Have you cried in front of a painting ?

maybe paintings don't really have that time element to them, that would encourage emotional 'interaction' like films, or books.

hmmm waterlillies made you cry eh? I felt wonderment.

you two must be artists i presume?

nevertheless, my ans. is no and I do not know why

Paintings can make me cry as easily as any other artform. I don't see a difference.

Paintings... this reminds me of the Ferris Bueller scene where, to an accompaniment of a reconstructed Smiths song, one of the characters closes in on one particular painting, focusing on one figure until the viewer has trouble making anything out... I've had a tendency to focus on paintings in that way ever since I saw that film... which helped me appreciate a lot of art, oddly enough.

As far as I can remember, I have never cried in front of a painting. I don't think I've even come close. In rare cases, music makes has made me cry. (Often I have to already be under a lot of stress for this to happen.)

I was just discussing with a friend the fact that I don't think I'm very good at looking at paintings. I can't seem to stand in front of them and patiently digest them. I get an overall, sort of schematic impression, and that's about it. On the other hand, I feel happy to have made the acquaintance of the work of a great number of artists. I think that when I get a feeling for a painter's overall style, that's about as far as I go. I don't necessarily get the nuances.

With music, despite the fact that I have no real musical training and don't play an instrument, I seem to be able to appreciate it on a more nuanced level. I think that overall I find it easier to pay attention to something that moves.

I mean, I wouldn't want to lead any of you innocents astray.

I want to cry just thinking about Rothko.

http://www.atf.gov/kids/graphics/art_contest/dsc_554820%25.jpg

Mostly when I cry in front of a painting, I'm holding a brush and it's not going as well as I'd like.

holy geez abbott when i read this thread title the first thing that popped into my head was rothko!

and then hunter age 3
!

yes

sistine chapel ceiling

I really want to see the Rothko Chapel in TX.

http://www.kerovisuals.com/timer/dog-poker-background-1024x768.jpg

It's 800 miles away, probably not going to happen anytime soon. Fucking Texas, why do you have to be Europe-sized? (not literally I know)

I think it would wreck me for a few days.

http://www.nerditry.com/images/jesus-elvis.jpg

The Rothko Chapel is fucking amazing. The Twombly gallery is like a block away, too, and the Menil collection. Def. worth a trip.

Technically at the Rothko Chapel, you'd be crying inside 14 paintings. Judgment call whether that's the same thing or not.

http://www.powerstudios.com.au/images/airbrushed_vehicles/hot_cars/medium/breed1_2.jpg

rothko. yes. at tate modern.

klimt's drawings - heartbreakingly gorgeous stuff.

art is about thought processes and subtle appreciation of aesthetic ideals.

not blubbering into your hanky like an emotional wreck!

Oh god how I want to see Klimt's stuff IRL.

abbot you should come to the National Gallery here in DC. There are quite a few Rothkos in the contemporary wing.

lot's of good Rothko prints/posters and stuff for sale in the gift shop too. we have one framed in our apartment, "No. 6 - Violet, Green, and Red". I love Rothko.

"Pictures & Tears" by James Elkins is a fantastic exploration of this subject.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vA9BCZ4znI4C&dq=pictures+%26+tears&pg=PP1&ots=y8RGdphjG9&sig=kD-rYNgVArVlj4sqx7pU9VVCnZQ&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fclient%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26q%3Dpictures%2B%2526%2Btears%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail

The opening chapter is on the Rothko chapel--very interesting study of various responses to it.

I imagine I'm saving tearing up for Agnes Martin. Despite her being my favourite artist/hero I have never seen anything by her in the flesh.

there's a Eugene Richards photograph from 'Americans We' of a homeless guy on a dirty mattress hugging his mangy dog to his chest like the goddamn dog is the last good, meaningful thing left on Earth. Breaking out in tears in the middle of the museum bookstore is very gauche.

I've done worse, trust me.

I haven't seen that but just the fucking description is ripping me up. I cried at a House M.D. the other night when a disabled guy is dying and he asks for his guide dog to sit by him while he dies. Oh god I cried for at least like seven minutes.

like 5 people in this thread admit to crying in front of a rothko

http://abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_Grnfthrs_fldr/g0000_gr_inf_images/g051_rothko_vbkoy-wr.jpg

NSFW

is that like the painting version of bragging you weep when you hear Sigur Ros?

There was an exhibit of expressionist sketches at the Getty a couple of years ago, and this one Seurat KILLED me. Still think about it.

i've only cried tears of rage at really awful ones

that $73m rothko painting makes me cry. if you had stacked that money up next to a homeless guy and burnt it, at least he'd have been warm for a while. what a fraudulent waste.

I think he would probably rather spend the money than use it for warmth tbh

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mfMRTBDpgkM/ShMoaSXaDhI/AAAAAAAAG7g/kGUhSAAO_BQ/s400/rothko-1.jpg

Sniff... The humanity of lil' yellow in there

looks like a egg sandwich imo

you guys don't really get 'art' do you

I'm just a crier.

When no one is around, so am I. I don't know what appearances I'm trying to keep up otherwise. Habit, I guess.

It really makes me cranky that Whiney upthread was so dismissive of others' experiences and then asked everyone he'd just knocked hardcore to explain their behavior. Seriously, wtf. If you've never been moved to tears by visual beauty...I don't know if it can really be explained. "Lady, if you have to ask..." (FWIW ILX is the #1 google hit for that quote!)

I have misted up a couple of times, but engagement with artworks generally brings me to a calm and still place, not a really wrought and emotional one. Films are a big exception, which is why I'm really suspicious and distrustful of obvious tearjerkers.

― In "Bob" There Is No East or West (WmC)

I missed this earlier. I like it.

I farted in front of Guernica in high school. True story.

― love in this ♣ (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, September 26, 2009 3:53 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

i farted in front of guernica in 12th grade

― like the G6 summit (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, October 11, 2010 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

wondering if whiney is all WHOAOAOAOAO OMG PPL R MOVED BY ART HAHA MEME MEME SNARF on this one

i don't really know why but I went to the Frick this weekend on Saturday afternoon to see the show of Ribera and Goya drawings and then I wandered into one of those wainscoted palatial upstairs rooms and saw the Holbein portrait of Thomas More by the fireplace and I got all misty looking at it. It's an image I have seen reproduced so many times and I don't necessarily revere More but the sheer persistence and endurance of the face within the portrait really moved me and I teared up a bit. Maybe I am just getting older . . .

what if you fart, then cry?

i definitely weep over art about once a week but i also got a pre-existing condition. i also weep over nature about once a week. i'm a real "double rainbow" kind of guy.

and when i weep over art i weep over really weird shit. last "art" i wept over was my janson's, looking at a photo of joseph beuys coyote piece w/ accompanying bio: "that the attempt was inherently doomed to failure does not in any way reduce the sincerity of this act of conscience"

though i see suzy beat me to it upthread

when I stepped into a gallery set up for Hiroshi Sugimoto's Sea of Buddhas - it was a separate room in a museum, dark and cool, just a perfectly serene place
plus the aforementioned Eugene Richards photograph

I was pretty much moved to tears at a Kandinsky exhibition at the V&A a few years ago, mainly by his pen & ink sketches.

what if you fart, then cry?

Then you're making me laugh a lot.

I cried at Whiney's farts in front of Guernica both in high school and in 12th grade. True story.

Has a building ever made any of you cry?

no, but i was once genuinely frightened by the prague tv-tower when i was walking through the city by myself at night. to the point where i sped up my walking to get away from it, which is silly, because buildings, they don't move

Well, until they do. And when that happens, best not to be nearby.

You did the right thing.

What about a crywank in front of a Jeff Koons?

you tell us

Putting the 'anal' into Banality...

you wank anally?

annually?

"oh god i can't wait til 11 Oct 2011"

anal retentively?

"i always use my left hand only and only the index, middle and fourth finger"

annularly?

orly

I knew a French woman called Aurilly.

o know an irish guy called o'reilly

Can you tell him to finish off my extension?
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/tours/materialslibrary/images/carlandre_equivalent.jpg
I know there's a brick shortage, but this isn't enough.

u racist that's not cool

Sorry but white bricks were all that the builder's merchant had...

:'(
http://hyperallergic.com/58144/rothko-defaced-at-tate-modern/

man see u

C/D: Mark Rothko

i was looking for whiney's post over there

http://splitsider.com/2010/12/eight-times-the-simpsons-have-made-me-cry/

I thought that was going to be about paintings somehow.

I got to see the famous golden death mask of King Tut and it was an incredibly moving experience. Sort of the shock of seeing something that I had seen thousands of times before in books suddenly physically in front of me. If you look close enough you can see tool marks, which humanizes it, and then you step back and look at the whole thing again and holy crap it is just a perfect artifact. Possibly the most beautiful image I have ever seen. It was on display in the Cairo Museum and there were several rooms with just stuff from his tomb, and near the mask were several sarcophagi, and people were just walking around it all. At a certain point it felt like I was attending a wake, like for someone who had just passed, which just made the whole experience even heavier.

I spend alot of time thinking about paintings, making them, looking at them. I spend alot of time thinking about the ways in which emotional reactions drive my decision-making process when making a painting. In many ways it's the whole point of painting for me. I can recall coming to tears at the point of total breakdown during the making (or unmaking at that time) of a painting, yet I have never cried in front of a painting, but wept instantly during the first 10 minutes of 'Up'. Emotions are wierd.

The first time I saw a Rothko in person I tried to make myself cry because I had heard it was the appropriate reaction and I failed to cry but the attempt was enough pretext to lie and tell people I cried the first time I saw a Rothko until I came clean right now in this post

— 😵‍💫 (@samc00ke) September 9, 2026

_Has a building ever made any of you cry?_

far too often

Me in 2010 otm

xp why do people feel the need to make up this stuff? people are fucking weird.

i teared up at under the pines, evening by claude monet at the philadelphia museum of art a few months ago.

Large-format minimalism makes me cry-- not Rothko, but Motherwell and (especially) Warhol's "Shadows".

the closest was getting choked up seeing the Sistine Chapel. i probably would've actually cried but my then 1 year old had just started learning to talk and was happily waving her hands and yelling "hi!" to everyone in the room so we had to cut the stay in that room fairly short.

You didn’t say that your kid was recreating iconic work by Bruce Naumann?

my italian wasn't that great

Dont think I've ever cried but i do remember surprising myself by letting out a loud involuntary gasp at seeing Repin's Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan. Probably the first time I really truly understood the gulf between seeing a picture of a painting and being in the physical presence of a painting.

the closest was getting choked up seeing the Sistine Chapel. i probably would've actually cried but my then 1 year old had just started learning to talk and was happily waving her hands and yelling "hi!" to everyone in the room so we had to cut the stay in that room fairly short.

_Has a building ever made any of you cry?_
far too often

Me in 2010 otm

― sarahell, Wednesday, September 9, 2026 5:34 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

You are Charles III and I claim my five pounds.

Sometimes (not always) a historic artifact or artwork seems to me to bridge the years between then and now, in a way that deeply affects me. But the only time I was brought to tears was hearing The Dismemberment Plan's "The City" for the first time.

i love this thread. some things are just unspeakably beautiful. the physicality of a painting is missing when you see a reproduction of it. i can feel it in my body when i see great paintings in person in a way i don't usually experience. i get overwhelmed and spill over.

I think I would cry in front of Guernica. The Picasso museum in Paris has a VR exhibit about the work's creation and exhibition history, and I almost cried during that.

the thing about the monet paintings that took me by surprise was their physical force. with the pines though it's just those trees and the light - almost gone, so rich. a love letter to these trees at the edge of the sea. i'm tearing up right now just thinking about it lol.

Rembrandt's portrait, in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, of his son Titus dressed as a monk always gets me.

I think maybe only a Titian I saw at the Hermitage, a small painting of Christ with the most human eyes, incredible and I’m glad I saw it once as I’ll almost certainly never go back. But that wasn’t tears so much as, wow. Just a staggering piece of work.