Have you ever seen a painting so powerful that you were moved to extreme emotion upon viewing it; anger, sadness, disgust happiness..etc...? Could you discribe your experience?

There is one sculpture by Eduardo Chillida called "the Combs of the Wind", it is composed of three seperate pieces of cor-ten placed near & in the bay of Biscay. One piece is on solid land, though hanging precariously off a 12-ft. ledge, the next is on a huge, sharp rock that juts out of the sea to the right of the first piece, and the third is about 20 feet out on another huge jutting rock. Every time I go back to Spain, I spend at least a week waking up at 5am and sitting near the sculptures to watch the sun rise.

When I see his pieces they subvert my feelings for the rest of the day...they move something primally calm deep inside of me.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chillida (I think it's all in Spanish)

Yes, most of Goya's later work. 'Chronos devouring his children' horror to the point of fright. The executions of the 12 May, a mixture of compassion and admiration at the skill of composition and masterly use of light and dark. Barbara Hepworth's landscape/seascape sculptures when I finally realised what she was doing which was depicting Penwith,. particularly 'Wave - Porthmeor' bronze. The verdegris patterning the bronze had, naturally, mimiced the 'sea-lace' stirred up sand floating on the surface.

Melancholy of Departure (Gare Montparnasse) by Giorgio de Chirico. I actually just wrote a paper on it. It's at MoMA. The gloomy colors and the tiny train in the background right above the two tiny figures devoid of detail lead the viewer to such an intense feeling! There are six different perspective points/techniques that do not correlate. Since everything is out of place, it's like nothing else matters but those two little figures. They have no details, so the viewer is lead to make up his own story and that makes it more personal. The thought of the sound of a train has a association with loneliness and sadness for me. Seeing this painting makes me cry.

Here is a link that might be useful: Image and info of Melancholy of Departure by MoMA

Two artists and their works come to mind: Picasso's "Guernica" which is a vision of horrors of war. And in a different vein: the last painting Van Gogh ever did: "Crows over Cornfield". In his very brush strokes are his final anguish and utter desolation....

Usually...self-portraits by artists. At least the ones that are representational, not the single-dot-in-the-lower-left-corner type of self-portraits (then, there are those ill-absorbed views that will undoubtedly put me down for this...LOL). I mean, like VanGogh's self-portraits are incredibly powerful...or Gericault, or Sisquieros, or Nerdrum....blah, blah, blah...

Self-portraits are important documentation of how an artist views him/herself. As an artiste, I find them incredibly moving. They extend a certain understanding between me and the artist.

JAZ