This may sound self-centered, but I enjoy hanging my work. As a photographer for over four decades, I have numerous nature and landscape images I can choose from to print and hang. Some of my favorite prints remain on my walls, while I frame and hang newer work at other times.
I've been obsessed with this painting since 2000 when she was the youngest woman to be given a solo show at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh with Shift. It features in the novel I'm working on just now and the lack of traditional narrative (the kind I'd grown up with and the narrow lens through which I discussed paintings - background, middleground, foreground) has given me a structure around which to write, and I felt it a sign when I found a print of it hanging on the dining room wall at Moniack Mhor last winter where I'd gone to work on the manuscript.
I said the other day in the comments on your post, Katherine, that I struggle to stand still with a piece of art but this one is the exception. I probably go to see it every couple of years and I always find something new, or come to it with a different perspective or emotion. I used to imagine the folds of fabric like drapery, hanging vertically as the painting does. Now, though, I see them as crumpled bedsheets. Thanks for this prompt - really enjoying reading others' responses.
The original "Virginia Woolf in a Deckchair" by Vanessa Bell. As Jacques Lucas described it, "a trap for the gaze." On my European tour two years ago, I made it a point to spend a week in East Sussex traipsing through the homes and gardens of Bloomsbury. A childhood dream that would not release me. My soul was ablaze with joy.
That said, my home is filled with the socially conscious, charcoal and pencil drawings of Jeffrey Berg as well as wood carvings bought during a month's stay in South Africa.
Seeing as we just had the blue moon I’m going with Helen Frankenthaler’s Zone Blue and Basquiat’s Blue Heads. But I have art love, awe, and greed and I want all the paintings and a magic house that grows to accompany them all haha.
The Lawrence Tree by Georgia O’keefe. I first saw it in a textbook when I was 16 paired with Walt Whitman’s “When I heard the Learned Astronomer”. Both pieces of art resonated so deeply!!
Thank you for sharing this. I've never seen this piece. Some years ago I visited O'Keefe's home, but there was very little of her work on display. I didn't have the opportunity to visit the museum, but oh, her home was filled with spirits so present I cried.
How lovely! I got to see the Lawrence Tree many years after first seeing it in my textbook. I just wandered into a room in a museum to find it hanging there - such a wonderful surprise
I would also love Night Sleeper by Andrew Wyeth. The sleeping dog, the light, the out of time-ness of it, the calm hush of it. I would love to live with that painting. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/andrew-wyeth-night-sleeper
And finally I was able to see the Hilma af Klimt exhibition at the Guggeheim and have never been more blown away by an exhibition. Fantastic in all ways--the abstract but almost rigid symbolism, the color and quality of the paint, the scale.... I'd take any of it in a minute. Just stunning.
A woman, both green and nude, reclines upon a bed of moss, with an eaten apple discarded by her knee, and a snakeskin curled at her elbow. Trilliums bloom and bend over her, delphiniums too, irises surround her, a bee hovers above.
She is not ashamed, she is not going anywhere.
The title is, "This Garden is Mine"--and it hangs in my home. Sometimes I forget that, living in the American Deep South, some people might be a little taken aback by her direct gaze and nude body, green or not. Also, it's a self-portrait. I drew it with pastels in 2006. Because I am not ashamed, and I am not going anywhere.
When my son turned about 9 he was rather mortified by her, and insisted we put a sheet over her when his friends were coming over. I wouldn't have that--instead I cut a paper bikini for her and taped it to the glass.
Only one? It has to be Carel Fabritius "The Goldfinch". I saw it the first time right after art school graduation. I fell in love immediately. I saw it many years later when it visited the Frick. It had been cleaned, utterly exquisite! https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/our-collection/artworks/605-the-goldfinch/
There's something about the way her captures reflected light that has kept me staring for hours on more than one occasion. The first time I ever went to the d'Orsay, I got stuck on the Raboteurs and saw basically nothing else, but I left happy.
I wouldn't kick the Sargent out of my house either... nor most of the gorgeous things everyone has shared. What beauty!
As long as 'my wall' was The Great Wall of China we would be good! So, so many things I covet. Before I lived on a boat I lived in a house bedecked with pictures on every wall and I miss it. We invested in some art a few years ago and as we were living in a rental house then, before moving to the boat, I didn't get a chance to hang it and live with it properly which makes me very sad. Now it's all in storage, along with the things from the old house. I love living on a boat but I also look forward to living on dry land again so I can enjoy them all. What I would choose is so difficult to decide but I do return again and again to Totes Meer by Paul Nash https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-totes-meer-dead-sea-n05717 - It's such an uncanny, powerful painting. If I had the Great Wall of China I would also choose Bigger Trees Near Warter by David Hockney https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/resources/film/making-of-bigger-trees-near-warter
Is it wrong if I want all of yours, too? We crave more wall space and also fear it in equal measure... when we have more walls we tend to find more art. I love having it up, and it's a pricey thing to get seduced by...
I have often been curious to live on a boat, but hadn't considered the art aspect. The overall less space is both exciting and would also be a challenge, I expect. Has that been the case for you?
I'm happy to share! The boat is exciting to live on, and rationalising our lives to fit onto one was a very challenging but ultimately quite cathartic experience. People do hang art, but it requires far more effort than banging a nail in the wall and we chose not to do it in the end. I have a few things on shelves and rotate postcards propped against the books quite often. If we were planning on living on a boat long term I think I'd be more focussed in the way I display stuff. As it is, there is a haphazard quality to things that I quite enjoy and which drives my husband slightly mad. Our walls are metal, skinned in a plastic finish and all the wiring etc sits between the outer and inner, insulated walls of the boat. The walls are also slightly curved, so there are all the challenges when hanging stuff.
It would have to be Stanhope Forbes joyous recreation of Penzance Station, England’s untimate railway terminus. Still recognizable today, it captures the feeling of joy that never fails to fill me when the train finally pulls up in my favourite place
I’m going to be an absolute philistine (and likely offend the artist) but I’d rather like Richard Serra’s work “Matter of Time” in the middle of my garden. My walls are already cluttered with my photographs, textiles and drawings, interspersed by those of friends. If I could add a couple of major pieces then one of William Robinson’s “creation series” and any painting by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, please
This may sound self-centered, but I enjoy hanging my work. As a photographer for over four decades, I have numerous nature and landscape images I can choose from to print and hang. Some of my favorite prints remain on my walls, while I frame and hang newer work at other times.
Absolutely- why not!
I have some of my work on the walls too, a picture in oil pastels and some photos. And why not?
Haha, a lot of the artwork in my apartment is of my own photography too!
So wish we could share images here! I'd choose Sabine by Alison Watt:
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/59538/sabine
I've been obsessed with this painting since 2000 when she was the youngest woman to be given a solo show at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh with Shift. It features in the novel I'm working on just now and the lack of traditional narrative (the kind I'd grown up with and the narrow lens through which I discussed paintings - background, middleground, foreground) has given me a structure around which to write, and I felt it a sign when I found a print of it hanging on the dining room wall at Moniack Mhor last winter where I'd gone to work on the manuscript.
I said the other day in the comments on your post, Katherine, that I struggle to stand still with a piece of art but this one is the exception. I probably go to see it every couple of years and I always find something new, or come to it with a different perspective or emotion. I used to imagine the folds of fabric like drapery, hanging vertically as the painting does. Now, though, I see them as crumpled bedsheets. Thanks for this prompt - really enjoying reading others' responses.
I could look at that for hours!
This is stunning!!
Isn’t it!
that is absolutely gorgeous!
WOW!
LOVE this one.
The original "Virginia Woolf in a Deckchair" by Vanessa Bell. As Jacques Lucas described it, "a trap for the gaze." On my European tour two years ago, I made it a point to spend a week in East Sussex traipsing through the homes and gardens of Bloomsbury. A childhood dream that would not release me. My soul was ablaze with joy.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/769271180114060682/
That said, my home is filled with the socially conscious, charcoal and pencil drawings of Jeffrey Berg as well as wood carvings bought during a month's stay in South Africa.
Oh yes, that’s a lovely one!
Seeing as we just had the blue moon I’m going with Helen Frankenthaler’s Zone Blue and Basquiat’s Blue Heads. But I have art love, awe, and greed and I want all the paintings and a magic house that grows to accompany them all haha.
Yes please to the magic house 😂
Yes! I too have art love, awe and greed! x
The Lawrence Tree by Georgia O’keefe. I first saw it in a textbook when I was 16 paired with Walt Whitman’s “When I heard the Learned Astronomer”. Both pieces of art resonated so deeply!!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawrence_Tree
What a gorgeous pairing!
Thank you for sharing this. I've never seen this piece. Some years ago I visited O'Keefe's home, but there was very little of her work on display. I didn't have the opportunity to visit the museum, but oh, her home was filled with spirits so present I cried.
How lovely! I got to see the Lawrence Tree many years after first seeing it in my textbook. I just wandered into a room in a museum to find it hanging there - such a wonderful surprise
If you ever get a chance to go to Taos and visit the home of DH Lawrence, the tree is still there. A lovely secluded place in the hills.
This is my favorite thread to peruse over! What a joy to see what art people love!
I've had a postcard of Lady with Ermine by Leonardo from the National Gallery follow along my various offices for some time--I just love the quality of the details, the age of it, the sort of quiet ease of its realism. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lady-with-an-ermine/HwHUpggDy_HxNQ?hl=en
I would also love Night Sleeper by Andrew Wyeth. The sleeping dog, the light, the out of time-ness of it, the calm hush of it. I would love to live with that painting. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/andrew-wyeth-night-sleeper
And finally I was able to see the Hilma af Klimt exhibition at the Guggeheim and have never been more blown away by an exhibition. Fantastic in all ways--the abstract but almost rigid symbolism, the color and quality of the paint, the scale.... I'd take any of it in a minute. Just stunning.
I would definitely take Lady with Ermine any day!
John Everett Millais' "Ophelia"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/John_Everett_Millais_-_Ophelia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Another one I used to work with in the Tate! I always love to see pastiches of it too - the composition endures.
I have this hanging above my bath so I can watch her not quite yet drowned whilst I echo her lying in, probably warmer, water.
A woman, both green and nude, reclines upon a bed of moss, with an eaten apple discarded by her knee, and a snakeskin curled at her elbow. Trilliums bloom and bend over her, delphiniums too, irises surround her, a bee hovers above.
She is not ashamed, she is not going anywhere.
The title is, "This Garden is Mine"--and it hangs in my home. Sometimes I forget that, living in the American Deep South, some people might be a little taken aback by her direct gaze and nude body, green or not. Also, it's a self-portrait. I drew it with pastels in 2006. Because I am not ashamed, and I am not going anywhere.
https://stephanie.studio/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/833x653.gif
Excellent! A goddess!
When my son turned about 9 he was rather mortified by her, and insisted we put a sheet over her when his friends were coming over. I wouldn't have that--instead I cut a paper bikini for her and taped it to the glass.
😂😂😂
Stunning.
Thank you
Only one? It has to be Carel Fabritius "The Goldfinch". I saw it the first time right after art school graduation. I fell in love immediately. I saw it many years later when it visited the Frick. It had been cleaned, utterly exquisite! https://www.mauritshuis.nl/en/our-collection/artworks/605-the-goldfinch/
Ah yes, this is such a wonderful piece
I too saw it at The Frick. I made a special trip from Washington just to lay eyes on it.
The first time I saw it was at the National Gallery in Washington DC. So worth the trip! It's a gem!
just fantastic!
So beautiful
I'd have to have a Caillebotte. Either Raboteurs de Parquet / The Floor Scrapers(https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/oeuvres/raboteurs-de-parquet-105) or the one in the Art Institute of Chicago, Paris Street: Rainy Day. Those umbrellas! https://www.artic.edu/artworks/20684/paris-street-rainy-day
There's something about the way her captures reflected light that has kept me staring for hours on more than one occasion. The first time I ever went to the d'Orsay, I got stuck on the Raboteurs and saw basically nothing else, but I left happy.
I wouldn't kick the Sargent out of my house either... nor most of the gorgeous things everyone has shared. What beauty!
I never realised those two paintings were by the same person!
He’s incredible, right?
Amazing! They’re actually both quite different in terms of their handling of light and the painted surface. What incredible skill!
https://images.app.goo.gl/JYPW57Gz1jwqrdzB6
Anything by Joan Eardly really….
Oh yes, how lovely!
I love Joan Eardly🧡
What wonderful layers and texture!
As long as 'my wall' was The Great Wall of China we would be good! So, so many things I covet. Before I lived on a boat I lived in a house bedecked with pictures on every wall and I miss it. We invested in some art a few years ago and as we were living in a rental house then, before moving to the boat, I didn't get a chance to hang it and live with it properly which makes me very sad. Now it's all in storage, along with the things from the old house. I love living on a boat but I also look forward to living on dry land again so I can enjoy them all. What I would choose is so difficult to decide but I do return again and again to Totes Meer by Paul Nash https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nash-totes-meer-dead-sea-n05717 - It's such an uncanny, powerful painting. If I had the Great Wall of China I would also choose Bigger Trees Near Warter by David Hockney https://www.thedavidhockneyfoundation.org/resources/film/making-of-bigger-trees-near-warter
And if I could pinch a sculpture it would be Jacob and the Angel by Joseph Epstein https://thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk/exhibition/jacob-epstein-jacob-and-the-angel/
I ADORE Jacob and the Angel. It’s so muscular. And I love your commitment to scale!
Ha ha! I am very much a more is more kind of woman!
Is it wrong if I want all of yours, too? We crave more wall space and also fear it in equal measure... when we have more walls we tend to find more art. I love having it up, and it's a pricey thing to get seduced by...
I have often been curious to live on a boat, but hadn't considered the art aspect. The overall less space is both exciting and would also be a challenge, I expect. Has that been the case for you?
I'm happy to share! The boat is exciting to live on, and rationalising our lives to fit onto one was a very challenging but ultimately quite cathartic experience. People do hang art, but it requires far more effort than banging a nail in the wall and we chose not to do it in the end. I have a few things on shelves and rotate postcards propped against the books quite often. If we were planning on living on a boat long term I think I'd be more focussed in the way I display stuff. As it is, there is a haphazard quality to things that I quite enjoy and which drives my husband slightly mad. Our walls are metal, skinned in a plastic finish and all the wiring etc sits between the outer and inner, insulated walls of the boat. The walls are also slightly curved, so there are all the challenges when hanging stuff.
Totally fascinating and an ongoing challenge, it sounds like. But sometimes challenges bring opportunity, I suspect. Thank you so much for sharing!
xx
https://www.hopkinscollection.com/greetingcards/prod_7672989-Stanhope-Forbes-The-Terminus-Penzance-Station-Cornwall.html
It would have to be Stanhope Forbes joyous recreation of Penzance Station, England’s untimate railway terminus. Still recognizable today, it captures the feeling of joy that never fails to fill me when the train finally pulls up in my favourite place
So evocative - it really reminds me of a children’s book I used to have
I’d love to know which one!
Modigliani- Jeanne Hébuterne. Reading a book about his life and work really captivated me!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_H%C3%A9buterne_with_Hat_and_Necklace
Oh yes, that would be lovely!
I love this piece. Before I leave this planet, I must see his work up close. He makes me happy, even when his subject is less so.
I would love a full sized Franz Marc ‘playing forms’ saw it as a teenager, bought the postcard and decades later I still love it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Franz_Marc
I just googled it - incredible colours!
I’m going to be an absolute philistine (and likely offend the artist) but I’d rather like Richard Serra’s work “Matter of Time” in the middle of my garden. My walls are already cluttered with my photographs, textiles and drawings, interspersed by those of friends. If I could add a couple of major pieces then one of William Robinson’s “creation series” and any painting by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, please
I love the idea of offending Richard Serra :)