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Books, movies, or art works that have had a profound impact on your life?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by dmc89, Dec 2, 2010.

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  1. dmc89

    dmc89 Member

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    Oh wow I actually took Art History in undergrad, and I learnt about the painting because of that.

    In The Calling of St. Matthew, you can barely recognize the important religious figures from afar but there are hints in the details. I liked that; in modern life, it's hard to find anything religious in what some people do, but on close observance, you see goodness in their lives i.e. my volunteer experience with a poor, single mother raising her son in the South Side of Chicago.

    Btw, Caravaggio used Adam's hand gesture from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel as a hint.

    Most importantly, the strong contrast of light/dark (tenebrism) using the beam of sunlight in a dark room symbolizes religious epiphany. Yet only one person can see the "light" (ironic because he is a tax collector); the two other men are hunched over busy counting money and they sit in the darkness.

    Although I'm a Muslim, this painting has some of the same ideas as Islam. For instance, how the mysteries of religion are inner and external experiences open to everybody, and that those who focus only on the material world are blinded by its 'darkness'/unable to the see the light.
     
    #21 dmc89, Dec 7, 2010
    1 person likes this.
  2. 00rocketgirl

    00rocketgirl Member

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    Books:
    Brave New World
    Bible
    To Kill a Mocking Bird

    Art:
    saw this on a fieldtrip to some art museum in Houston years back. I just stood there staring at it for the majority of the time we spent there. It's pretty large in size and I couldn't get over how lifelike she is. Favorite painting of all time
    Joan of Arc- Jules Bastien-Lepage.
    100 x 110 in
    [​IMG]
     
    #22 00rocketgirl, Dec 7, 2010
  3. finalsbound

    finalsbound Member

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    I hate to say it, but art doesn't really inspire me. It's great to look at, sure, and I can definitely detect metaphors and abstract concepts when I view it, it just doesn't "impact my life."

    The most moving of everything I've viewed was probably St. Peter's Basilica and the Duomo in Florence. I can't really attach words to it, it was simply magnificent.
     
    #23 finalsbound, Dec 7, 2010
  4. moestavern19

    moestavern19 Member

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    Books:
    Fahrenheit 451
    1984
    Brave New World
    The Fountainhead
    Fast Food Nation
    No Country for Old Men
    Donald Barthelme's Collection of 60 short stories


    Poetry:
    William Blake
    John Donne
    Andrew Marvel
    Edna St. Vincent Millay
    Emily Dickinson
    Ralph Waldo Emerson


    Movies:
    Inception
    Memento
    The Wrestler
    Requiem for a Dream
    American History X
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    Adaption
    Being John Malkovich
    Synecdoche, New York
    Donnie Darko
    Star Wars
    Garden State
    Persepolis
    No Country For Old Men
    Who is Harry Nilsson? (And why is everybody talkin' about him)


    Music:
    Radiohead
    The Beatles
    John Lennon
    Sigur Ros
    Pink Floyd
    Led Zeppelin
    Pixies
    Belle & Sebastian
    Neutral Milk Hotel
    The Flaming Lips

    Art:
    Caravaggio

    [​IMG]


    Renoir
    [​IMG]

    Monet
    [​IMG]

    Dali
    [​IMG]

    Damien Hirst
    [​IMG]
     
    #24 moestavern19, Dec 7, 2010
  5. dmc89

    dmc89 Member

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    I had a friend who used to the think the same way. Until she saw this photograph from the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

    [​IMG]

    The simple nonviolent act of standing in front of four 36-tonne tanks at the risk of being run over was unbelievably courageous. That Chinese secret police whisked him away to execute him, that no one really knows who he was, this all affected her in a subtle way. But I see your point.
     
    #25 dmc89, Dec 7, 2010
  6. moestavern19

    moestavern19 Member

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    But art is the inspiration for everything that inspires you. It is the originality of expressive means. Radiohead and Bowie aimed to create music but work like painters with a canvas. Barthleme took Rauschenberg's idea of layers and implemented in it his stories. Hemingway kept the obvious hidden. Woolf let loose in a stream of consciousness. All these themes taken from what was going on conceptually in art at the time.

    Life always imitates art.

    To me, the most beautiful thing about art is how it can be something as simple as a reflection of life and at the same time be as profound as a cultural shift in thinking.

    Think of the metaphorical structures, such as the Impressionists and the modernist movement which really came from themes of existentialism and eventually inspired literature and all other forms of expression.

    Art is the purest reflection of life.
     
    #26 moestavern19, Dec 7, 2010
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2010
  7. LCII

    LCII Member

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    The Matrix
     
    #27 LCII, Dec 7, 2010
  8. TexasTofu

    TexasTofu Member

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    Just gonna post some art I love and that has inspired me, most of my movie suggestions have already been posted and my book reading is basically all novels when i do.

    Keith Haring
    [​IMG]

    Basquiat
    [​IMG]

    Warhol
    [​IMG]


    Choe
    [​IMG]

    Mac
    (colab)[​IMG]

    Jeff Soto
    [​IMG]

    More Choe
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    #28 TexasTofu, Dec 7, 2010
  9. thadeus

    thadeus Member

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    Is this another thread where people make long lists of stuff? Cool, I like long lists of stuff.
     
    #29 thadeus, Dec 7, 2010
  10. Agent94

    Agent94 Member

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    I can think of any books, movies or art that has inspired me profoundly.

    A couple of people have mentioned Caravaggio, you should read "The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece". Its a really good read.
     
    #30 Agent94, Dec 7, 2010
  11. peleincubus

    peleincubus Member

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    thanks texas tofu. ive been looking around at david choe's stuff. like it a lot.
     
    #31 peleincubus, Dec 7, 2010
  12. TexasTofu

    TexasTofu Member

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    Ya his stuffs pretty cool, my friend turned me onto him last summer or so, got a chance to see his show in LA when i went there. Pretty cool, hes definitively the darling of the art world it seems.

    Pictures I took of his LA show...
     
    #32 TexasTofu, Dec 8, 2010
  13. peleincubus

    peleincubus Member

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    too bad his prints are pretty expensive. i guess if i ever got a piece of his it would be pretty cool to have because it would be more rare.
     
    #33 peleincubus, Dec 8, 2010
  14. dmc89

    dmc89 Member

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    Caspar David Friedrich was an amazing painter.
    His landscape paintings from the Romantic era wanted to give viewers a sense of spiritual refection.

    -I love the imagery in Monk. A man of religion pondering about the universe in a vast, solemn, and mysterious horizon.

    Monk By The Sea
    [​IMG]

    -These two are similar with the haunting location and the ruins of a crumbling structure.
    -It's like the recent History Channel programs on how the world will look without humans.
    -Nature will reclaim everything. It will do away with our monuments like a snake shedding old skin.
    -Ironically, the first painting below was destroyed in WW2. This B/W photo is all we have left.

    Cloister Cemetery In The Snow
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    #34 dmc89, Dec 9, 2012
  15. Outlier

    Outlier Member

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    Wow. I think I found my favorite new painter. Caspar David Friedrich is amazing. Thanks dmc. The only other artist I liked was van Gogh. All the other dudes paint about stuff I can't relate to like wars back in the medieval area. I prefer art that I can actually envision in my mind, like places I would like to go to someday. It has more meaning to me that way. the stuff from van Gogh is breathless, just like Caspar's.
     
    #35 Outlier, Dec 9, 2012
  16. what

    what Member

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    Really?

    Your life has been changed a hell of a lot.
     
    #36 what, Dec 9, 2012
  17. dandorotik

    dandorotik Member

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    Books:
    The Grapes of Wrath
    What Color is Your Parachute
    And Then There Were None

    Movies:
    Taxi Driver
    Citizen Kane
    McCabe and Mrs. Miller

    Music:
    Born to Run, Springsteen
    What's Going On, Gaye
    Astral Weeks, Van Morrison

    Art:
    Van Gogh, Cafe painting
    Arbus, photo of boy with grenade
    Cover of Derek and the Dominos Layla
     
    #37 dandorotik, Dec 9, 2012
  18. ynelilvs99

    ynelilvs99 Member

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    The Bible ... As far as movies, cant think of any
     
    #38 ynelilvs99, Dec 9, 2012
  19. ynelilvs99

    ynelilvs99 Member

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    Just thought of a book that helped me a lot at work. The question behind the question, can't remember the author. And anything by TW Tozer, ESP Knowledge of the Holy and the Pursuit of God.
     
    #39 ynelilvs99, Dec 9, 2012
  20. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Member
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    Books
    The Bible
    The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
    Chicot the Jester - Alexandre Dumas
    On the Road - Jack Kerouac
    The Great Shark Hunt - Hunter Thompson
    A Separate Peace - John Knowles
    This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald
    The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald
    Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes
    The Groucho Letters - Groucho Marx
    My Wicked Wicked Ways - Errol Flynn

    Movies
    A Night At the Opera
    Coconuts
    Animal Crackers
    Monkey Business
    Duck Soup
    This is Spinal Tap
    Help
    A Hard Day's Night
    Five Deadly Venoms
    Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
    Pulp Fiction
    Excalibur
    Rushmore
    Blue Velvet
    Raising Arizona
    The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
    The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

    Music
    The Clash
    Big Country
    Devo
    The Beatles
    The Who
    The Kinks
    The Pixies
    New Order
    Velvet Underground
    The Shaggs
    Kraftwerk
    The Shins
    The Ramones
    Hank Williams Sr.
    Art
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    #40 FranchiseBlade, Dec 9, 2012
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2012
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