Tag Archive "art-institute-of-chicago"

Chicago on the last weekend in April: a panel at Art Chicago, a brief visit to the Art Institute of Chicago and airplane reading about Public Space

Twenty years ago, when I had just moved to Chicago, Art Chicago was the only fair in the U.S. devoted to contemporary art, and my introduction to the genre. Now that fairs are so common, it may be hard to remember that Art Basel existed only in its home city and New York had many galleries, but no fairs. Art Chicago was then held at Navy Pier, in a charmless state of decay: endless, dirty, green shag carpets that made it clear that the week before the space had held farm equipment, and the following week would likely exhibit motorcycles. ... More » »

College Art Association Annual Meeting in Chicago; random thoughts

The plane to Chicago for the College Art Association (CAA) Annual Meeting left from a concourse I rarely use so I saw different art than usual  as part of the airport’s Exhibition Program,  which certainly provides the best distraction I’ve found at Philadelphia International Airport.  Nick Kripal’s Swarm was a terra cotta landscape of an alternative, multi-culti character with forms cribbed from the kitchen cabinets; what looked like a Moorish dome turned out to have been cast from a pudding mold!  I’d love to see him do animations based on them.

All about Watercolor; a review of Watercolors by Winslow Homer; the color of light

Winslow Homer Boy in Boat, Gloucester (1880/81) transparent watercolor, with touches of opaque watercolor and scraping, over graphite, on moderately thick, rough-textured, ivory wove paper, The Art Institute of Chicago, photo courtesy of the museum. I never knew much about watercolor as a technique other than the fact that its early association with amateur painters had prejudiced many art historians, collectors and museums not to treat it sufficiently seriously. Still I recognize major accomplishment when I see it and Winslow Homer is unquestionably at the summit of the field. Sorry to say I didn’t get to the Art Institute of ... More » »

Last Chicago post–Art Institute of Chicago

This is the third and last of my Chicago posts. Here are the the first post and the second one. I suppose it’s silly to write a post that says the Art Institute of Chicago is a great museum. But that’s what I’m going to do. Here’s a picture of the Beaux Arts building that houses it, completed the year of the Chicago World’s Fair (1893). And to think, if not for the beastly hot weather, I might have missed the place. But on our last day, we needed someplace to go that was indoors and cool. Ellsworth paintings surrounded ... More » »