What was the last masterpiece you've come in contact with?

[BurtWorm]

Be it book, movie, song, album, play, poem, dance, etc.

I have to think about this myself. My hypothesis is that they don't make them anymore. But I'm going to try to think about it to prove myself wrong.

[smiley_glad_hands]

1. A Perfect Circle

13th Step. Truly a masterpiece of musical art.

[BurtWorm]

2. I am woefully ignorant.

What is it? Rock music? Something else? American?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

6. No way is it better than Lateralus

[CrownPrinceBandar]

14. I didn't like Lateralus as much.......

I thought that "Aenima" is Tool's masterpiece so far.

[Failure]

23. Yep,. and the first one is a masterpiece as well...

Aenima is too...

failure.

[Book Lover]

3. Verdi's Requiem

I listen to it every few weeks lately, after my mother's passing. But you seem to be after "modern" masterpieces... When you say, "They don't make 'em anymore," do you mean ever since, oh, say the Sixties?

[BurtWorm]

4. I'm trying to remember a masterpiece since the early 1970s.

Chinatown seems nearly perfect to me. There must have been masterpieces since then.

By masterpiece, I mean some work of art that is self-assured without being self-conscious. It's the self-consciousness that ruins most artworks in the post-modern era, in my opinion.

7. Perhaps "Wings of Desire"

by Wim Wenders.

I'm not sure if I agree with the "self-consciousness" limitation on masterpieces.
I'd consider 8 1/2 by Fellini to be a masterpiece and it's incredibly self-conscious.

18. in literature-Gravity's Rainbow.

Ignore the critical fawning & how it was a "flavor of the month" or "year."
In terms of influence and scope, it is just as much a masterpiece as Ulysses or Moby Dick & is in a similar niche in relationship to its time & culture.

[Book Lover]

12. <nods head>

Yeah, with those criteria, I'm having a heard time, too. Maybe Midnight's Children, by Rushdie. I can also point you to a few handbound books done in the past ten years, but they're done by artisans you've never heard of and they are privately held, so they'll never be seen except by their owners...

[BurtWorm]

21. Actually, now that I think of it, Guns, Germs and Steel

is a kind of masterpiece. I haven't finished it yet, but it's one of the most self-assured works I've come in contact with in a long time.

I haven't come across much fiction I'd put in that category lately.

[Book Lover]

22. Indeed it is

How funny - I just reread that at Yuletide, and gave a copy to a friend for her birthday. If civilization falls, and I can only save a few of my books, that is absolutely and certainly one.

[CPschem]

5. the movie " In America"

was the best movie i've seen in a long time.

[northzax]

8. true, there are no masterpieces being created

at this time. At least none that we can acclaim as such. the thing about it is that there is just as much artistic talent as there ever was (more perhaps, given the population and the rise is levels of education) but masterpieces are still as rare as ever, I mean think about it, there were what, five or six in the 18th century? and how many of those took time for popular acclaim to turn them into masterpieces? and that was when artistic genius was limited, really, to eight genres: long fiction, poetry, oils, marble, bronze, orchestral music, opera, architecture (maybe porcelain, but that's really painting as well) other talent (acting, singing, oration) have been lost to the ages, through our inability to record them. now look at how fractured that same talent base is, you can apply creative talent to twenty types of music, to twenty types of painting, to photography, cinema, remixing, hundreds of media for sculpture, collage, theatre, etc. There are bound to be timeless masterpieces somehwere in this list, the problem is, how do we establish what is going to stand the test of time, and what isn't? which of the twenty thousand books published every year across the globe will be the next 'catcher in the rye'? which of the paintings from this decade will be 'Guernica'? any of them? who knows, amybe our age has fufilled it's allocation? or will time sort something from the pile that our great-grandchildren will look at and say, "damn, why don't they make them like that anymore? Given the population of the earth, and the large amounts of resources applied to creative acts, the likelihood is that something, somwhere, will stand the test. But we'll likely never know.

[radwriter0555]

9. Mona Lisa... Birth of Venus.. while in europe last year..

finally had the honor and glory of visiting those great works...

David... EVERYTHING by Michelangelo... da vinci, gallileo, breath-taking...

simply brilliant.

[BigMcLargehuge]

10. Quadrophenia (The Who)

while writing mine, Tears of Amaterasu, a novel.

[AverageJoe]

11. Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys

and I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Smile, the legendary "lost" album that Brian Wilson is currently touring in Europe.... :-)

[terrya]

13. I watched "Citizen Kane" again this weekend.

It is a film masterpiece.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

15. Anything by Raymond Chandler, especially "The Big Sleep" n/t

[Champ]

16. I'm not sure

Maybe "American History X" That was the last (movie/book/dance/poem/whatever) I seen. It is #62 on the top 150 movies over at IMDB so I and others think it's a great movie so I think that is your answer.

[Bog Frog]

17. Possibly Jeffrey Eugenides Pulitzer-Prize winner

Middlesex.

[SanFranciscoDemocrat]

19. Last weekend...

We watched "Lolita" by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick, one of my favorite directors, made several masterpieces, and "Lolita" is one of his best. The casting was perfect, particularly the insanely brilliant Peter Sellers.

[bif]

20. Saw the painting "Whistler's Mother" last weekend

n/t

[Failure]

24. Dredg "el cielo"

on edit: I wanted to add...some have called this the album of the decade...


failure.

[mvd]

25. Just bought one - Patti Smith's Trampin'

Ok, Horses may be slightly better, but Trampin's still a masterpiece. While Gung Ho dragged a bit, Trampin's long songs are poetic. It's hard to get more beautiful than "Mother Rose" and as rousing as "Stride Of The Mind."

[BurtWorm]

27. I loved Gung Ho.

You think I'd be in ectasy over Trampin'?

[mvd]

30. Yep

It's just a difference between an A and an A+ IMO. :-)

[Rowdyboy]

Meng's "Crucifiction of Christ" ...the most important neoclassical

painting in Spain; it was truly stunning. The same exhibit had a recreation of the famous "Porcelain Room" from the Royal Palace of Aranjuez which I could barely tear myself away from.

In the last 30 years?......................................................................................................................................................I'll just have to get back to you on that

[pagerbear]

26. The movie Random Harvest

... on TCM the other night.

[Burma Jones]

28. Cornet Chop Suey

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five

[amazona]

29. so many in literature it's impossible to keep track

We are in a golden age for literature in my humble view. I see reading downward that you're seeking newer stuff, from the 70s on, but it would be easier if you were seeking from the 90s on, because I could not possibly list all the great stuff out there even from the last decade.

To the one who said there are no new masterpieces, have you considered, "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, or the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson? "Cloudsplitter" by Russell Banks? "We were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates? "An Instance of the Fingerpost" by Ian Pears? Or...I could go on by the hour but I'd better stop now. What is being done in genre fiction now by people like Robinson (science fiction), Wallace (slipstream), even mystery (Pears) can be absolutely amazing.

I last encountered a masterpiece yesterday, when I started reading "Turtle Island" by Gary Snyder for the first time. Read "Spel for Demons" and tell me that couldn't have penned yesterday instead of the early 1970s.

My fear is too many masterpieces, too little time, frankly!

[blindpig]

31. Quicksilver

By Neal Stephenson. Can't say for sure that it's a masterpiece but it's surely a tour de force.