Don't need a top 5.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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I love Art, but I am a degreed musician, so I'll offer one painting, and four musical masterpieces.
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Picasso: Guernica - I saw it decades ago, when it was still at MOMA, before it went back to Spain. I was already a fan of great art, but seeing Guernica in person, made me hard-core. I have seen many museums and masterpieces since then, but never had a more visceral response to any other painting.
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Beethoven: Symphony #7 - the 9th may be the greatest musical work ever composed, but I love the 7th, a perfect little jewel. I don't think there is any other musical work that makes me feel such warm affection for it.
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Bach, JS: Brandenburg Concertos - Nearly every musical mood is illustrated with possibly the most exquisite sparkling music ever composed.
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Pink Floyd: The Wall - IMHO, simply the best composed, performed, and produced rock album of all time. Literally perfect. David Gilmour gives a master class in virtuosic guitar playing, in what is probably the greatest guitar album of all time. It deserves to stand alongside the greatest musical masterpieces of the 20th century, in any genre.
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Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense (Film, 40th Anniversary remastered version) - the greatest live rock album and and film ever produced. Incendiary performances, better than the original studio versions, captured on film by Jonathan Demme. One mesmerizing performance after another.
I am a fan of every single one. Lovely choices.
Man I want to wear the big suit for Halloween but nobody would get it
Maybe not the top five, but five top-tier pieces I can name right now:
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Milton Horn's sculpture Chicago Rising from the Lake
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The Carbon & Carbide Building
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Philip K. Dick's novella Galactic Pot-Healer
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Longfellow's poem "The Village Blacksmith"
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The Magnetic Fields' song "If You Don't Cry"
- Clair de lune by Debussy, chefs kiss, always calming, perfect for waking up
- House of leaves. One of the most confusing books ive ever read.
- Beserk by kentaro miura, singlehandedly the greatest manga ive ever read. And i will not spoil it
- Noita, by nolla games. 2d finnish wizard pixel art game where every pixel is simulated. Feels like cbt to play through but its absolutely fantastic
- Meteora by linkin park, has lived rent free in my head.
Honourable mentions: Ultrakill, doom eternal, Blame! By tsutomo nihei, bach Brandenburg concerto No. 4, the old testament in the bible, i consider this fiction, fight me, gris, the king in yellow, song of ice and fire,the Antwerp station and anything made by antireal, bach, heaven pierce her, mozart and keygen church
That banana that someone taped to a wall.
As you mentioned in your post, it's almost impossible to pick just 5 favorite singular works.. so here are some of the top active artists that I currently adore (in no particular order)
- Guido Llordi, kinetic painter
- Tomislav Topić, muralist and fabric installations
- Smallwhitemonster, painter
- Seontae Hwang, backlit lightbox art
- Pieter Van Hooydonck/Kras Glass, stained glass artist
- Stevie Shao, muralist and painter
- Aura Terrariums, stained glass artist
... this list will probably change by next week
Instagram? No, we don't do that here. :)
I have updated the links, no more meta 🫣🙃
OMG! Thank you. These are all interesting and all new to me.
Poem - Robert Frost - Stopping by woods on a snowy evening
Short story - Kurt Vonnegut - Harrison Bergeron
Movie - Life is Beautiful (do not watch this if you don't want to cry)
Book - Carl Sagan - Contact (it's much better than the movie)
Anime - Serial Experiments Lain
Honorable mention, Paper Tole - an ocean scene my grandmother did when I was a boy. She has written my name on the back of it for when she passes away. It's the only thing I want. I hope I don't get it soon, but she's not young anymore.
I am familiar with all of these except the anime edit: and grandma's stuff. I am an anime manga fan and consider Akira and Appleseed among several others to be high art. Thanks for the contribution.
I'm not a huge anime person, but Lain is great. I have it on DVD, even.
I just watched the first 6, then deleted it. It's not for me.
I'll go with one for now:
Death is the Road to Awe by Clint Mansell
But it only works if you truly listen without splitting your attention.
- Music: Hoagy Carmichael - Ole Buttermilk Sky (1953, 1946)
- Manga: Osamu Tezuka - The Ant and the Giant (1961-1962)
- Light Novel: 激辛寝具 - TSアル中悪役令嬢は破滅を御所望です (2021)
- Game: Nintendo - Splatoon 2 (2017)
- Animation: Aardman - The Coconnut - Shaun the Sheep Season 3 (2012)
An impossible question, but some that came to mind.
The frescos of the Hospicio Cabañas, by José Clemente Orozco
This statue of the goddess Coatlicue
Bernini's David
John Martin's destruction of Pompei and pandemonium
"Oh, you're a Beksiński fan? Name five of his works."
"Untitled?"
"That's on me, I set the bar too low."
Oh cool find. I love his work and never knew about him. Thanks!
I like a lot of Marc Davis' work.
In particular
An impossible task!
Minoan snake goddess figurines
Don't bite the sun by Tanith Lee
https://youtu.be/rWqQ9uwqQxk Lullaby Loreena McKennitt
Resident Evil 4
Danae by Klimt
Bit of a titty theme in there. The minoans knew what they were doing. Why RE4 in particular?
The Wii mechanics are fantastic. It's to me a perfect balance of offrails without total free world which I've discovered I hate. It managed to genuinely scare me. And you get to kill Ashley so many ways 😺
Top 5 is hard but I'll give my favorite:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hands_Resist_Him
I heard of it the first time in relation to it being a haunted painting. Not that I believed it but the next night, I had a nightmare about it, which is extremely rare for me. It's so incredibly eerie. I've been going back and forth on if I wanted a print of it but I get legitimate fear at the thought. I feel like I'd be inviting something in my home that I shouldn't. I mean yes, probably just psychology but I've experienced some weird things in my life so.... I'll go with my gut and admire it from afar only.
Besides that, I love Caravaggio.
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Hieronymus Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights
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Francis Bacon - Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
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Giovanni Boldini - Portrait of Lady Colin Campbell
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Antoni Gaudí - Parc Güell
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Vincent van Gogh - Café Terrace at Night
#1 was in my top 10 and Bosch's Death and the Miser are top 25. Fantastic choices.
I'm grateful for #4 as this is completely new to me. I am going to sit on this one for a while. Thanks for sharing.
And a good top choice of Danse sacrée.
I'm pretty sure that is another one that stopped me in my tracks at D'Orsay. At the end of one side of the Terrasse des Sculptures. Exceptional carving work.
I spent 2.5hrs at the Prado, drinking in The Garden of Earthly Delights, I love this work.
Strolling around the playful work that is Parc Güell, is just a delight.
I'll never forget seeing the portait of Gertrude Blood in the National Portrait Gallery. Finding out later, that she went up against the Victorian state, in her divorce case, added to my appreciation of this painting.
Hmm, so much to choose from and so much I don't even know about...
Visually, Beksinski has been one of the few that really triggers a resonance somewhere inside me.
The works of Jim Henson are also amazing, though I don't know how one would ever categorize them. Part writing, part performance, part musical, part sculptural, part visual, and yet still other elements.
There's a great deal of very good music as well, but one of the few where the music felt like 'art,' in a way I have some difficulty expressing, is Lorn. Something about it has a sense that it's trying to say something in a language I feel like I'm supposed to understand, and almost can, but only almost.
That Lorn song you linked feels like its from a soundtrack I know, but can't put my finger on.
It's a link to the album, so I'm not sure which song you mean, but I know one of his tracks was used for a game trailer at one point.
A search shows 'His music has been used in a number of video games, movies and TV shows, including CSI, Love, Death & Robots, Silicon Valley, Furi, LittleBigPlanet 2, and Sleeping Dogs' via wikipedia, and full OSTs for Killzone: Shadowfall and the movie Black Swan, which I hadn't seen but now think I will have to.
Visual arts:
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‘Happy Person Having a Pleasant Conversation in Public’ by Randy Ortiz
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Jackson Pollock's ‘One: Number 31, 1950’
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works by Aidan Hughes aka ‘Brute!’, namely his album covers for KMFDM and in particular ‘Split’
Music:
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nearly everything by Mamaleek: try the albums ‘Diner Coffee’ and ‘Vida Blue’ (gotta note that I have no idea what the lyrics are, but what I deciphered of their other songs is somewhat abstract, so eh)
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Last Exit at Deutsches Jazzfestival, Frankfurt, 1986 (with my favorite musician: bassist and producer Bill Laswell)
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Nurse With Wound's ‘Homotopy To Marie’
For performance, perhaps Meredith Monk's ‘Turtle Dreams’, shot by Ping Chong. But I'm not an aficionado of the form.
Hey man, I said top FIVE. You're cheating! ;) Kidding, of course. Thanks
Oh man.. top five…
- Building: The Guggenheim museum NYC.
The building just looks incredible on the outside the the circular gallery is so awesome.
- Painting: The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
There is something about the sheer power that painting illustrates.
- Picture: The Vulture and the Little Girl
Somebody get that fucking bird away from her
- Movie
Jaws
- Broadway Play
Hamilton
spoiler
