People are bored. Well, lucky, middle class people and more people are bored, as opposed to the less lucky who are busy trying to work out how to feed their families with no wage.
So there are plenty of social media “challenges” out there attempting to keep the lucky people busy and one of them was to spend a week choosing and sharing one of your favourite pieces of art each day.
& it’s raining so the garden is washed out as an activity.
The first took no thought at all. I have always, totally and probably irrationally loved the Van Gogh Sunflowers to be found in the National Gallery.
No idea why this specific, one of many, sunflowers appeals the most but it always has. Whilst the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is wonderful and well worth a visit (along with the Kroller-Muller Museum in Brabant) to see his many paintings, this one, close to home has always given the most enjoyment, not happiness exactly, but a sort of struggling, wonky joyfulness.
Somewhere on the list has to be a Modigliani nude.
Of all the male artists painting women nude, he seems to enjoy their bodies the most and that pleasure, that satisfaction seems to translate into the painting itself somehow. His nudes and portraits seem to be the antithesis of Picasso whose portraits of women always seem to feel a little cruel.
In any selection of my favourite paintings there would have to be a portrait by Rembrandt, probably not a self-portrait but rather a commission of one of the powerful, wealthy men and their wives. More than most, Rembrandt seems to capture the soul of a person within their portrait with kindness.
There would also have to be a painting by Klimt, one reason I’m thinking about making a trip to Vienna to view some of his many joyful works housed in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The most obvious delights are covered with gold, the Kiss or the portraits of Adele Blochar, but some of his more fantastical works, stages of life and/or death are beautiful.
So far, and I’m tending towards chocolate box, pretty art. Whilst tempting to tack back towards some kind of gritty reality with modern artists, Rodin is hardly gritty. Whilst the Thinker or Lovers are tempting, my favourite Rodin would be the man with a broken nose.
It would be difficult to choose just one Giacometti sculpture, though the Tate exhibition certainly highlighted the figures ranging from massive to matchbox. The sculptures that I remembered most clearly were the most simple, the Nose or the Arm.
But surely there should be some current artwork included in any list of favourites? Or some women?
Paula Rego
Or maybe Bridget Riley?
Or Georgia O’Keefe whose exhibition warranted four separate visits with different people and alone.
And then when the end of the most immediate or “quick” list is reached, there are the various and insistent “what about…” such as Rothko.
Or Sergent, how could I miss John Singer Sargent?
Or the current national treasure that is David Hockney?
But what about photography, about Ansel Adams,
or Annie Leibovitz, whose portrait of a very pregnant Demi Moore is a memory from my youth. I bought the magazine because of the cover – I’d never seen anything like it.
And suddenly there are too many artists and too many pieces of art, rather than too few to mention and two weeks have skipped by without thinking.
