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I found myself in Chicago on my short trip following the 80's band The Bangles on their midwest tour Bangles review. The band was playing at a benefit that night. Since the donation was $500, I opted instead to visit the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in the afternoon and wander around downtown Chicago that evening. Here I drive into downtown and head toward the AIC through city streets.
The Art Institute of Chicago is an encyclopedic fine art museum located in Chicago, Illinois's Grant Park. The Art Institute has one of the world's most notable collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in its permanent collection. Its diverse holdings also include significant Old Master works, American art, European and American decorative arts, Asian art and modern and contemporary art. The museum is associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Today, the museum is most famous for its collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and American paintings. Included in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection are more than 30 paintings by Claude Monet
In 2006, the Art Institute began construction of "The Modern Wing", an addition situated on the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. The project, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, was completed and officially opened to the public on May 16, 2009. The 264,000 square-foot building makes the Art Institute the second largest art museum in the United States. The building houses the museum’s world-renowned collections of 20th- and 21st-century art, specifically modern European painting and sculpture, contemporary art, architecture and design, and photography.
I liked the "where's Waldo" feeling given by the viewer discovering the various people who blend into the background of the garden. I am amazed that mere "dabbing" by the artist makes the mind render people.
Paul Cezanne‘s use of pronounced contours in some places and sketchy, broken ones elsewhere, along with such elements as the strange misalignment of the tabletop to the right and left, shows that he was trying to capture an experience and construct a composition outside the hounds of conventional modeling and perspective.
I liked how he depicted the folded napkin and the nestled fruit. That said, Cezanne is not one of my favorites ....
I am a sucker for any women in nature scenes. Look at the texture of the grass on the stream bank. He's also got the reflection of the bank in the water captured well, along with the view of the bank itself under the water. The figure is just stylized and not very human, which doesn't really matter. Why are her feet so dirty to begin with? After finishing it, he painted a variation featuring a nude (a rarity for the artist) in the same pose and setting (1891; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Pissarro painted this for the seventh Impressionist exhibition- , in 1882, where he displayed a number of paintings of peasant girls. Here the small brushstrokes, applied one next to the other and sometimes overlaid with dabs of thicker paint, result in an irregularly built-up surface, serving to integrate figure and setting and evoke the textures of the young woman's wool clothing. I think the treatment of light and shadow (look at her shoulder and down her arm) is done well. I couldn't figure out what she was holding until I read the card.
This is a painting done while Gauguin lived in Tahiti. Most of his painting are of naked native women. That's a good gig if you can get it, I guess. I don't really care for Gauguin, but this one isn't too bad. This woman was Gaguin's companion. She is wearing the prim attire imposed on native women by European missionaries. I like thinking about her carefully choosing her dress and taking care in dressing for her portrait. I wonder if it was hot enough for her to have to make use of the fan?
I thought to myself, "Why would decent-looking mermaids hang out with such hideous guy-creatures? It can't be for the music supplied by the harp and shell. I bet they bought these under-age mermaids booze, that's what I think. That has led to the playfulness. So, it's a cautionary tale. I do like the inexact reflections in the water, and the captured sense of wild play.
There is something innocent and appealing about this stark content. It seems to be winter outside. Is she checking whether some neighbor she knows is up with the light on? She's not boldly peering out of the center of the window, but peeking around the curtain to show modesty. I read a "longing-for" emotion into the picture.
La Touche's first paintings (1880s) were domestic scenes in the style of the Dutch 17th century. They were vigorous, harsh and sombre and met with no success: he burnt most of them in 1891. Pardon, signifies in Brittany the feast of the patron saint of a church or chapel, at which an indulgence is granted. To these Breton Pardons come pilgrims from every side, clad in their best costumes which are only to be seen there and at a wedding. It is a pilgrimage of devotion and piety. The greater part of the day is spent in prayer and the Pardon begins with early Mass at 4 AM, Its observance, however, has actually commenced earlier, for the preceding evening is devoted to confession, and the rosary is generally recited by the pilgrims, the whole way to the place of the Pardon, After the religious service, the great procession takes place around the church.