For me there's just as much appeal in subverting aesthetic standards as in perfecting them. Dali is great because he does both, but I have much love for Duchamp as well. It's also worth pointing out that some conceptual art is really really funny or a complete mindfuck. I saw one conceptual art piece that had a bunch of rats in a 3D transparent maze--each wall of the maze had a tv facing the rats showing them the maze set up and themselves. Then outside the set-up there was a guy banging something with a baseball bat. The pointlessness becomes the point and life is implicated. Maybe conceptual art is only worthwhile on LSD. Whatever. I think the liberation of art is wonderful.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/im...61-Posters.jpg

I like Francis Bacon a lot, who someone else already mentioned. Also...

I'm a pretty big fan of Chuck Close. Unfortunately looking at a JPG online really doesn't do his work any justice. His paintings are huge and much more impressive in person. Anyway, here's one example:

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j2...uckClose05.jpg

I also love Joseph Stella. One of the neat things about him was his style constantly changed so his output was extremely diverse. Here's my favorite painting by him, Brooklyn Bridge:

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/art...ridge-1941.jpg

Goya, was also pretty amazing and I frequently find his paintings sort of frightening:

http://www.independent.co.uk/multime...oya_23768t.jpg

Duchamp was the shiznit. Nude Descending a Staircase is a classic:

http://www.people.ku.edu/~brister/im...o-2-1912-2.jpg

Well that one looks really cool, who is that?

The thing with a lot of modern art, especially concept art and pop art, is that it's not meant to be aesthetically pleasing, it just has some kind of statement, and if that statement is lost on you, the art becomes completely worthless. I find most of the statements in modern art to be painfully obvious or it dosen't make any kind of sense whatsoever. Most of all it dosen't require any skill of any kind, just an idea.

"Hey let's take a photograpth of Marilyn Monroe and invert the colors"

"Brilliant"

You may not like the concept, but silkscreening does take skill.

I know what you mean. But I do find some of the ideas pretty interesting, especially in the way they weave a narrative of the artist continually reenvisioning his role in the 20th century with the advent of mechanical reproduction. With Warhol that struggle becomes self-aware and even self-parodying, which is what makes him so infuriating and immediately iconic. In any case, that painting is by Sam Francis, he does a lot of really intense abstract expressionism.

Ok, fair enough.

I hope you don't think I'm dismissing all modern art or pop art, I agree that theres some amazing stuff that came out of those movements, I just have a strong distaste for most of it.

Op art and photorealism are great, lowbrow too.

With too much modern art though, it's not about the imagery or the detail, just the context behind it. But in that sense, you can look at a piece of pop art, say to yourself "well that's clever" and then you have no reason to ever look at it again because it's so simplistic that theres nothing left to observe. I think art that's easy to make and easy to "get" is also easy to forget. Art should tell a story, not just an idea, it should take you to a certain place, that's what I get from surrealism, expressionism, impressionism and realism. When I look at a Malevich painting of a brown square, I see nothing but a brown square, and I don't get it, and even if I did, it wouldn't matter.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention Roger Dean, another big favorite of mine.

Just to throw someone a bit older into the mix, Bruegel was a really amazing renaissance painter. I love his crowd scenes like the one below. Apparently everything that's going on in the painting relate to common Flemmish folk expressions of the time. I can't say I get any of it on that level, but there's such an obvious sense of humor at work that I can't help but enjoy it. Just look at all the bizarre crap going on here. The ass that's sticking out of the tower window in the background makes me laugh every time.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...l_Proverbs.jpg

Frank Auerbach

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:A...d_of_Julia.jpg