My Art Photography: ART OUTDOORS. (36 Photos).
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Category Archives: Collections and Exhibitions
My Art Photography: AT MUSEUMS.
FEATURE image: May 2015. Michigan Avenue Main Lobby. The Art Institute of Chicago. 4.57mb DSC_0366 (1)
Photographs and Text by John P. Walsh.
Michigan Avenue entrance of The Art Institute of Chicago.
Sculpture Court, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Modern Wing, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Mao, 1972, Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and pencil on linen, 448.3 × 346.7 cm (176 1/2 × 136 1/2 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago.
The Chauncey McCormick Gallery refers to exhibition space (often featuring Asian and European decorative arts) at the Art Institute of Chicago named after Chauncey Brooks McCormick (1884–1954), a prominent Chicago businessman, philanthropist, and president of the museum from 1944 until his death
Robert Irwin (1928-2023), Untitled, Acrylic lacquer on cast acrylic disk, 1969. The Art Institute of Chicago. Irwin was a pioneering figure in California Light and Space art.
Modern wing, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Frances Stark (1967-) from Intimism, 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Carl Milles (1875-1955), Triton Fountain, 1926, bronze, Alexander McKinlock Memorial Court, The Art Institute of Chicago. Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (1875-1955) studied in Paris from 1897 to 1904, working in the studio of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Yet Milles departed from the prevailing naturalism that dominated sculpture in the Belle Époque era, and embraced ideas and forms that reflected the artist’s independent spirit, his knowledge and appreciation of classical and Gothic sculpture, and his Nordic roots.
Speaking of his fountain at the Art Institute of Chicago, Milles observed: “The great classicists knew that it was impossible to reproduce the appearance of flesh in marble, and they set themselves to create forms of pure beauty that would merely suggest and symbolize the living creature, and then to invest those forms with a meaning that mankind would feel intuitively to be universal and significant. This is what I have tried to do.”
Charles Ray (1953-), Young Man, 2012, Solid Stainless Steel.
Lorado Taft (1860-1936), Fountain of the Great Lakes, 1913. South Garden. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Flying Dragon, 1975, Steel plate and paint, 365 × 579 × 335 cm (120 × 228 × 132 in.), North Garden, The Art Institute of Chicago. 20th Century. American. Sculpture. Modernism.
Henry Moore (1898-1986), Large Interior Form, bronze (ed. of 6), 1953/4, 16 ft. 9 in., North Garden, The Art Institute of Chicago. Henry Moore’s 16-foot sculpture was made when the 84-year-old British artist was concerned with the construction of three-dimensional space, internal forms within solid volumes, and placing his work in a natural setting. Moore had worked primarily in stone but as these formal concerns emerged, he shifted to modeling and bronze casting. Large Interior Form explores mass and void as well as gravity and growth within a nature-inspired artist-created form.
Aristide Maillol (1861-1944), Nymph—Central Figure for the Three Graces, 1930, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Acquired by the museum in 1966, photographs show that the statue stood in an open location by a garden pool at the museum. In 1991 following a whirlwind of euphoria associated with the successful completion of Operation Desert Storm, a victory celebration at the Mall in June of that year involved hovering military jets and helicopters. Their downdraft sent gravel footpath debris flying in the air that scratched and cracked several statues in the sculpture garden. Though none appeared to sustain damage beyond some repair, the Nymph—Central Figure for the Three Graces suffered the most damage as the nude female statue had pitted indentations on her backside. In 2010 when this photograph was taken, the sculpture was located in front of a protective garden wall. See- https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-06-12-1991163158-story.html 20th Century. France. Sculpture. Modernism.
Indian and Islamic Art.
Frédéric Bazille, Self-portrait, 1865/6. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Clodion (1738-1814). The See-Saw. 1775. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
Michel Anguier (1612-1686), Amphitrite, marble, 1684. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
Venus, Roman, Asia Minor, marble, c.165 CE, Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
Bill Reid (1920-1998), Birth of the World or The Raven and the First Men/Humans, yellow cedar, 1980. Museum of Anthropology, UBC, Vancouver, British Columbia.
“The Café-Concert,” Édouard Manet, c. 1879. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Next to it is Portrait of Estelle Balfour by Edgar Degas, c. 1863-65, oil on canvas mounted on panel, also at The Walters.
From right to left: Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Woman with Cat, 1908, and Quai, Venice, 1921; Gabriele Münter (1877-1962), Portrait Young Woman, 1909. Milwaukee Art Museum.
Mikazuki (male deity) Noh Mask, cypress wood, brass, colors. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919): Chrysanthemums, 1881/2; Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenberg), 1879; Fruits of the Midi, 1881; Seascape, 1879; Lucie Berard (Child in White), 1883. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Woman in a Garden, 1882/3, The Art Institute of Chicago.
William Glackens (1870-1938), The Dressing Table, c.1922, oil on canvas. Snite Museum of Art, Nore Dame University, South Bend, Indiana.
Gabriele Münter (1877-1962): Kirche von Reidhausen, oil on canvas board, 1908 and Mädchen mit Puppe, oil on cardboard, 1908/9. August Macke (1887-1914), Geraniums Before Blue Mountain, oil on canvas, 1911. Milwaukee Art Museum.
Above and below: Bodhisattva; Diety; Buddha. 4th-6th Centuries. Afghanistan/Pakistan. Stucco. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Charles Collins (1680-1744), Still Life with Game, 1741. Private Collection. 18th Century. Ireland.
James C. Timbrell (1807-1850), Carolan the Irish Bard, c. 1844, oil on canvas. Private collection. 19th Century. Ireland.
John Kelly, wire-strung Bunworth harp, 1734, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Robert Fagan (c. 1761-1816), Portrait of Lady as Hibernia, c. 1798. Private collection. The Bunworth harp is inscribed: “made by Iohn Kelly for the Revd Charles Bworth Baltdaniel 1734″. The wire-string harp was made by Catholic instrument maker John Kelly for the Reverend Charles Bunworth, also of Baltdaniel, who was the Protestant rector of Buttevant, County Cork. The many aspects of the instrument—from soundbox, harmonic curve, fore-pillar, tuning pegs, and ornamentation and color— invite interest. Though it may be the female head at the top of the harmonic curve that at first most intrigues. (see – https://harp.fandom.com/wiki/Bunworth_Harp and http://www.earlygaelicharp.info/harpmakers/ – both retrieved October 14, 2021). Robert Fagan was an Irish painter who was born in London but spent most of his artistic career in Rome and Sicily (Fagan first arrived into Italy in 1781). Though an expatriate, Fagan’s oil on canvas depicts a woman who represents Ireland careessing the strings of the harp, the country’s national instrument and symbol. Seated next to an Irish wolfhound, she holds a scroll that reads: “Ireland Forever” (“Erin go bragh“). 18th century. Ireland.
Includes (below) John Dodd, of Swallowfield, Berkshire, 1739, John Vanderbank (1694 – 1739) and (above) Portrait of a Woman, Probably Elizabeth Aislabie, of Studley Royal, Yorkshire, c. 1749, Thomas Hudson (1701-1779), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.
Loutrophoros (Bath water vase), 4th Century BCE. Greece. Italy (Apulia). Terracotta. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Black-figure painting was the primary technique for decorating Greek vases for over 200 years. The technique started in Corinth and expanded east to Athens in the mid first millennium BCE (700- 500 BCE). In this time period ancient Corinth was, with almost 100,000 people, one of the largest cities of Greece. In 146 BCE the Romans besieged, captured and demolished Corinth. The site lay deserted for almost 100 years until the Romans rebuilt it as a new city populated with around 50,000 Romans, Greeks and Jews.
Oil Jar, 450 BCE, Athens, Greece, terracotta. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1898), Paris Street; A Rainy Day (“Rue de Paris, Temps de pluie”), 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921). Winged Figure, 1889, oil on canvas. 130.8 × 95.9 cm (51 1/2 × 37 3/4 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago.
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Artist in his Studio, c. 1865-66, oil on boarded mounted on panel, 62 × 46.5 cm (24 7/16 × 18 5/16 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Eternal Springtime, 1884. Bronze. Fonderie Alexis Rudier, Paris (20th century). The Art Institute of Chicago.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Spanish dance (c.1883), Arabesque (c.1885), and Woman seated in an armchair, (c.1901), bronze (cast later). The Art Institute of Chicago.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Adam, 1881. Bronze. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Headdresses. 19th/20th Century. Africa. The Art Institute of Chicago. The headdresses at the right and at the left are Gelede headdresses. The headdress in the middle is perhaps a Gelde or Efe headdress. The headdress at the left is made of wood and the oldest of the headdresses. It was made in Nigeria or Benin by the Yoruba community in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Gelede headdresses often portray women. The headdresses in the center and at right depict women. One is wearing a head tie and the other is showing a woman with a plaited hairstyle. These were made in Nigeria by the Yoruba community in the early 20th century. The Gelede festival of the Yoruba community in western Africa is a public spectacle which uses colorful masks that combines art and ritual dance to educate, entertain and inspire worship. Gelede includes the celebration of “Mothers,” a grouping that includes female ancestors and deities as well as the elderly women of the community whose power and spiritual capacity in society is convoked. The Efe is a nighttime public performance held the day before the Gelede.
Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874), African Chief, 1870, oil on canvas, 41 × 32.9 cm (16 1/8 × 12 15/16 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago. African Chief in The Art Institute of Chicago was recently exhibited in a 2017-2018 monographic retrospective at the Prado in Madrid. The show, simply entitled “Fortuny (1838-1874),” reflected the Prado’s holdings of many of this artist’s masterpieces. The Prado’s collection is due to their own acquisitions but mainly the generous bequests of the artist’s oils, watercolors, and drawings by late 19th century Mexican collector Ramón de Errazu (1840-1904) as well as the painter’s son, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo. Fortuny’s artwork is often Orientalist in style that reflects the many trips he made to North Africa. In his career, Fortuny was noted for his precision of anatomy and archaeological scrupulousness though African Chief tends to the modern broken brush style for which the Spanish artist was prescient following his many trips to Paris. 19th century. Spain. Romanticism.
Left to right: Kramer Brothers Company (Dayton, Ohio), Settee, c. 1905/25; Cecilia Beaux (American, 1855-1942), Dorothea and Francesca, 1898, oil on canvas; Daniel Chester French (American, 1855- 1931), Truth, 1900, plaster.
Above and next three below: Fragments, Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. American. Modernism.
With the arm detail of Rodin’s bronze Adam (1881), the landing of the Grand Staircase at The Art Institute of Chicago.
Bisa Butler (1973-), The Safety Patrol, 2018, by Bisa Butler. Cotton, wool, and chiffon; appliquéd and quilted. The Safety Patrol considers the potential of a group of children as future caretakers of the world led by a boy in a sash with outstretched arms whose duty it is to protect the others. Bisa Butler uses the technique of appliqué quilt making to create her work. For the figures, the artist cuts, layers, and pins together fabrics and arranges them on the ground fabric. This comprises the quilt top. Between this quilt top and a backing fabric is a layer of fiber “batting” or stuffing. These layers are stitched to form the quilt with the thread lines part of the structure, texture and details of the image. Butler seeks to use fabric colors and patterns to contribute to the quilt’s subject and narrative. 21st Century. American.
Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808), The Fountains, 1787, oil on canvas, 255.3 × 221.2 cm (100 1/2 × 88 1/8 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago.
Joseph Wilson (d. 1800), Adephi Club – Belfast, oil on canvas, 1783.
The State Ballroom, Saint Patrick’s Hall, Dublin Castle, oil on wood, c. 1845, signed and inscribed: F. J. Davis/Dublin. St Patrick’s Hall had long been a key location for Ireland’s political, military and social elite to gather (B. Rooney, Creating History, Stories of Ireland in Art, 2016, p.179). These dance proceedings are overseen by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and his wife visible at the end of the hall. The 1840s was a period of fashion indulgence. The social ball with attendees in sumptuous costume took place during the period of the Irish famine (1845-1849) where approximately one million people died. Another one million or more emigrated out of the country at the same time, many to the United States. Court dress for gentleman allowed personal expression in fabric and style for the waistcoat. Military officers and political office holders wore court uniforms indicating their position and rank. For ladies, to signal their marital situation, unmarried women wore jewelry and fresh flowers in their hair. Conventionally-minded single ladies added two ostrich feathers behind one ear. Matrons sported a third ostrich feather in their hair and wore lace ribbons.
El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (1541-1614), Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation, c. 1595, oil on canvas. 92 × 74 cm (36 3/16 × 24 1/8 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago.
Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922), Boats at Rest, c. 1895, oil on canvas, 66 × 91.4 cm (26 × 36 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago.
Pompeo Batoni (Italian, 1708-1787), Allegory of Peace and War, 1776, oil on canvas, 53 1/2 × 39 in. The Art Institute of Chicago. 5.73 mb Pompeo Batoni was a leading 18th-century Roman painter. The artist was known for his portraits and commissioned large format historical and religious paintings. The painting entitled “Allegory of Peace and War” represented the mythological figure of the god Mars being restrained by a semi-nude embodiment of peace. Peace lays her hand on War’s sword and bears to him an olive branch. The painting was the result of Batoni’s own invention – no one commissioned this artwork – and it stayed in the artist’s studio until at least the early 1780s.
Statue of Aphrodite, called Venus de Milo because it was found on the Greek Island of Milos in the Aegean Sea. It dates from around 150 B.C. In the Louvre in Paris, the Venus de Milo is one of the most famous statues in the world. Its soft, sensual handling of the marble was characteristic of the late Hellenistic period. She is monumental – the topless, armless Venus de Milo stands, independent of her base and pedestal, six feet five inches in height. In the course of the second half of the 19th century, the Venus de Milo became a favorite statue of Parisians and its visitors. It was around 1875 that it was moved away from the wall which it stood against and placed in the middle of a 17th century room so that it could be viewed completely around. It was accorded this baroque effect first used at Versailles at the start of the 18th century so to isolate monumental sculpture for display to produce maximum impact and enjoyment of the artwork. SOURCES: Masterpieces of the Louvre, Marcel Brion, NY: Abrams; Creators Collectors and Connoisseurs, Niels Von Holst, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Fragment of a Funerary Monument, c. 330 BCE Greek; Athens, 152.4 × 111.8 × 33 cm (60 × 44 × 13 in.), The Art Institute of Chicago. see- https://www.artic.edu/artworks/55887/fragment-of-a-funerary-naiskos-monument-in-the-shape-of-a-temple – retrieved March 31, 2025. This is one of the fashionable burial markers, whether of Greek or Roman families, encountered by the public in ancient times. Made in all sorts of shapes and sizes, this large stone monument from the 4th century BCE shows three figures carved in very high relief so much so that they are nearly in the round. The two male figures’ gestures of parting indicate that it is a funerary scene. The standing man is likely the person who has died and this funerary marker depicts his sharing a final farewell with loved ones – their relationship, obviously close, after 2500 years, completely unknown.
Cristoforo Stati (Italian, 1556–1619). Samson and the Lion, 1604-1607, marble, 210 × 112 × 84 cm (82 11/16 × 44 1/8 × 33 1/8 in.). The Art Institute of Chicago. see – https://www.artic.edu/artworks/146875/samson-and-the-lion – retrieved April 1, 2025. Stati studied in Florence under Giambologna (1529-1608). In 1601, Tuscany’s archduke, Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1549-1609), sent a sculpture of Samson by Giambologna to the palace of Spain’s prime minister in Valladolid as a gift. Later, Stati’s sculpture of Samson and the Lion was also sent to Spain as a complementary gift and installed in Madrid. The work was in a Swiss private collection before it was acquired by The Art Institute of Chicago in 1996.
Head of Hercules. Roman, First Century CE. The Art Institute of Chicago. The Romans adapted the stories of Hercules’ superhuman feats of strength from the Greeks. The earlier Greeks viewed him as a demigod, the later Romans saw him as one of their hero figures.
Head of Pierre de Wissant (1889) by Auguste Rodin, part of The Burghers of Calais (1884–89) in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, originates from the larger sculptural ensemble commemorating the six citizens of Calais who offered themselves as hostages to the English during the Hundred Years’ War. When displayed independently, the head emphasizes Rodin’s exploration of psychological intensity and human vulnerability. The sculpture conveys a moment of profound emotional anguish: the downward gaze, deeply furrowed brow, and partially opened mouth collectively articulate a state of acute despair and inner turmoil. Through these expressive distortions, Rodin captures not only the historical gravity of the subject’s sacrifice but also the universal experience of psychological suffering.
Crèche, mid-18th century, Naples, Italy. Details of daily life are connected to the biblical narrative of the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
The mid-18th century Neapolitan Crèche invites viewers to witness the miraculous among the mundane. The Art Institute of Chicago. see – Neapolitan Crèche | The Art Institute of Chicago – retrieved December 14, 2025.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), A Burgher of Calais (Jean d’Aire), modelled 1889, plaster, 82×26 in. The figure was exhibited in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and entered the Art Institute’s collection that same year. The monument includes six individualized figures on a heroic scale and was commissioned in France in 1884. Completed in 1889 by Rodin the monument was installed in Calais’s town hall square in 1895. Rodin depicts Jean d’Aire, one of the town fathers, in sackcloth with the keys of the city, surrendering to the English during the Hundred Years War, in exchange for their lifting a nearly year-long siege that led to the starvation of the city’s inhabitants.. see – Monument to The Burghers of Calais | Musée Rodin – retrieved December 15, 2025.
Exhibition Strange Realities: The Symbolist Imagination (October 4, 2025- January 5, 2026). Over 85 works of major artists including Odilon Redon, Paul Gauguin, and Edvard Munch, drawn from the Museum’s collection of drawings and prints exploring the late 19th century pan-European Symbolist movement of art, literature and theatre.see – Strange Realities: The Symbolist Imagination | The Art Institute of Chicago – retrieved December 16, 2025.
Greyed Rainbow, 1953, Jackson Pollock, oil on linen, 182.9 × 244.2 cm (72 1/16 × 96 3/16 in.) and Streetcar, 1951, Alexander Calder, Brass, sheet metal, rod, wire, and paint, 9’8″ long, Art Institute of Chicago. See – Streetcar (1951) | Calder Foundation – retrieved Jan. 29, 2026 and Greyed Rainbow | The Art Institute of Chicago – retrieved Jan. 29, 2016.
In a year of Gladiator, Traffic, Almost Famous and Erin Brockovich, Marcia Gay Harden won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in “Pollock” for her portrayal of Lee Krasner (1908-1984), pioneering American Abstract Expressionist painter and wife of American abstract painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), the biographical film’s title character. Hardin also won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. Ed Harris was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jackson Pollock in a film that was also Harris’s directorial debut. An ensemble cast portrays real people of the mid-20th century modern art world including Jennifer Connelly as Ruth Kligman (1930-2010), American abstract artist and Pollock and Willem de Kooning lover, Val Kilmer as the Dutch-American abstract expressionist de Kooning (1904-1997), Bud Cort as writer/dealer Howard Putzel (1898-1945), Jeffrey Tambor as critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), John Heard as sculptor Tony Smith (1912-1980), Robert Knott as older brother Sande Pollock (1909-1963), Sada Thompson as Pollock’s mother Stella (1875-1958) and Amy Madigan as American art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979). Like its namesake’ artwork, the film made a splash when it came out in December 2000 and was a memorably fine effort. https://youtu.be/z0xiovbDML0?si=XupBbr5gZnhuTVqP – retrieved Jan. 30, 2026.
Thomas Hart Benton, Poker Night (from A Streetcar Named Desire), 1948 (Whitney Museum of American Art), Milwaukee Art Museum. 2.63mb DSC_0054 (1)
Frida Kahlo’s Self‑Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) is a concentrated display of her mature portrait style. Despite its small scale, the composition is intricate, drawing the viewer’s eye across a dense constellation of figures and symbolic objects. At the center sits Kahlo herself, rendered with imaginative realism and surrounded by a menagerie: a monkey on her left, a cat on her right, and a lifeless hummingbird suspended at her throat. Beneath her signature joined eyebrows, she meets the viewer with a calm, unwavering gaze that feels both resolute and quietly intense.
The animals around her animate the scene with contrasting energies. The monkey, distracted, toys with the thorn necklace, while the cat appears tense and ready to strike. The necklace itself encircles her neck and extends downward, its sharp thorns pressing into her half‑length figure. Against this harshness, delicate butterflies—whether real or hair clips—rest motionless in her hair, and above them hover two dragonflies, creatures that in Mexican art often signal a link between nature and the spirit world, messengers of transformation and guardians of the soul.
Within this symbolic framework, the monkey can be read as an emblem of lust or moral temptation, the cat as mysticism and freedom, and the thorn necklace as a sign of bodily suffering and constraint. It also evokes Christ’s crown of thorns, allowing Kahlo to cast herself in a mode of imitatio Christi—a figure bearing pain, betrayal, and emotional anguish after failed relationships. In this light, the butterflies and dragonflies become signs of renewal, hinting at the possibility of resurrection emerging from her world’s suffering.
Finally, hummingbirds (colibríes) are powerful symbols of the warrior spirit, deeply linked to Aztec mythology, embodying courage, vitality, and the fierce renewal of life. By the modern era hummingbirds have also come to represent love, hope, joy, and inner strength while being understood as messengers carrying the presence of departed loved ones returning in brief, luminous visitations.
Even if Édouard Manet did not literally model Christ’s face on his own in Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers, the painting functions as an unmistakable act of self‑identification. Christ becomes a proxy for the embattled modern artist—a figure exposed, judged, and misunderstood by a hostile public. Manet selects the moment of Christ’s humiliation not to reenact a devotional scene but to stage a parallel between sacred suffering and his own experience before the Salon.
By mid‑century, French painting had turned decisively secular, yet Manet submitted two religious works to the Salons of 1864 and 1865—The Dead Christ with Angels and Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers. Both were accepted, and both were savaged. Critics called them vulgar, ignoble, even “contrary to art.” The public, accustomed to sentimentalized, idealized images of Jesus, recoiled from Manet’s starkly human Christ. Manet admitted to Baudelaire that the hostility unsettled him, even as Degas noted that the uproar made him famous. As Edmond Bazire observed, the Empire preferred idealized piety and bristled at seeing the Passion rendered with unvarnished realism, even when the scene followed Scripture closely.
What, then, is a secular modern artist doing painting the Passion at all? Manet’s answer is to reframe Christ’s suffering as an analogue for the artist’s own embattled position—a truth‑teller punished by a complacent society. While many French moderns had drifted from Catholicism, Manet maintained ties to the faith, and he inherited a Renaissance tradition in which artists increasingly identified with Christ, blurring the line between human and divine as a form of imitatio Christi. By the 1860s this identification was a legitimate, if easily misunderstood, mode of artistic self‑expression. Manet was not conventionally pious, but he was close to several religious thinkers, and his engagement with sacred subjects was sincere enough that these works were conspicuously omitted from the 1884 retrospective after his death.
What makes Manet’s identification radical is the way he collapses the boundary between sacred history and modern experience. His Christ is rendered with the same realist immediacy, the same studio illumination, the same unidealized physicality that define his contemporary subjects. The result is a figure who is neither fully divine nor fully secular but unsettlingly both—a Christ startlingly contemporary. The frontal, confrontational composition intensifies this effect: Christ appears not as a distant theological symbol but as a vulnerable body exposed to judgment. The ambiguity—devotional image, critique of devotional imagery, or modern psychological drama—was precisely what scandalized a hierarchical society that depended on stable categories.
The deeper provocation lies in Manet’s intervention into the history of painting. For a secular avant‑garde artist to take up a Passion subject in the 1860s was anomalous; to transform it into a conceptual self‑portrait was unprecedented. Manet’s Christ is not a theological claim but an artistic one: the modern painter, like the historical Jesus, confronts entrenched power, exposes uncomfortable truths, and endures public derision for doing so. The painting becomes a self‑portrait not of Manet’s face but of his artistic condition.
In this light, Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers is not a mockery of the sacred scene but a mockery of the mockery—a doubling of humiliation that implicates both Christ’s tormentors and Manet’s critics. The viewer’s unease arises from this conflation of registers: divine and human, biblical and modern, sacred narrative and artistic identity. Manet’s Christ stands under a bright studio light, stripped of idealization, exposed to judgment—just as Manet stood before the tribunal of the Salon.
The scandal, then, lies not only in the subject but in the claim: that the modern artist, misunderstood and persecuted, belongs to a lineage of suffering truth‑tellers. If not a literal self‑portrait, the painting is unmistakably a portrait of artistic identity, asserting that the modern painter occupies a role once reserved for the sacred.
SOURCES: French Salon Artists, 1800-1900, Richard R. Brettell, The Art Institute of Chicago and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, pp. 58-62; Manet 1832-1883, Françoise Cachin and Charles S. Moffett, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, pp. 226-229.
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My Art Photography: EXPO CHICAGO 2018, Festival Hall, Navy Pier. 7th Annual International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, September 27-30, 2018. (58 Photos).
FEATURE image: EXPO CHICAGO 2018, Festival Hall, Navy Pier.
EXPO CHICAGO 2018 is the 7th annual exhibition of international contemporary and modern art held in Chicago at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. It took place September 27-30, 2018. Expo Chicago/2018 presented 135 galleries and exhibitors representing 27 countries and 63 cities from around the world. This post’s 60 photographs are of that event.
EXPO CHICAGO 2018 includes exhibitors four sections categorized to a specific aim:
Exposure are galleries founded since 2010 featuring one or two artists;
Profile are international galleries featuring solo or collective artists with focused installations, exhibitions and projects;
Editions + Books highlight artist books, editions, prints, collectibles, photography, collage, drawing, etc.;
Special Exhibitions” feature site specific work.
More EXPO CHICAGO 2018 sections include:
IN/SITU highlighting curated large-scale installations (a second, outside version features large-scale sculptures in various Chicago locations);
EXPO VIDEO highlighting curated film, video and new media work;
EXPO SOUND highlighting curated sound installations and projects.
Aniela Sobieksi, Girl with a Garden, 2018, oil on panel, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee. The painting next to it sold just before I took this photograph.
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My Art Photography: EXPO CHICAGO 2017, Festival Hall, Navy Pier. 6th Annual International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, September 13-17, 2017. (34 photos).
FEATURE image: EXPO CHICAGO 2017, Festival Hall, Navy Pier.
EXPO CHICAGO 2017 is the 6th annual exhibition of international contemporary and modern art held in Chicago at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. It took place September 13-17, 2017. Expo Chicago/2017 presented 135 galleries representing 25 countries and 58 cities from around the world.
Brian Calvin, Momentary Monument, 2017, acrylic on canvas, Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Admissions, Expo Chicago 2017.
Information desk, Expo Chicago 2017.
Lara Schnitger, Suffragette City, 2015-2017, Cotton, and linen, quilted and bleached, Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
The War We Won, Roger Brown, oil on canvas, 80 x 120 in., Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago. Expo Chicago 2017.
Doug Argue, Dream Song 12, 2017, oil on paper, 40,x,60 in., Marc Straus, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
CarrerasMugica Contemporary Art Gallery, Bilbao. Expo Chicago 2017.
Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich, Switzerland, with booth design by Antonio Manfreda. Expo Chicago 2017. Germano Celant, theorist of the Arte Povera movement. From 2015 he was the artistic director of the Prada Foundation in Milan.
Matthew Monahan, Hurricane Nickel, 2016, and Aquarius Gemini, 2016, Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Rita McBride, Halicarnassus, 2010, bronze and grey limestone, and Pantheon 2, bronze and markina marble, CarrerasMugica Contemporary Art Gallery, Bilbao. Expo Chicago 2017.
Wardell Milan, The New Sun Will Warm our Proud and Naked Bodies, 2016, charcoal, oil, oil pastel, pastel, gesso, acrylic, color pencil, cut paper on paper, David Nolan Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Meleko Mokgosi, Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. Expo Chicago 2017.
John A. Seal, König Galerie, Berlin. Expo Chicago 2017.
Alfred Leslie, Oval Collage, 1959, Diana Moore, White Head, 1988 and Willem de Kooning, 1965, charcoal on paper, Alan Stone Projects, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Thinks I, To Myself. Expo Chicago 2017.
Expo Chicago 2017.
Expo Chicago 2017.
Jackie Saccoccio, Portrait (Bomba), 2017, and Faheem Majeed, Hopscotch I, 2011, and Pause, 2010, Rhona Hoffman Gallery Chicago. Expo Chicago 2017.
Expo Chicago 2017.
Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Iva Gueorguieva, Listen, 2017, acrylic oil collage on canvas, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Hayal Pozanti, 70 (million m.p.h that the earth orbit around the sun), 2017, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 132 in., Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, California. Expo Chicago 2017.
Lavar Munroe, Instinctual, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 42 in., Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco. Expo Chicago 2017.
Expo Chicago 2017.
Peres Projects Berlin. Expo Chicago 2017.
Ransome Stanley, Untitled, 2017, oil on canvas, 59 x 78 in., Gallery MOMO, South Africa. Expo Chicago 2017.
Booth 839, Expo Chicago 2017.
Caroline Walker, Grimm Gallery Amsterdam New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Expo Chicago 2017.
Nicolas Africano, Untitled, 2017, cast glass, Weinstein Gallery Minneapolis. Expo Chicago 2017.
Paul Kasmin Gallery New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Artist’s Signature (Miró). Expo Chicago 2017.
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My Art Photography: EXPO CHICAGO 2016, Festival Hall, Navy Pier. 5th International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, September 22-25, 2016.
FEATURE IMAGE: Manuel Mendive, Este Lugar Sagrado/This Sacred Place, 2009, acrylic on canvas, Cernuda Arte Coral Gables, FL. Expo Chicago/2016.
EXPO CHICAGO 2016 is the 5th annual exhibition of international contemporary and modern art held in Chicago at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. It took place from September 22-25, 2016. Expo Chicago/2016 presents 145 galleries representing 22 countries and 53 cities from around the world. This post’s photographs are of that event.
Jeff Koons, BMW M3 GT2, Expo Chicago/2016.
Alfredo Jaar, Be Afraid of the Enormity of the Possible, 2015, neon, edition 3/3 + 3AP, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany. Expo Chicago/2016.
At Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Berlin, Germany includes artwork by Klaus Jörres and Julian Charrière. Expo Chicago/2016.
At Cernuda Arte Coral Gables, FL. Manuel Mendive (foreground) Este Lugar Sagrado/This Sacred Place, 2009, acrylic on canvas. Expo Chicago/2016.
Paintings I, Art+Language, Made in Zurich 1965-1972, London. Expo Chicago/2016.
The Art + Language group’s Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden in Chicago. Founded in the mid1960s in the United Kingdom by Terry Atkinson (b. 1939), David Bainbridge (b. 1941), Michael Baldwin (b. 1945) and Harold Hurrell (b. 1940), artist Mel Ramsden joined in 1970.
Throughout the 1970s, Art + Language dealt with questions about art production and attempted a shift from conventional forms of art, such as painting and sculpture, to theoretically linguistic (text)-based artwork. Art + Language remains active today in several collaborative projects.
Jonathan Lasker, The Handicapper’s Faith, 2011, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany. Expo Chicago/2016.
At Gallery MOMO Cape Town/Johannesburg, South Africa. Artwork by Mary Sibande. Expo Chicago/2016.
Expo Chicago/2016.
Andrew Moore, Mirador, Gibara, Cuba, 2008, 46 x 58 inch archival pigment print, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.
Margot Bergman, Agnes, acrylic on canvas, 2016, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago. Expo Chicago/2016.
Shannon Finley, Googol, 2015, acrylic on linen, 4 panels 95 x 189 in.,Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago. Expo Chicago/2016.
Euan Uglow, Sue Wearing a Blue Swimming Cap, 1978/80, oil on canvas 19.5 x 27.5 in., Browse & Darby London. Expo Chicago/2016.
Deborah Butterfield, Hala, 2016, cast bronze with patina, Zolla Lieberman Gallery Inc., Chicago. Expo Chicago/2016.
Juan Garaizabal, Álvaro Alcázar Gallery, Madrid. Expo Chicago/2016.
April Martin, The Sun had not yet Risen, 2016, copper, thread, glass, vinegar, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Expo Chicago/2016.
September 2016. Hermann Nitsch, Schüttbild (Shaped Image), 2013, Acrylic on Canvas, Marc Straus Gallery, New York City. 4.29mb DSC_0876 (1)
Dialogue with Miguel Aguilar and Chris Silva, Conversation Pieces. Expo Chicago/2016.
Louise Bourgeois, Girl with hair, 2007, archival dye on silk, edition of 12, Carolina Nitsch, New York City. Expo Chicago/2016.
Pace Gallery, New York City. Expo Chicago/2016.
Expo Chicago 2016.
Genieve Figgis, Half Gallery, New York City. Genieve Figgis is an artist from Ireland who began her artistic career on social media. Expo Chicago/2016.
Buddha’s tight ringlet curls by Qi Yu. Ceramic cinnabar mineral mounted on canvas. Expo Chicago/2016.
Artist Qi Yu of Redbrick Art Museum, Beijing, China.
North Cafe. Expo Chicago/2016.
Expo Chicago/2016.
Listen, you a wonder. you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own., Amy Sherald, 2016, 54 x 43 in., oil on canvas, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
The artist’s title quotes American poet Lucille Clifton (1936-2010): “listen, you a wonder. you a city of a woman. you got a geography of your own. listen, somebody need a map to understand you. somebody need directions to move around you. listen, woman, you not a noplace anonymous girl; mister with his hands on you he got his hands on some damn body!”
Sandro Miller, American Bikers 1990-1995, Catherine Edleman Gallery, Chicago. Expo Chicago/2016.
Bettina Pousttchi, Rotunda, 2016, photographic print on textile, 25′ diameter, Buchmann Galerie, Berlin/Lugano. Expo Chicago/2016.
Raffi Kalenderian, Sekula Benner Street, 2016, oil on canvas, Buchmann Galerie Berlin/Lugano. Expo Chicago/2016.
Ernesto Burgos, Kate Werble Gallery, New York City. Expo Chicago/2016.
Sims Reed Gallery London. Expo Chicago/2016.
Ann Agee, Negishi Heights 1957, 2015, acrylic on Thai Mulberry paper, P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York City. Expo Chicago/2016.
Expo Chicago/2016.
Performance outside Zwirner Gallery, New York City. Background: Raymond Pettibon, No Title (Manhattan rising, advancing—), 2010, ink and acrylic on paper, 59 x 118 inches. Expo Chicago/2016.
Mel Bochner, Blah Blah Blah, 2016 and Aloyson Shotz, Flow Fold #3, 2015, Carolina Nitsch Gallery, New York City. Expo Chicago/2016.
Alicja Kwade, Hypotheisches Gebilde, 2016, König Galerie Berlin, Germany. Expo Chicago/2016.
Bernar Venet, Indeterminate Line, 2013, rolled steel, 75 1/2 × 80 × 62 in. Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City. Expo Chicago/2016.
Richard Norton Gallery. Expos Chicago/2016.
Jannis Varelas, New Flags for a New Country, The Breeder, Athens, Greece. Expo Chicago/2016.
Expo Chicago/2016.
Jenn Smith, Untitled (Snake), oil and acrylic on canvas, 2016, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Expo Chicago/2016.
Atelier Van Lieshout, The Beginning of Everything, foam, paint, wood, paverpoll, 2016. Expo Chicago/2016. The molecule represents Glucose (C6H12O6), the primary source of energy for human life. Without glucose, nothing would function: neither the brain, intelligence, thought, muscles, movement or sports. Without energy, our lives would come to a standstill.
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My Art Photography: EXPO CHICAGO 2015, Festival Hall, Navy Pier. 4th Annual International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, September 17-20, 2015. (82 Photos).
FEATURE image: Ewerdt Hilgemann, Habakuk (Homage to Max Ernst), 2014, stainless steel, Borzo Gallery and The Mayor Gallery. In/Situ Outside 2015.
EXPO CHICAGO 2015 is the 4th annual exhibition of international contemporary and modern art held in Chicago at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall on September 17 – 20, 2015. This year’s exhibition featured 140 art galleries representing 16 countries and nearly 50 major international cities including New York City, Shanghai, Tokyo, Beijing, Rome, Berlin, London, Paris, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.
In/Situ Outside 2015.
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REVIEW: All three versions of VAN GOGH’S BEDROOMS, The Art Institute of Chicago, February 14-May 10, 2016.
FEATURE image: The Bedroom (1889) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from the Art Institute of Chicago. “The Bedroom (1889) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from the Art Institute of Chicago. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.” by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
During its historic run from February 14 to May 10, 2016, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted a monumental blockbuster exhibition that brought together all three versions of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Bedroom” in North America for the first time in art history. Captured here in the author’s photograph, the exhibition’s penultimate gallery offered a rare side-by-side view of these masterworks, spanning from the 1888 original from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to the two subsequent 1889 versions from Chicago’s own collection and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This review explores the profound impact of this unprecedented artistic reunion, examining how seeing these three distinct iterations in one room shifts our understanding of Van Gogh’s psychological obsession with home and sanctuary.
By John P. Walsh. May 6, 2016.
I saw the Van Gogh’s Bedrooms exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago (February 14-May 10, 2016) on the last Friday afternoon before the show closed. The museum that day was drawing a large crowd and it was challenging to navigate through the multi-room art show in a mass of frequently immobile art lovers. Exactly for what cause some stationary patrons might be transfixed could only be speculated upon but often no art was present. No one I think comes to art shows to be caught in a logjam of people yet that recurrent phenomenon in Van Gogh’s Bedrooms soon became one of its unpleasant features. The expansive exhibition space—striking for its illogical reasoning to display three relatively small masterpieces—proved impractical, or at least a two-edged sword, in terms of containing its throngs.
Those three featured paintings are this show’s raison d’être and prove a marvelous highlight after reaching them by way of a dozen or so high-ceiling galleries. Once arrived to the show’s penultimate room, my eyes settled on the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam’s version as the most intriguing of the three superficially identical works. The other two versions are from the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
When 35-year-old Van Gogh painted his The Bedroom series starting in October 1888, the Dutchman had been an artist only a short while: about 7 years. This had followed a variety of other occupations, although Van Gogh began his professional life as an art dealer. By late 1888—less than two years before his death by self-inflicted gunshot in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890—Van Gogh had traveled long and far from his beginnings in North Brabant. He arrived into Paris in 1885 to paint and join his brother Theo who was an avant-garde art dealer in the Rue Montmartre. Looking to sell more of his artwork, he began painting in the bright Impressionist style for which Van Gogh is probably most famous today. By February 1888 Van Gogh relocated to Arles in the South of France on account of his health and to possibly start an art colony. Still quite poor and alone, this roughly 15-month period in Arles proved to be prolific for the artist’s production when Van Gogh completed 200 paintings, and over 100 drawings and watercolors. Many of Van Gogh’s most famous works were created in this fecund period—for example, his portraits of Eugène Boch (Musée d’Orsay), Postman Joseph Roulin and Augustine Roulin (both Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Madame Ginoux (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) among several others; sunflowers and irises such as Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers (National Gallery, London), Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers (Neue Pinakothek, Munich) and Irises (Getty Museum, Los Angeles); 15 canvases of cypresses; and his iconic Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin in the Harvard Art Museums.
None of these contextual artworks were in the Chicago show but demonstrate the range and depth of Van Gogh’s artistic vision in the same time period that The Bedrooms—which shared his body of work’s intoxication with color and decorative strategies—were painted. Despite its title—Van Gogh’s Bedrooms—this show is not content to let their presence in Chicago suffice. Instead, much of the other parts of this massive show were from the Art Institute’s permanent collection of mostly Barbizon and Impressionist artwork. Perhaps if they had been left on whatever museum walls from which they had come, these fine artworks might have maintained an even greater impact for themselves and this show’s ultimate purpose than crowding them onto walls into this special exhibition space. That said, the condensed interpretive curatorial exercise of parts of the permanent collection in this show could prove interesting for visitors who are not willing or able to visit other parts of the museum. In a show that took on the formula of a typical Regenstein Hall blockbuster, its propensity for Impressionist rehash (“delve” was the museum’s word) had a boring art textbook’s sensibility. That the show dipped into the museum storehouse to retrieve the life-size maquette of the Yellow House from AIC’s vastly superior exhibition Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South in 2001, produced a dispiriting effect on at least one viewer who recognized it. But so far I am quibbling: this AIC exhibition brings together the powerful canon of all three versions of Van Gogh’s The Bedroom for the first time in North America which is very special and undoubtedly sufficient to any museum goer’s time and interest. I don’t believe, however, that their full artistic power was best served by being able to see these objects intensely advertised in the media markets and then only hung at the show’s virtual end following a cacophony of mostly extraneous art historical resources however severely earnestly presented. Instead, a surfeit of front-loaded artistic riches labors to obscure these significant Van Goghs that finally appear in the second to last gallery, all of which are jam-packed with art, people, various filmic explorations, somewhat bloviating wall texts, whole house reconstructions, etc.
Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, October 1888. 72.4 x 91.3 cm.
Chicago, 1889. 72.4 x 91.3 cm. Version Van Gogh painted in the asylum at St. Rémy.
Paris, 1889. 57.5 x 74 cm. Destitute bachelor artist Van Gogh gave this version to his mother and sister to assure them in part that he was working..
It is certainly obvious that Van Gogh’s Bedrooms possibly could have benefited by not pulling out all the stops (AIC: “in-depth study”) but to focus on the three colorful masterpieces uniquely gathered in their essential power. If one wants to read blow by blow explanations of virtually every curatorial application in the show, one might turn to other reviews cited in “Further Reading” below. The equitably in-depth appreciation of this trio of Van Gogh works—and minus the Disney World trappings—might be advanced using timed tickets (as done for Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South) and within a pared down and simpler exhibition scope. The way things are constructed by the show’s curator Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition transmits encyclopedic knowledge while largely missing a tangible evocation of bachelor Van Gogh’s humble petit boulevard persona who produced in Arles in 1888 and in Saint-Rémy in 1889 these bold canvases of his simple bedroom and even gifting one of the versions (the one now in Paris) to his aged mother and sister to reassure them in his destitution. For Van Gogh the motif of his private and hard-featured bedroom in Arles continued his bold self-expression in a tightly woven and complex painting composed in broad outlines using a many-hued post-impressionistic palette in thick impasto. Despite Van Gogh’s reputation as mad—he mutilated his ear in this bedroom in December 1888—he soon carried on painting two more versions of The Bedroom (the last one slightly reduced) with the apparent added intention to express to his family and friends that the artist was as stable and restful as his artistic subject.
What should an exhibition advertised as Van Gogh’s Three Bedrooms wish to have its spectators looking for and come away with? By the time a visitor reaches Van Gogh’s three paintings after plowing through the aforesaid gauntlet of people and well-known Chicago art resources, the exhibition almost runs the danger of displaying these highly-prized artworks not as denouement but incidental. These Van Gogh paintings are hardly allowed to speak freely for themselves. Of course they have a fascinating history but to what degree should these particular artworks’ written history be simultaneous to their exhibition? Thinking of the viewer, does the display of three paintings of an artist’s bedroom (albeit Vincent Van Gogh’s) that when placed side by side measures the whole of about ten feet across merit thousands of cubic feet of mostly academic groundwork before a viewer can even see them? To what degree are artistic exhibition and their intellectual exposition necessarily complementary since many museum art shows follow this tactic?
The final gallery after the display of the three bedrooms continued Van Gogh’s Bedrooms’ devotion to comprehensive information and theatricality—although a side-by-side blow-up of the bedrooms’ diverging painterly details was perhaps the most useful techie display so to appreciate the artist’s handling of the individual paintings. Yet it begged a question: could this orientation to detail, to seeing the painting, somehow serve as the exhibition’s primary or sole introduction, such as in a film theater? This last gallery then led directly to the ubiquitous and depressing gift shop hosting the galleries’ multitude disporting themselves basically as they did in and among the art. Hearing its timbre I wondered if a unique opportunity to view together these three Van Gogh bedroom paintings—“the first time in North America”—had under- or overplayed its hand? As its elemental objective, had the exhibition Van Gogh’s Bedrooms rightly oriented and imparted to its viewers an intimate and perhaps personally revealing look into these three sensitive treasures of Van Gogh’s oeuvre? Or had the artist Van Gogh merely omitted to paint into his own scene the proverbial kitchen sink?
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My Art Photography: EXPO CHICAGO 2014, Festival Hall, Navy Pier. 3rd Annual International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, September 18-21, 2014. (51 Photos).
FEATURE image: EXPO CHICAGO 2014, Festival Hall, Navy Pier.
EXPO CHICAGO 2014 is the 3rd annual exhibition of international contemporary and modern art held in Chicago at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall on September 18 – 21, 2014. Photographs by John P. Walsh.
Jina Park, Automatic Door Follow Me, 2014, oil on canvas, 100 x 130 cm, One and J. Gallery, Seoul.
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My Art Photography: EXPO CHICAGO 2013, Festival Hall, Navy Pier. 2nd Annual International Exposition of Contemporary & Modern Art, September 19-22, 2013. (26 Photos).
FEATURE Image: Glenn Kaino, Bridge, 2013. A section of a 100-foot long construction that features 200 gold casts of Tommie Smith’s arm in a raised fist salute that occured in the 1968 Summer Olympics on the medal podium during the national anthem after Smith broke a sprinting record to take gold.
EXPO CHICAGO 2013 is the 2rd annual exhibition of international contemporary and modern art held in Chicago at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall on September 19-22, 2013.
Tommie Smith is an American former track and field athlete and American Football League wide receiver. On October 16, 1968, the 24-year-old Smith won the 200-meter sprint finals and gold medal in 19.83 seconds at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
It was the first time the 20-second barrier was officially broken in competitive sports history. Atop the medal podium and with heads bowed, Smith’s Black Power salute with silver-medal-winner John Carlos protested racism and injustice against African-Americans in the United States.
Smith’s raised fist as the national anthem played is seen as one of the most overtly political statements in the history of the modern Olympics and caused memorable admiration and criticism.
In Silent Gesture: The Autobiography of Tommie Smith (Temple University Press, 2008), Smith maintained that the gesture was not solely a “Black Power” salute but a “Human Rights” salute.
In any event, Smith’s raised fist salute in 1968 became one of the most iconic moments in the Olympic games and the history of the Black Power movement.
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REVIEW: “Picasso and Chicago,” The Art Institute of Chicago, February 20–May 12, 2013.
FEATURE image: The Art Institute of Chicago hosted the “Picasso and Chicago” exhibition to celebrate the 100-year relationship between the artist and the city. It featured over 250 of Picasso’s works, including paintings, sculptures, and prints, highlighting Chicago’s role as the first American city to showcase his art. “Chicago Art Institute, Picasso and Chicago 01” by Larry Miller is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Armory Show, International Exhibition of Modern Art. The Cubist room, Gallery 53 (northeast view), Art Institute of Chicago, March 24–April 16, 1913. On the long wall are three of seven Picasso artworks included in that landmark exhibition. None are in “Picasso and Chicago” in 2013.
By John P. Walsh.
Almost as long as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was making his art, there have been bragging rights on the Catalan artist that have come from others. Even 40 years after the artist’s death at 91 years old, media talk in 2013 for Picasso and Chicago, a large art exhibition at The Art Institute of Chicago from February 20 to May 12, 2013, revolves around American collector “firsts” associated with Picasso.
Which institution collected Picasso first? The Art Institute of Chicago in 1923.
Which institution collected Picasso most? The Chicago Renaissance Society by 1930.
Which institution had the first Picasso exhibition? The Arts Club of Chicago in 1923.
Which institution had the first Picasso retrospective? The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut in 1934.
The Art Institute of Chicago is able to put imagination aside and quote itself in Picasso and Chicago. Nearly all of the same inventory of Picasso artwork in this 2013 show were assembled and displayed in the exact same order in a previous exhibition at the museum called Picasso in Chicago held from February 3 to March 31, 1968. According to the museum director writing at that time, that exhibition had been inspired by the dedication of the Picasso sculpture on August 15, 1967, a five-story Cor-10 steel Chicago icon that still stands enigimatically in Daley Plaza. If public attention is what Pablo Picasso craves, then he should have no worries.
Above and two below: Pablo Picasso, Nude with a Pitcher, Gósol, summer 1906, oil on canvas, 39 5/8 x 31 7/8 in. (100.6 x 81 cm), Signed, l.r.: “Picasso.” The Art Institute of Chicago. In the summer of 1906, during a working sojourn to Gósol in the Spanish Pyrenees, Picasso painted his mistress and muse, Fernande Olivier (French, 1881-1966).
Fernande Olivier and Pablo Picasso in 1905 in Paris.
Pablo Picasso, Fernande Olivier, summer 1906. Charcoal, with stumping, on cream laid paper, 610 x 458 mm. Signed recto, lower right, in graphite: “Picasso” (underlined), The Art Insitute of Chicago.
Pablo Picasso, The Two Saltimbanques, 1905, printed and published 1913. Drypoint on ivory wove paper 120 x 91 mm (image/plate); 193 x 129 mm (sheet) The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above: Picasso, Study for “La Coiffure,” 1905-1906. Pen and brown ink, with colored crayons and charcoal applied with stump, over graphite, on blue-gray laid paper 184 x 307 m. Signed recto, upper right, in graphite: “Picasso.” The Art Institute of Chicago. The pairs of figures are related by both being involved in intimate activities but represent different subjects Picasso studied months apart. One dates from 1905 and the other from 1906. The pair on the right is a study for a major painting, La Coiffure, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
There are several excellent reasons to see Picasso and Chicago in 2013 and they don’t always revolve around his art. It is a matter for city pride to know that Chicago possesses within its own collections the breadth of art resources to showcase, in chronological order, this Picasso show comprehensive of every major period. In these tight economic times kudos goes out to museum curators who have effectively displayed a vast amount and range of artwork by Pablo Picasso to produce a blockbuster show. The chronological exhibition of Picasso’s art includes works from The Art Institute of Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago and The Renaissance Society and is front loaded providing for immediate pleasures.
The visitor is greeted nearly at the door by The Old Guitarist painted by Picasso in 1903-1904—a revered Blue Period painting in the Art Institute—and for the viewer to be edified by its presence is worth any exhibition’s admission price though there was no special exhibition fee beyond the price of general admission to the museum.
Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903–1904, oil on panel, 48 3/8 x 32 1/2 in. signed, l.r.: “Picasso.” The Art Institute of Chicago.
If front-loaded, does the rest of the show retain the same high interest? The answer is: yes and no. For all future Picasso shows in Chicago, curators can find several avenues to whittle away at the volume of artwork on display for Picasso and Chicago to present its most interesting parts. That downsizing opportunity intimates this show’s arguable shortcoming: as it displays the Spanish master’s later, increasingly commercial artwork, the Art Institute of Chicago’s 500 Picasso works in all mediums begins to reveal the challenges of building a seamlessly qualitative collection of contemporary art even when the artist is Picasso.
Above: Picasso, Woman with her hair up, 1904, Gouache on tan wood pulp board, 427 x 313 mm, Signed and dated recto, upper left, in blue gouache: “Picasso / 1904.” The Art Institute of Chicago.
Below: Pablo Picasso, Beggar with Crutch, Barcelona 1904, pen, brown ink and colored crayon on paper. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above: Crazy Woman with Cats, 1901. Oil on pulp board 17 7/16 x 16 1/16 in. (44.3 x 40.8 cm). Signed. l.r.: “Picasso.” Amy McCormick Memorial Collection, 1942. The Art Institute of Chicago. In late May 1901 Picasso came to Paris with three weeks to prepare for an exhibition at Vollard’s gallery. The exhibition was arranged by a Catalan dealer who roomed with the 19-year-old Picasso on the Boulevard de Clichy. Crazy Woman with Cats is one of the 64 paintings and several drawings Picasso prepared for the show.
Above: Picasso, Sketch of a young woman (detail), pen and brush and black ink on paper, Paris 1904, gift of Robert Allerton, 1924, The Art Institute of Chicago. Robert Allerton, a museum trustee since 1918, began to acquire Picasso drawings in 1923 with the sole purpose of donating them to the museum. Sketch of a young woman was Allerton’s first Picasso drawing purchase and museum donation in 1923 purchased in Chicago from Albert Roullier Galleries.
Above: Pablo Picasso. Salomé from the Saltimbanques series. 1905 102B0518 (1)
Above: Picasso, Portrait of a Seated Man, 1905. Black chalk on cream wove paper, laid down on cream Japanese paper, 329 x 216 mm, Signed recto, lower left, in graphite: “Picasso.” Gift of Robert Allerton, 1924. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above: Picasso, Study of Four Nudes, Paris, 1906-07, black crayon paper, Johnson Family collection. By the end of 1906 Picasso stopped painting and instead started to fill sketchbooks for a new major composition: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) today in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Above: Picasso, Female Nude, 1906. Fabricated Black chalk with graphite and smudging on paper, 31.8 x 23.5 cm. Gray Collection Trust. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Below: Picasso, Two Nudes, Standing, fall 1906 Graphite, with stumping, on cream laid paper 630 x 469 mm Signed verso, upper left, in graphite: “Picasso.” Gift of Mrs. Potter Palmer, 1944. The Art Institute of Chicago .
In the early 1920’s as Chicago started a buying frenzy of Picasso, another young Spanish painter twelve years younger than Picasso arrived into Paris and was immediately overtly critical of the great Picasso’s work at that time. That younger painter was Joan Miró (1893-1983).
Miró’s criticism of Picasso as well as of Henri Matisse (1869-1954)— it was more a kind of disgust—was basically that the pair, once young avant-gardists, were making all their art for their dealer. In other words, the older artists were making contemporary art mainly for the money. Such may be an inherent risk in making art that meets a market demand in that the artist is tempted to, after a fashion, sell-out. Miró knew at first look—and history has proven him basically correct—that the future of contemporary painting no longer rested in Picasso’s hands after about 1920. This is partly the reason why Miró turned to the “nonsense” art of the Dadaists for the future of his own painting.
Keeping Miro’s judgment in one’s mind at Picasso and Chicago one sees that, notable exceptions made, an earlier Picasso painting—from the Blue Period after 1901 to Picasso’s period of synthetic cubism until around 1920—offers cohesive artwork that contains a germ or seed of progress. The art collection in Picasso and Chicago, much of it produced following Miró’s critical judgment of Picasso, shares his problematic.
The Red Armchair of 1931 is hung at what is about the show’s halfway point. At this point, I might have exited. Yet where Miró’s critical judgment lags for me is that Picasso’s art is never incompetent or boring. His art is perceptibly linear and, despite its erotic themes, often contains qualities which satisfy and cleanse an art-hungry eye. Picasso’s art is ever ancient and ever new, and distinctly European. For me, seeing a Picasso connotes a stroll in Paris or feeling a sunburn on the face after revelry and reverie along some Mediterranean coast. Quite readily the show produced these kinds of vicarious experiences for me as i soaked up a plethora of Picasso’s later, lesser work in utilitarian Regenstein Hall.
Above: Nessus and Deianira, September 22, 1920, Graphite on tan wove paper, prepared with a white ground, signed recto, upper left, in pen and blue ink: “Picasso” (underlined); inscribed upper left, in graphite: “22-9-20.” Just before leaving Paris in September 1920, Picasso made a series of drawings of the Greek myth of the abduction of Hercules’ bride Deianira by the centaur Nessus. With this, Picasso became fascinated with Greek mythology and continued to make artwork using its themes.
Above: Picasso, Head of A Woman (Fernande), Paris winter 1909-10, brush and gray wash on paper. Private Collection. Paintings and drawings by Picasso in winter 1909-10 continued to explore Cubism as it related to the human face and figure and its surroundings.
Above: Picasso’s studio at Horta de Ebro (now Horta de San Juan) in Spain between May and September 1909. The painting (at left) of a Head of a Woman is one of the early Cubist artworks in “Picasso and Chicago.”
Below: Picasso, Head of a Woman, summer 1909, Oil on canvas 23 3/4 x 20 1/8 in. (60.3 x 51.1 cm), Winterbotham Collection, 1940. The painting above dates to one of the most productive and inventive periods of Pablo Picasso’s career, a summer stay in the town of Horta de Ebro (now Horta de San Juan) in Spain, which lasted, with minor interruptions, from May to September of 1909. In these months, Picasso produced a series of landscapes, heads, and still lifes that are among the most highly acclaimed achievements of early Cubism. Fernande Olivier, Picasso’s mistress, was the model for the series of heads that the artist produced at this time.
Below: Picasso, Bust of a Woman, late 1909, Watercolor and gouache on cream laid paper, laid down on buff laid paper, 363 x 278 mm overall; signed recto, lower left, in graphite: “Picasso (underlined)/ 09” Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy J. Friedman, 1964. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above: Head of a Woman (Fernande), fall 1909, bronze, 16 1/8 x 9 7/8 x 10 9/16 in. (40.7 x 20.1 x 26.9 cm), cast 1910, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949. This work is Pablo Picasso’s first large Cubist sculpture and represents the distinctive physiognomy of Fernande Olivier, who was the artist’s model and mistress from 1905 to 1912. Before making the bust, Picasso produced countless drawings and gouaches to explore the specific form and structure of his subject’s facial features. Her hair is in a coil and a topknot; her bulging jaw; her well-defined depression in the center of her upper lip. The Fernande series’ evolved from an agility of facial expression to fixed signs of its individual features.
Below: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Artist and Model, Cannes, July 24, 1933, watercolor and pen and black ink on paper. Gray Collection trust.
Portrait photograph of Pablo Picasso, 1908.
Below: Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, autumn 1910, Oil on canvas, 39 9/16 x 28 9/16 in. (100.4 x 72.4 cm) Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman in memory of Charles B. Goodspeed, 1948. The Art Institute of Chicago. German-born Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) opened an art gallery in Paris in 1907. In 1908 Kahnweiler began representing Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and introduced him to Georges Braque (1882-1963). Kahnweiler championed these artists’ revolutionary experiment with Cubism and purchased most of their paintings between 1908 and 1915. Kahnweiler sat for Picasso up to thirty times for this portrait.
Above: Picasso, Head of Harlequin, 1916, The Art Institute of Chicagio. Photograph by author.
Below: Picasso, Harlequin Playing the Guitar, c. 1916, Elden collection.
Above: Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1922, The Arts Club of Chicago, purchased 1926.
Above: Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955) in Picasso’s Montrouge studio, spring 1918. Olga married Picasso on July 12, 1918, at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Paris. On February 4, 1921, she gave birth to their son Paulo (1921-1975). After that, Olga and Picasso’s relationship deteriorated though they never divorced. Olga died in Cannes in 1955.
Above: Picasso, Still Life, February 4, 1922, Oil on canvas 32 1/8 x 39 5/8 in. (81.6 x 100.3 cm), Dated, u.l.: “4-2-22-.” Ada Turnbull Hertle Endowment, 1953. Picasso produced a series of Cubist still lifes in 1922 that are simplified to flat planes in a patterned framework. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) bought this canvas in 1923 to add to her collection of more than 30 Picasso paintings and even more of his drawings and watercolors. This still life was Stein’s last purchase of a painting by Picasso. See article in Architectural Digest by Nick Mafi dated July 28, 2020 on the recent discovery associated with the Picasso painting above. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/famed-pablo-picasso-painting-reveals-abandoned-artwork-beneath
Above: Picasso, Double Flute Player and Reclining Nude, October 22, 1932, pen and ink with brush and black wash and scraping on paper, Shapiro collection, 1992. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Marie-Thérèse Walter and Pablo Picasso. Their relationship began when she was seventeen and Picasso was 45 years old and married to Olga Khokhlova. In late summer and fall of 1932, Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter (French, 1909-1977), the artist’s mistress from 1927 to 1935, were together in Boisgeloup. Picasso made three drawings on the same day on a theme of lovers serenading one another.
Picasso transforms the bullfighting theme where the half-man and half-bull Minotaur is the aggressor in the ring terrorizing a horse.
Above: Picasso, Minotaur and Wounded Horse, Boisgeloup, April 17, 1935, Pen and brush and black inks, graphite, and colored crayons, with smudging, over incising, on cream laid paper, 343 x 515 mm Signed recto, lower right, in graphite: “Picasso” (underlined); inscribed upper right, in graphite: “Boisgeloup–17 Avril XXXV” The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above: Picasso, The Red Armchair, oil and ripolin on panel; signed, u.r.: “Picasso,” oil and ripolin on panel, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above: Picasso, Head of Woman (Dora Maar), Paris, April 1, 1939, oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm. Private collection.
Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) met Picasso in 1936 at the Café des Deux Magots in Paris. Her liaison with Picasso ended in 1943.
Above: Weeping Woman I, July 1, 1937. Drypoint, aquatint, and etching, with scraping on copper in black on ivory laid paper, 695 x 497 mm (plate); 774 x 568 mm (sheet). The Art Institute of Chicago.
About making portraits of his mistress Dora Maar weeping, Picasso explained: “For years, I’ve painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism and not through pleasure either – just obeying a vision that forced himself on me.” At the end of their relationship Picasso confessed, “I can only see her weeping.”
From left: Dora Maar, Picasso, Lee Miller in 1937.
Picasso, Villa in Vallauris, Vallauris, Feb., 4, 1951, oil on panel. 88.9 x 116.2 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Picasso, large vase with dancers, Vallauris, 1950, red earthenware clay, ground painted in white engobe, 71.2 cm Crown collection.
Picasso and Françoise Gilot (b. 1921) at Madoura pottery, Vallauris, 1953.
Gilot was lover and muse to Picasso from 1943 to 1953. In the early 1990s I met Françoise Gilot accompanied by her husband, Jonas Sauk (1914-1995), when she was featured speaker at Alliance Française in Chicago. That evening Gilot made it perfectly clear upfront that she was not going to talk about Picasso.
Picasso, Portrait of Jacqueline, Mougins, Dec. 28, 1962, graphite with smudging and black ballpoint pen on paper. 34.9 x 25 cm., Gray Collection Trust.
Picasso, Jacqueline, Cannes or Vauvenargues, October 17, 1959, Linocut in colors on paper, 63.8 x 53 cm., Crown collection.
Jacqueline Roque was muse and second wife of Pablo Picasso. Their marriage lasted 11 years until his death, during which time he created over 400 portraits of her, more than any of Picasso’s loves.
Picasso and Jacqueline, his second wife. Pablo Picasso met Jacqueline Roque (1927-1986) in 1953 when she was 26 years old and he was 72. He romanced her until she agreed to date him. Only in 1955, when Picasso’s first wife Olga Khokhlova died, did Picasso decide to marry Jacqueline in Vallauris in 1961. They were married until Picasso’s death in 1973.
The Chicago Picasso, 1967. In situ in Daley Plaza in Downtown Chicago, July 2015. Photograph by author.
There are 250 items on display in Picasso and Chicago—including paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics—and only begins to manifest the prodigious genius of Pablo Picasso.
Picasso and Chicago may have closed, but many, if not most, of these works in Chicago’s cultural institutions and private collections can be savored with the simplicity of a museum visit. A visitor can do no better than visit The Art Institute of Chicago and see Picasso’s The Old Guitarist and The Red Armchair. By that begins one’s own new adventure of absorption of the Spanish master’s artwork whose home is Chicago. The 2013 show is over but more than a few of its best parts are on display right now in these institutions’ permanent collections.
SOURCES:
Miró, Janis Mink, Taschen, 2006.
Je suis Le Cahier: The Sketchbooks of Picasso, 1986, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Verona, Italy.
Picasso and Chicago 100 years, 100 works, Stephanie D’Alessandro, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.
Picasso in Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1968.
http://michiganavemag.com/living/articles/aic-opens-picasso-and-chicago
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780300184525; http://chicagoist.com/2013/05/11/last_chance_to_see_picasso_and_chic.php
