Only Wonder Grasps Anything

art institute of chicago

Two weeks ago Thursday I spent six hours at The Art Institute of Chicago, while on my way up to the L'Abri conference. I planned my visit to pass through the galleries chronologically, starting with Egyptian, Greek and Roman art, through the middle ages, the Reformation, Romantic, impressionist, and up to contemporary art.

Grant Wood's "American Gothic" (1930) is probably the most famous painting in their collection, and it was actually really interesting to see the real thing. I think I've seen so many parodies, I thought that I wouldn't enjoy the real thing, but it was really cool.

Here are a couple other more modern paintings that struck me near the end of the day:

Paul Klee's "Dancing Girl" (1940) made me think of cave paintings, and I'm not sure if the girl was happy or not while she was dancing.

This painting, Marc Chagall's "White Crucifixion" (1938) captivated me and was haunting in its prophetic vision of the suffering during the Holocaust.

When I found Kandinsky's paintings, I was happy. Above is "Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons)" (1913). The colors were so vivid, and I was able to enjoy the colors and the shapes without having to think about forms and representations of objects... abstract painting relaxed me near the end of the day.

Go Philly-girl! Mary Cassatt, a Philadelphia native, painted "The Child's Bath" (1893) and it was the last painting I looked at in the museum. I've seen prints of it before, but it was cool to find the original. I like this one.

So that's a tiny bit of what I saw at the museum. They had a cool Durer print of a rhinosaurus, but they don't have it on their website, and I really enjoyed the early Reformation paintings, many of which had biblical story themes, so I played "guess the story". The six painting series on the life of John the Baptist was pretty gruesome when it showed his body hanging out the prison window with blood gushing from his neck. Two ladies were wondering what that was all about, and I'd just read that story earlier that morning on the train into downtown, so I told the the story. Wow. The painting captured the Bible's realism.

And, sitting outside here at Panera's, the reality is that its gotten cold, and I've gotta scoot on home and get some sleep. G'night.

Posted by swanson at mars 1, 2006 10:00 EM | TrackBack