Ok, you can pick 10 paintings past or contemporary -which???

ditto

And I'll raise that ditto.
I have the impression that his bottom designs have been (legitimately) inspired by the natural designs in sidewalk cracks/patterns.

The painter whose work I like least of all of these recent favorites is Blackman, and I like a lot of his too.

I've come to this thread very late, but here are 10 paintings I'd love to have:
1) Any illuminated page from the BOOK OF KELLS
2) Any scroll of early Chinese calligraphy
3) Any painting from the Duc de Berry's TRES RICHES HEURES
4) Any Fra Angelico
5) Any Botticelli
6) Grunewald's RESURRECTION (from the triptych)
7) A Breton winter scene by Gauguin
8) Any late van Gogh landscape
9) VICOMTE LEPIC AND HIS DAUGHTERS by Degas
10) Any Matisse from the 1920's

Anything by F E Church, especially Cotopaxi.
Turner is good too.
I like the Da Vinci illustrations in his notebooks.Do they count?

sure they count!

I would love to own some japanese work, either painting or prints; say a screen with a beautiful peaceful landscape on it.

After having seen this one "live" at the Metropolitan Museum this afternoon, I have to add it to my list.



Wall of Light Desert Night (Sean Scully)

Actually, I loved everything in the room (a special exhibit of Scully's "Wall of Light" works). I don't know what it is about them that appeals to me so, but they sure do.

I can make a jump to that, enjoying it, anyway.

how large is it? not that it matters, but to understand..

I see I missed all the posts after my own last one. I'm going to be looking up all of Miklos' choices for the pleasure of it.

It's pretty big, osso: the Met's website says the dimensions in inches are 108 x 132, which, if my math is correct, means it's 9 feet by 11 feet. The Met exhibit includes several works that size, as well as several smaller ones.

I had never heard of Scully until I visited the Tate Modern on a trip to London last year. I hated just about everything that was on display at the Tate Modern at that time, except for Scully's works, which may have something to do with why I've always felt warmly towards them ever since (for having redeemed what would otherwise have been a wasted afternoon).

I love the painterly effect (thickness of paint) of this Scully. The design doesn't move me very much (it has become cliche), but I do respond to his very effective use of black to set off the wonderful colors.

Well, I can see how it is light desert night... or desert night light... It's not so much the painting itself, but the separated colors related to night. I wouldn't want the painting, I'm almost stopped from thinking of night by the pattern, and I can see it aggravating me if I kept passing the painting.. but I enjoy the glimpse now.

Osso, I think that's a crucial criterion. I must want to see the painting over and over again. It's a reason I do not care for performance or installation art, any more than I like (temporary) Tibetian sand paintings or ice sculptures (except that they are not intended to be art works). I love the notion of OBJECTS of art.

I might agree, tell us more...

We've both done paintings about night, you with the one I think of and you might have named Night on the Edge of Town, or was that my name for it in my mind... and me with Night Comes A Sky Horse. I'd do many more night paintings if I drove at twilight and could get photos..last light being exquisite to me, abstract or symbolic, impressionable or photoreal.

This painting Bree showed by Scully might mean... oh, Las Vegas, to me.

Oh, but wait, some performance art has been memorable to me.

My ex has signed up various acts as a consultant for a theater arts/civic center complex, and I enjoyed many, well, ok, some.

I haven't followed installation art that closely, though I liked what I saw the one time I was at the Whitney, some stuff by Diller and Scofidio. I hate hate hated installation art the first time I saw it at LAICA.

Oops, it wasn't Installation Art, it was Process Art. Beg your pardon.

with any luck, a google page for Scully images -
http://images.google.com/images?q=sean+scully&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

Which makes me less interested, at least at first glance.

I bet a Met curator can tell me more...

I trust Bree's attraction to Scully's work. Bree, can you describe your liking?

I wish I could, osso, but I'm not quite sure what it is. I just find them very pleasing to look at (and I think, but of course can't be sure, that they would remain so to me, and thus would meet your test of time, which I agree is an important test).

The colors he uses (especially in works like the one I posted) are, of course, a big part of it. And there's something about the way the bars are arranged -- a sort of asymmetrical symmetry, or symmetrical asymmetry, if you will -- that I enjoy following as I look at them. (Although I'm entirely bereft of artistic talent, when I doodle I tend to doodle geometric shapes. Make of that what you will.)

As I wrote the part about asymmetrical symmetry, I realized that it could also describe the quilts that were part of the wonderful "Quilts of Gee's Bend" exhibit that was at the Whitney a couple of years ago. Here are some images from that show.

Quilts of Gee's Bend

And here are some more Scully images from the Met's show:

Scully images

Obviously, the mediums are completely different (the thickness of the paint in Scully's work that JLNobody mentioned not being an option with quilts, to mention just one example), but I think the similarities may be part of what appeals to me in both Scully's work and the Gee's Bend quilts.

I checked out the Google site. If you ask me Scully's STYLE has taken over creativity. To some degree at least. He seems to be painting the same painting over and over again. But he's a fine colorist, no doubt.

Bree, in contrast to some posters over time (not meaning JL), I think everybody has capacity for art, and along with one of my teachers, I think that sometimes the harder it is to come by, the more interesting. I wouldn't be so quick to denounce yourself.
Got the quilt reference. (My mother's quilts had a lot of triangles,,,).

I'll let this go. Scully isn't a painter for me personally, but many aren't, and so?

Individual attraction to art/paintings is almost what it is all about.