Deep Thought Thursday: 1 piece of art

I play this game with anyone I go to an art exhibit with . . .

If money were no object . . . if space were no object . . . If you could take home any piece of art you see here, what would it be? (Implied: What do you want to live with?)

Me with de Kooning's Woman IV at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Me with de Kooning's Woman IV at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

In order to play today's game, I'd like for you to think back on the most recent exhibit you attended tell us about the work you'd want to live with. If you can find it, share a link to the image with us. (Just one link, please. Otherwise, my blog will think it's a spam comment.)

Most recently, I attended the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and came upon this de Kooning that I'd like to live with–perhaps mostly because we just finished reading about him in our artist book club. But, honestly, I'd love to live with her. I know I'd see something new each time!

My husband Rob selected anything and everything in the Isamu Noguchi Court. I'm 100% behind him on this one! (See the video below to see what I mean.)

If you can't recall a single work from the last exhibit you visited, you can select one from the past year. But this isn't a “1 work from all time” list.

PS: If you haven't visited any exhibits recently, you need to get out more. There's so much to see and so little time!

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24 thoughts on “Deep Thought Thursday: 1 piece of art”

  1. I would select two works from Carolyn Quan. The first being this elephant collage: http://www.carolynquan.com/gallery.2008/2008.gentlespirits.html There is just something mystical about it. It seems to bring the past and present together with the universe as a whole. It appears very down-to-earth and yet spiritual at the same time. For some reason, it speaks to me. I love to visit this link from time to time just to feel moved by the piece.

    Then there’s her Hawaiin girl hereL http://www.carolynquan.com/gallery.2008/2008.healinggarden.html
    It is as though the girl is becoming one with the universe and herself. As though she is relishing in what is, what was, and what will be. Very spiritual.

  2. Monet’s “Water Lilies-1904”, a pick from my last museum visit. It’s also on my top five all-time. Others all time: Klee’s “Golden Fish.” Picasso’s “Guernevaca” (except it would have to have a curtain over it most of the time). Rembrandt’s “Golden Helmet” (I know they say it ain’t by Rembrandt). Constable’s “Salisbury Cathedral”. Pollack’s “Full Fathom Five” for when Guernevaca is covered.

  3. Ooh – I always do this when I go to shows!

    At Clyde Aspevig’s show earlier this year I stood in front of his painting
    “Golden Willows” for half an hour – the depth of color and texture and brushwork were just amazing. It’s one of those paintings you could live with for years and still see something new every day. The photo of it here, while pretty, doesn’t hold a candle to the depth of the real thing: http://www.clydeaspevig.com/clyde_aspevig_golden_willows.html

  4. I also saw the Clyde Aspevig exhibition this year. It was one of the best exhibitions that I have seen in quite a while. There was one painting, “Prairie Moonrise” that I kept returning to. The artist considers this painting to be one of his small “gems”. It has an ethereal quality that spoke to me. There were some other paintings that I also liked very much such as “Raindrops and Dragonflies”, and ” Lake Katahdin Maine”.

  5. I visited the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff last month. Amongst the wonderful paintings and photographs the small but immensely powerful The Shooting Stars by Jean-François Millet was the one I wanted to take home with me…not my favourite painter by a long way but i was moved by this piece. http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/art/online/?action=show_item&item=1323
    This is a game I always play when visiting a gallery or museum….focuses the mind wonderfully.
    Sally

  6. Last November (2008) I attended the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I have loved Van Gogh’s work for many, many years and in this exhibition I saw, in person, for the first time “The Sower” that is a painting I’d love to live with!

    After viewing the painitng I sat on a nearby bench and wrote this about The Sower, in my sketchbook…

    “I could get lost forever in the smokey lavendars, mauves and blue grays of the sowers field. Earthy gold erupts here and there among the dusky shadows of the field, a receptive earth greedily opens to the seeds he sows. The sun blazes and radiates, burining the sky as it sets in a thousand refracted, fractured bits of light as the day closes. The sky is hot but the earth has already cooled. The subtle shadows fill every nook of crumbly, fertile earth. The sower content, even joyful, in his work strides along ignoring the crows that chatter and thieve. Silence and only the faint, impreceptible sound of seeds hitting the earth disturb the sacredness of the act of sowing.”

  7. A couple of months ago I went to the California Arts Club show at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in Malibu, California. I loved David Gallup’s , The Glistening Playground, 2009, 30 x 40 inches. It has layers and layers of stumbled (dry brush technique) shimmering color, but it also has a quiet romanticism in the depiction of the pacific ocean, surfers, and dolphins – it reminded me of sailing when I was a kid and the dolphins would tag along.

    http://newberryworkshop.com/Tutorial/imagen/imagen.html

  8. Oh thats a hard one!!

    But if I could have only one, it would have to be “The Horse Fair” by Rosa Bonheur.
    Created in the 1850s, you have to salute this artist’s heroic efforts, (the painting is 8′ x 16′) not only for creating such a colossal masterpiece, but also for dispelling prejudices against women artists at the time.

    http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rlsm/ho_87.25.htm

    And since I get to dream big here, I might also build this painting its own home. With only one chair set in the middle of the room, in which to sit and admire it.

  9. I don’t usually comment on DTT, but have to respond to one thing.

    Sari: Love this comment! We have spider sculptures on the outside of our house and they receive quite the stares when people notice them. One neighbor was just flummoxed as to why we would ever put giant spiders on our walls. She thought we might be entomologists or something. I think she was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated, but she said her young son absolutely loved them. I love it when art starts conversation!

  10. For me it would be Norman Rockwells ” The problem we all live with” , Lois Mailou Jones “Mob Victim” and “The Banjo Lesson” by Henry O. Tanner. These three paintings taught me how to marry emotion and art.

  11. Without invading your privacy (Dear ArtBizCoach), maybe just a close-up photo without the background of your home, I would love to see your giant spiders, & I’m pretty sure there are a few others who are interested- seeing as spiders are so good with their hands & make such intricate art themselves…If not possible, I just want to say That is so cool!

  12. I need to get out more. Haven’t been to see anything of note in a while. But I did see Ray Materson’s work at the NY Folk Art Museum several years ago – see he was just at the Belger Art Center in KC. His work was so amazing – I was happy to see him in the exhibit that Christine Sauer referenced and will go look for his book.

  13. Saw Brian Rutenburgs Show at the College ofCharleston in Charleston SC. HIs work is so awsome. The colors are beautiful and his abstract design work is just beautiful. He has incredible talent!!

  14. About a week ago I visited “Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art” in Denmark. As I live in the south of Sweden it was not so long travel for me. The exhibition shows a huge collection of paintings by Anselm Kiefer, a now living painter from Germany. I found the exhibition and the paintings very good. The painting that I should be abel to deal with at home is shown at my blog. The museums website has flash so the pictures changes all the time and I don´t know how to point at a specific painting. So I did a screenshot and put it in my blog. http://lenaohlen.com/archives/582

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