Question of the Day | 06/15/2009 11:00 pm

If you could have one piece of artwork by one artist to call your own, what would you choose? Why?

Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney and Joan Juliet Buck take us on a tour of their favorite gallery pieces.

Joan Ganz Cooney | 06/15/2009 11:00 pm

Joan Ganz Cooney's Thrilling Artwork

My answer is the same as the last time I answered this question. If I could have any one painting, I’d choose Matisse’s red one in the Hermitage. It thrills me like no other.

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Judith Martin | 06/15/2009 11:00 pm

Judith Martin on The Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo

Not one of the greatest works, which are too emotional for everyday life. It would be Gentile Bellini’s The Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, which shows a religious procession in Venice that has been halted because someone dropped the piece of the True Cross into the canal. I have a small reproduction in my bathroom, and it never ceases to amuse me, thinking about what you would say if you had been the person who did it. "It’s not my fault — he pushed me"? Or "Hey, I said I was sorry; what more do you want"?

Also, I like picking out faces in the crowd, who are old friends from history, such as the artist himself and Queen Caterina of Cyprus, Venice’s answer to Grace Kelly. Instead of wondering who is the idiot who dropped the True Cross off the bridge, and how anyone is supposed to find a piece of old wood in the canal (it took a miracle), they are all standing around looking bored, no doubt fretting that the delay is going to make them late for their lunch dates.

Fortunately the Accademia is unlikely to let me have the real picture, because I don’t have the wall space.

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Candice Bergen | 06/15/2009 11:00 pm

Candice Bergen Orientalists Art Preference

There is a painting in the Williamstown museum whose name I forget, but it is an oil by Jerome of a scene in the Middle East, an Orientalist painting of a young boy, naked, standing with his back to the viewer, and he is surrounded by men sitting, smoking hookahs, transfixed, that is so beautiful and suggestive … I love it. I love all the Orientalists. I also love the Monet Moroccan series. A landscape in Munich by Altdorfer that is magnificent. The Zurbaran Lemons. Any Giacometti.

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Joan Juliet Buck | 06/15/2009 11:00 pm

Joan Juliet Buck: A 3-D Liubov Popova

This still life by Liubov Popova (1889-1924) is actually in 3-D — the white curves stick out of the canvas. I saw it at the Guggenheim in Venice about ten years ago, and, frankly, I want it.

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Julia Reed | 06/16/2009 1:53 pm

Julia Reed's Extraordinary Museum Postcard Collection

Oh, Lord, that is way too hard. I want so many things, so I make do instead with hundreds of museum postcards that I have stuck all around my office: a dozen Audubon birds (I’d adore a long hall hung with the complete double elephant folio), Thomas Eakins, a Morris Lewis, an Ed Ruscha, several Goyas, a William Dunlap of a dog running through intense green, a Julian Onderdonk field of bluebonnets, Turner’s Queen Mab’s Cave, a Manet still life, a lush and hilarious Paul de Vos from the Prado called Fight of Cats in the Pantry, an Indian miniature of an emerald green bird, Courbet’s breathtaking The Origin of the World, and on and on and on. The pressure is too great to choose just one, so I’d probably settle for something I know I’d love to look at all the time: one of Luis Melendez’s 18th century still-lives, also from the Prado. They are extraordinary and on view right now at the National Gallery in D.C. I urge you to get there before August 23, or failing that, to follow them to L.A. or Boston.

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69 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

That’s a good one, F P

By James the Game on 06/16/2009 12:43 pm

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Frank: check out Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) she is know as the female Caravaggio. Her father studied under him, if I recall. Her "Judith Beheading Holofernes" and "Susanna & the Elders" are marvelous. I always wished I could have a huge room that housed all my favorite paintings, my own mini museum. One painting that I love that I do have is Paul Cornoyer’s "After Rain."( He’s an American Impressionist). It’s a street scene, after rain, in the 19th century, and depicts a woman walking along with two children on either side of her, another figure is some feet behind her. Whenever I look at it I think of my grandmother who wore the same attire, but then I identify with the woman with those two children; it’s almost as if I could have lived during that period which I have always been drawn to––pure romance—pure nostalgia.

I have discovered that my love for art started way back and that the art that moves me moves me because I see it with my mind as well as my eyes.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 06/16/2009 1:07 pm

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Anything by Dale Chihuly. His glass just thrills me; it makes me happy, every time.

By Maryalice Chester on 06/16/2009 7:20 am

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Hello Maryalice…welcome to wow…I hope you enjoy your stay! You are, so far, the lone voice for 3-D in a sea of 2-D….I don’t really want to get into the 2-D/3-D dispute (what is art? craft? discussion…but it is still in the interest of gallery owners/high taste arbiters to fuel and perpetuate the argument..) I will just vote yes w/you on Chihuly (and Sam Malloof…) Did you see the PBS show about DC? I’m close to Louisville, KY where there is a lively glass community….a large new facility is in the works across the river in S. Indiana that will be "powered" by methane from a defunct landfill….Kentucky’s version of DC would be Stephen Rolfe Powell….well worth your Google time! Now I have to figure out my answer to the original question…..

By georgia fatwood on 06/16/2009 11:10 am

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Oh so difficult to decide! To be practical, since my home would not support a huge painting like a Rubens, I would pick a Rembrant etching or a small Matisse. Something to treasure forever. But, I also love the Andy Warhol idea - the soup cans??

By christine w on 06/16/2009 7:44 am

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My first response was "anything Picasso" but then I remembered a painting that was in a restaurant in Washington, DC that still resonates all these years later. A jockey sitting on a fence; obviously having just lost. The artist captured this abject loss; shoulders slumped, holding the riding crop, head down, it just spoke to me…….if I could have one painting that would be it.

There is one I own, though a print, that shows two small figures…small in relation to their surroundings, holding hands, traveling through a forest with tall, tall trees. It struck me then and still does…..my husband and I traveling through life together facing all those frightening challenges….together. I know, I know, really sentimental; but there it is.

By Andy C on 06/16/2009 8:02 am

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Turner, Turner, Turner. Whenever I’d visit London, I’d spend hours at the Tate where their collections of Turner’s works are rotated. Of course, my budget was tight, so I collected prints, had them framed, and felt surrounded by his visions——until I retired and happily moved to a smaller apartment in Greenwich Village where space is tight, so my friends and family inherited these glorious colors and shapes.

By SURA B on 06/16/2009 8:26 am

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Shirley: you may like to read John Updike’s essay on Turner whom he admired greatly.

By phyllis Doyle Pepe on 06/16/2009 1:29 pm

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Thanks. I’ll look for it.

By SURA B on 06/16/2009 4:22 pm

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The series of Monet’s paintings "Irises" in his garden. I fell in love them in college and would cherish them each day in my home. Also, there is a little known Quebec artist out of Montreal who does wonderful and quirky works of women. I forgot his name but anyone who visits Montreal can view his work in a place called Bonsecour Market in the Old Port.

By Laurie Deer on 06/16/2009 8:27 am

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This is a tough one. So many to choose from and a lot depends on my mood on any given day. I love most of the Old Masters. But I think I am going to go with something by John William Waterhouse or Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

By Deena B. on 06/16/2009 8:29 am

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Remington is one of my favorites. He is more famous for his sculptures but I have a reproduction of one of his paintings that reminds me of the beautiful country we live in. I dragged my kids all over the West every chance I got to see all the national parks etc.

By Barbara B on 06/16/2009 8:41 am

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Barbara, I saw part of his collection a few years back while on loan at the Houston Museum. Such a story in each piece!!! I , and several others, just stood and let our imaginations run wild.

By Maggie W on 06/16/2009 10:13 am

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I still get lost in my husband’s work, every painting that I kept (when rent was not due) is a treasure, I see him sitting there with his "ears" on listening to opera’s. His work belongs in my little corner of my soul.

Now, ask me tomorrow what I would like besides him and it would be Mary Cassatt or a trillion others, today I am homesick so I would want poppies everywhere. Monet, O Keefe,Van Gogh, different styles but poppies touch my Flemish heart.

Next week I may go modern but do not count on it.

By Jeannot Kensinger on 06/16/2009 8:54 am

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So many. An Edward Hopper of just yellow field grass and dark pine trees, not one of his famous woman staring out window or lighthouses. The light is so perfect, I am drawn right in, every time. A Whistler nocturne, in the Freer Gallery. Edward Tanner’s Annunciation. A Novgorod icon. A Celtic stone head. A Cahoon mermaid primitive. A pen drawing by Edward Gorey. A translucent jade funerary object from China. Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I think the answer is the same for all of them as to "why." They draw me in and engage me with the artist. Gilbert Stuart’s "The Skater." A chunk of fresco painting from Pompeii. Barnett Newman’s "Stations of the Cross." Bruegel’s "Hunters in the Snow." This type of reflection could go on and on …and on.

By Washington Cube on 06/16/2009 9:11 am