If you could choose one artwork to own, what would it be?

[AllaMova]

With the following caveat, you must select one that you love, rather than for its worth etc.

At the moment, I would choose “Sketch of a Seated Cat” by Gwen John. ❤️

Haven't rtft and don't know if sculptures are allowed, but if so can I have Michelangelo's David? It's overwhelming in the flesh.

The artwork I’d love to have - or even just experience again - is The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson. Of course, I need the turbine hall of a defunct power station to put in.

Seems hard to believe it’s 23 years ago. We went to this show so many times. It’s impossible to capture in a photograph what it was like to be there. Heady days. Thinking about “you can’t step in the same river twice” and all that, maybe it’s best that it has never been repeated.

Edward Hopper Hotel Room. I saw it in Madrid in 2000. I was wandering round the Thyssen-Bornemisza being rather baffled by just how much the art was moving people (I had only ever had that experience in theatre) when I turned a corner & saw Habitacion Hotel & ‘got it.’

I ‘read’ it very differently to the standard interpretation of the woman sad & abandoned - it spoke to me of a woman like me at that time - always on the move, rocking up in hotel rooms, stripping off as I was always hot, looking at the train timetable for the next day (I was doing my doctorate at the time & moving around a lot with my research.) I factored it in to a lecture some months later…

There’s a long story that followed of researching Hopper, falling in love with another piece by him, trying to track it down, finding IBM had it away from the public & bollocking them for not taking care of it, but even though that’s my favourite I’d still want Hotel Room as that’s what started the obsession.

'A bloody big boat' as James Bond says to Q!

@Whosthetabbynow, if you’ve not found my post: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/farah-nayeri-on-david-hockneys-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy

Oh, DH and I went to that together. We hadn't long since moved to London for our first post-university jobs, were living in a sublimely grotty flatshare, and were both recovering from bad colds. I remember lying down on the ground with our heads on our bundled-up coats in the middle of other people doing the same, and thinking everything was going to be OK, London was home now, and we were making lives for ourselves.

@Quella Did you write that article? I absolutely love the Hockney. It captures the era so well. I adore cats and to include Percy was just genius.

Apologies. I misunderstood. Xx

Le Lit by Toulouse Lautrec. I just love it.

The light of the world

@Smallorveryfaraway

I fell in love with Monet’s La Pie when I saw it in the flesh.

The subtle hues are what makes it beautiful.

I also love Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, having recently seen it in The Hague.

I also love anything my Dante Gabrielle Rosetti.

xx

Caravaggio’s Medusa

Frederic Edwin Church, Rainy Season In The Tropics.

Interested in the ownership angle. Ownership v favourite. Is there a difference here?

So many, I couldn’t choose! But I’ve just been to the Gwen John show in Cardiff and she’s fresh in my mind, so I’ll go for her studies of people in church.
I loved them all, so have picked one fairly arbitrarily.
Gwen John

I’ve spent hours and hours looking at her work, and have had posters of it in my house for decades, and never had an issue. So I hope not!

Don’t think that worked.

https://www.wikiart.org/en/gwen-john/nuns-and-schoolgirls-standing-in-church

What a great thread! So many fabulous choices… but I’d have the Jewish Bride by Rembrandt. This blew me away when I saw it in person, love and tenderness captured in paint - also less sad than his self-portraits which are also amazing.
www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/object/Isaac-and-Rebecca-Known-as-The-Jewish-Bride--019c1265e6dbf108d4587ab2b7c02c66

@Whosthetabbynow, I wish I could have written such a great article! I love the fact that Percy was actually Blanche (Percy the cat’s mum!) but Hockney thought the painting title would be better using Percy.

A gorgeous triptych by Robert Jenninson, that I know is not for sale, or a huge beach scene by Owen Wilson, that I know is for sale but I can't afford.

"Sketch of a Seated Cat" lovely...none of the others spoke to me as this one does.
Also, I've always loved Karen Hollingsworth "Gentle Reader" but then, I love ( realistic looking) sea-scapes and I can just picture myself in that chair!

Two crabs by Van Gogh , I've just the spot for it too

Isolated Being by Louis le Brocquy

Poplars on the Epte (1891) by Claude Monet (as they hang in Edinburgh, I can stare at them for ever……..)

Aah, The Dreamers. My friend and I call this "The Opium Party" 🥳