether you’ve seen it or not, it shouldn’t be on a list of paintings you have to make a special trip for!

Not really: it’s just that there’s a lot of mediocre stuff packed into the Louvre, even with the Richelieu wing open, and you need to arrive early, move with purpose and know the layout well to appreciate the good pieces.

Nothing from the National Gallery, though? The Ambassadors is over-analysed — thanks, Greenblatt — but it’s well worth going to see, not just for the easter egg. The Van Goghs in Orsay and Amsterdam really hit home when you see the texture of the paint on canvas. The scale of The Night Watch, or Las Meninas is hard to understand from reproductions. Etc.

But I don’t like seeing the Parthenon sculptures in person. Even with their dedicated gallery, and their sensitive presentation, they feel out of place in a way that doesn’t quite apply to the other bits of Ancient in the British Museum. (Perhaps it’s that the room is rented out for receptions?) Even the lions in the Great Court look fairly content with their surroundings by comparison.

The Elgin Marbles????? I thought this was ‘paintings to see before you die’ The last time I looked the Elgin Marbles were NOT paintings!!!!!

“Oh, and going-to-see is interesting for the going-to-see-ers. I’ve got a couple of nice photos of people crowded round the Mona Lisa”

My favorite part of seeing the Mona Lisa several months ago was overhearing someone say “if that’s where the Mona Lisa is, then the curator’s body must have been right over here!”

“…latter part of his[Sargent] career largely painting landscapes, though, and I don’t know anyone who agrees with that.”

Yo. Here.

even excellent reproductions cannot substitute for the real thing because the relative luminance of colours on your screen will probably not be the same as in the original

Yeah, but for a huge fraction of old paintings, the relative luminance of colors in the “original” as it now exists are probably not the same as they were when it was painted, or even when other people looked at it a hundred or two hundred years ago. That said, a lot of paintings look really cool in real life. Someone mentioned Van Gogh above — if you haven’t seen how thick the texture of a lot of his work is, you’re really missing an important aspect of it. Most of his paintings should really not be considered two-dimensional works at all.

Then there are the paintings that still hang in their original locations. These don’t tend to be in the greatest condition, but there are often really interesting effects of light & perspective that you can’t appreciate unless you’re standing where you’re supposed to be standing in relation to the painting.

regarding the discussion of reproductions…

The National Gallery in London has had an experiment running in partnership with Hewlett Packard of doing awesomely high resolution photographs (digital photos of a few square cm, then digital pasting them together) and printing them on very high resolution scanners, with a specially wide range of inks.

They had some very interesting discussions on what worked & what didn’t, on the resolution & printing, etc

It cannot do the texture, and, as noted, for some paintings that really does matter. (Although Tom Womack’s point, that could easily be done too: 3D moulding or even 3D printing is cheap).

But the ones I saw were stunning – not just the accuracy but also the vividness. Even to the extent of the patina or cracks in the image.

Part of this is the size: we often think of reproductions as small, but something that is meant to be 50″x70″ will never look the same at 5″x7″ in a book or postcard.

#38 eh.. maybe Picasso was asking something of the viewer. He could have just written something on a plaque, I guess. Maybe something tasteful and deeeeeep like this might be more in your line. You won’t miss out on no symbols there.

Picasso’s Guernika is a really big, messy painting. He did it for the 1936 World Fair, and the exhibit at MNCARS has photographs of its intermediate stages, some of which remain visible. It’s a painting about a war, done while the war was going on, and Picasso was on the side that lost.

Go to Madrid. A day at the Prado (Hieronymous Bosch, anyone? Though there he’s called El Bosco. More works of Theotokopoulos – el Greco – than I could find in a day in Toledo) And the Thyssen-Bornemisza. And the Reina Sofía.

If seeing “Guernika” doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, you haven’t understood the twentieth century, or lived through it.

And Michelangelo’s Moses is just around the corner from the Coliseum. If you ever wind up in Rome you owe it to yourself to check it out.

#39,

A war memorial is supposed to be for all citizens. It can be minimalist with no symbols whatsoever. If it employs symbols, those symbols should be recognizeable to all citizens contemporary to the monument’s founding – the victory laurel wreath and the American bald eagle at the National WWII Memorial, the bas-reliefs on the Arc de Triomphe depicting angels (symbolizing divine providence), and, quoting Wikipedia, “heroically nude French youths against bearded Germanic warriors in chain mail” – an eccentric choice of imagery, the average French of that day could tell which figures were French and which were the vanquished enemy.

In contrast, Guernica employs a few symbols of mayhem, and a lot that is indecipherable – and intentionally so:

Picasso never committed to a specific explanation of his symbolism: “…this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”

On another note, I prefer that war memorials aren’t ugly.

I haven’t seen any of these works of art, BTW. Heck, except for Houston I haven’t even seen any of those cities. I have seen a different painting of Mont Sainte-Victoire (Cezanne did over 70, IIRC), at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum.

And Alan, if you think for half a second about what happened in Guernica, that might give you an idea why Picasso may have thought that building an Arc de Triompe would have been a little inappropriate.

Alan, my friend: I grieve for you.

Alan – If you don’t like Guernica, don’t go and see it. Spend the money on French Fries and gasoline.

Guerinica says more about Picasso’s lunacy than about the attack on Guernica.

Oh-kay. Perhaps the Valley of the Fallen is more your style? Plenty of symbolism there.

I never said anything about planning to go to Spain, much less Guernica, so your comment is just empty snark.

Yeah, pretty much. But seriously, the topic of this discussion is “20 Paintings to See Before You Die” so I think it’s fair to assume your arguments were addressed to the question of whether you (or anyone else) should go and see Guernica. That’s assuming that you weren’t just trying to hijack this thread to use it as a platform for your “deflationary” views of modern art. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?

Well, I’ve seen that one too, as it happens: I have to say that IMHO Dali is not a great painter. But it looks like we can agree on something: de gustibus non est disputandum.

One more thing: it would be well within the topic of this thread to question why certain paintings belong on such a list. One tends to assume that the inclusion of Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950 in such mostly-distinguished company implies that it great art. (Or maybe he was thrown in for comic relief, or for some other reason.)

I asked in comment 23 why people consider him a great artist, and nobody attempted an answer. Maybe such an answer is not possible. With regard to this medium, greatness tends to be self-evident. Someone who is not partial to Dali or Titian can see the skill present in their works. Pollock’s “pour” method (yes, I read the Wikipedia article) defies the historical method for appreciating portrait artwork; explaining its appeal as great art may simply be impossible to put into words.

Guernica was Picasso’s response to the Nazi’s terrorist bombing of the town of Guernica, which marked their entrance into the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco’s fascists. Dali was later a supporter of Franco and, arguably, a fascist.

(Dali flirted with Marxism in his youth, but then so did David Horowitz.)