The Art Institute

I am beginning to think that I can't say that I don't get into the city very often. Once again, I was downtown this weekend. This time I went to the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to walking through the galleries to view great masterpieces, I finally can say that I saw another outdoor piece of art, Cloud Gate, also known as the Bean. I wasn't planning on seeing it, but since I was right there, we stopped. I only wish that I had my camera. Still, the pictures wouldn't have been that great because it was overcast and Cloud Gate would only have been refleting the dull gray sky endemic to Chicago winters.

I had forgotten how uplifting looking at a great piece of art can be. It is such a joy to be able to see the colors, techniques, and emotions that are put into a painting or sculpture. Even the pieces that are disturbing can have a powerful impact on one's pysche.

The Art Institute proudly displays one of my favorite paintings, Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte quite prominently. I can't say why I like this painting so much. Having read more about the artist I think that I relate to him on some level. He didn't really take the stage during the Impressionist scene. While an artist in his own right, he used his financial resources to provide backing for many well known artists such as Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley.

While I enjoy Impressionist paintings (for which the Art Institute is famous) I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the more modern and abstract paintings. I found the sculptures of Constatin Brancusi to be quite simple and elegant as well as a painting by Robert Delaunay Champs de Mars: The Red Tower.

My son tended to prefer sculptures to paintings, although he was particular interested in a disturbing painting of Dorian Gray by. My daughter was enthralled with the notion that she was seing famous paintings and those by famous artists in person. She particularly liked the Picassos and was entranced by Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.

One of the best parts of the whole trip is when I was approached by another patron, who asked me if the nearby children observing some painting were mine. I was nervous for a moment, wondering if my son and daughter had offended someone with their youthful exuberance. Instead, the woman told me that she was impressed by their attention to the paintings and thought it was wonderful that I was exposing them to art at the young ages of seven and nine.

Mardi Gras

I don't think that I have ever really understood the concept of Mardi Gras. It never made much sense to me to cram in all that excess, drunkeness, and debauchery just in time for a period of reflection, discipline, and penance. Most people probably wouldn't act that way the rest of the year, so they do it just because it is a defined holy season coming up? Is it a chance for people to do some things for which they need to do penance?

Now where did I put those beads? It is almost time to go eat some king cake.

No Comment

When I started this blog, I said to myself that I wasn't writing it for anyone else other than me. That is a reasonable and fair assumption. There are so many voices floating out there in the online world, that it is difficult to believe that many people would be able to find my blog let alone read it.

My expectation was that I would just be another voice out there chatting away, maybe attracting the attention of some government surveillance if I happened to inadvertently type some key word that they were monitoring in the cyber traffic, but not much else. While, I am pretty sure that my blog has been read here and there, it is still a little dispiriting at times to see a bunch of zeroes in the comment tallies.

So, if you do happen to read this, I would appreciate you posting a comment. A simple hi would suffice. It would be nice to know that I am not talking to myself. Thanks!

Half Life

The first thing that came to my mind when I typed in the title Half Life was the concept of the exponential decay of radioactive material. Fortunately, I was not thinking of myself in terms of uranium. If that was the case then I might have to watch my back for Sting (see previous post).

What I was actually thinking is that sometimes my life feels like it has been cleaved in half and not put back together so well. Rather than the perfect dichotomy of the yin yang symbol of Chinese philosophy, my symbol would be more like two mismatched plates shattered and half of each hastily glued back together into some rough, ill-fitting mosaic.

There always seems to be some juxtaposition between the elements of my life. When I was in school, the word juxtaposition was frequently used during design studio critiques. It always referred to the placement of two dissimilar architectural elements in close proximity so as to highlight the differences between the two. I feel that way about my life.

Rather than highlighting the opposing parts of my life, I wish that it was more like the yin yang symbol. Each half working to balance the other out

Body Worlds

Today, I made one of my rare trips into the city. Actually, I went into the city twice in one weekend. On Saturday night, I went to the Chicago Auto Show to look at all the shiny cars, ooh and ahh over the exciting concept cars (I thought that the best one was the Jeep Trailhawk), and sit in the ones that I can only currently dream of affording.

So, in one day I went from looking a gleaming hunks on metal to gazing upon plasticized human bodies. I went to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. I would have to sum up the experience as morbidly fascinating.

I was a bit unnerved going to look at a bunch of real human bodies in a museum. I thought it would be gross and creepy. In reality, it wasn't that bad. Given that the bodies had been injected with plastic and hardened they didn't have the glossiness of a body that I would have expected. Instead, as my date said, the bodies made her think of beef jerky.

It was a bit fascinating at seeing all the nerve endings and organs and such. I did however approach the portion of the exhibit with the circulatory system with some trepidation. I was fearing that I would find myself looking at an example of an aortic dissection. It still bothers me to think that it happened to me. Even running across an old episode of Three's Company on the television gives me a start, knowing that John Ritter died from an aortic dissection. Although looking at the hearts did cause an acceleration of mine, I was relieved not to see an example.

Some of the poses, such as the yoga woman and an ice-skating pair, highlighted the grace and fluidity of which the human body is capable. A couple of the poses seemed a little more shocking to me. Still, overall I found the exhibit to be very respectful of the bodies. In one room, there were several fetuses at various stages of development. It was somewhat sad to look at the bodies of people who never were. These tiny, precious bodies were supposed to become lives well spent, but it didn't happen. It did not seem like some sort of macabre nursery, but instead the bodies were gently placed on black cloths that seemed to nestle and swaddle the child. The only disrespect seemed to come from a woman looking at an embryo and commenting that she was amazed that there was so much political and religious fighting over something that looked like a booger.

The whole time I was in the exhibit, I kept wondering who these people were. What was their life stor? Where did they live? How did they die? Was it peaceful? Was it tragic? Do their families still mourn and miss them? Still seeing the human body in that form, stripped of the skin and reduced to an anatomical display really drove home the fact that our bodies aren't us. I felt no trace of the people who used to inhabit these bodies. Their souls were longer housed in those corporeal forms. I suppose many people could have a nihilistic approach to it and offer it as proof that when we die, that's it, lights out. I on the other hand, felt the other way around.