FEATURE image: July 2015. Joan Miró, Joan Miró’s Chicago (sometimes Miss Chicago), steel reinforced-concrete, colored ceramics, 1967, Brunswick Building Plaza, 69 W. Washington Street, Chicago. This artwork is Miró’s only monumental sculpture. 7.04 mb. Author’s photograph.
Joan Miró (1893-1983) is a Catalan who is a major dadaist artist “Dada” is a nonsense word but its artistic movement that started around 1915 in Zürich, Switzerland, has brought into existence many famous artworks by a range of artists. As World War I raged on in Europe between 1914 and 1918, young artists and intellectuals reacted with art, performance, and poetry that was radically experimental, dissident and anarchic. These artists countered the horrors of the war and capitalist culture by moving past a degradation of art to contributing to an anti-art under the banner of “dada.” These ideas and ideals of dada quickly spread to the art capitals of Paris and New York – and beyond.
Joan Miró’s Chicago is the artist’s first monumental sculpture in the world.
Joan Miró’s Chicago is in this dada milieu as it sits in the Brunswick Building Plaza, directly across Washington Street from another Spanish artist’s 50-foot-tall Cor-Ten steel sculpture from the same time (1967): Chicago’s Picasso in Daley Plaza. Miró’s sculpture expresses the neck, bustline, and slim and wasp-waisted hips of a woman’s torso with outstretched arms and a simplified head. She is made of steel-reinforced concrete with brightly colored ceramics that are added to the scooped-out hem of her skirt. Like other of Miró’s sculptures of female figures from the 1950s, the shape of the skirt is that of an overturned broad-lipped cup or chalice. The bronze, crown-like headdress is like the dadaist found objects that populated Miró’s artwork whether paintings, sculptures, ceramics and more throughout his career. Joan Miró’s Chicago possesses qualities evocative of primitive fertility or earth goddesses similar to those found in the ancient Mediterranean world.
One of Dada’s major sculptural forms to emerge and which was masterly accomplished by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), was the “readymade” which used familiar mass-produced objects (i.e., ceramic urinals, household tools, etc.) for high art pieces. The dada expression of the readymade increasingly asked the viewer to take seriously these consumer items and found objects as high art on an equal platform with lofty traditional productions of a monied arts establishment.
Dadaists experimented boldly with new media such as collage (Jean Arp, 1886-1966), airbrushed photography (Man Ray, 1890-1976) and nonsensical poetry (Hugo Ball, 1886-1927). These art forms freely combined as well as crossed over its categories, i.e., nonsensical poetry interpreted in performance art.
Joan Miró, Barcelona, June 13, 1935 by Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964). Public Domain. This work is from the Carl Van Vechten Photographs collection at the Library of Congress. According to the library, there are no known copyright restrictions on the use of this work. As the restrictions on this collection expired in 1986, the Library of Congress believes this image is in the public domain. The Carl Van Vechten estate has asked that use of Van Vechten’s photographs “preserve the integrity” of his work, i.e, that photographs not be colorized or cropped, and that proper credit is given to the photographer which is the photograph here.
Miró’s art does not accept the world as it is.
In the 1930’s and 1940’s Miró worked with material such as paper, string and even toothbrushes and, sometime later, natural objects such as rocks and fruits to make loose, playlike assemblies, many of which due to fragility or destruction, did not survive. Miró did not transform or repurpose these found objects – bells, jars, vases – but by leaving them alone saw they retained what the artist called their own “magical powers.” Miró’s more permanent artworks – paintings, ceramics, plaster or bronze sculptures, etc. – possess the same randomness as his looser assemblies which is the artist’s intended reflection of nature’s promiscuous progeny. The artist turns his back on established art principles and pursues his own independence which, following intuition unto slow resolve, improbably marries diverse objects of recognizable forms making for an assembly of more than one class or nature. They are of a realm not always of this world.
July 2015. Miró with City Hall in background. Chicago. 5.77mb DSC_0308 (1) Author’s photograph.
Though Miró completed a maquette of the sculpture in 1967 (called Project for a Monument for Barcelona), its production into a 40-foot sculpture – the artist’s only monumental sculpture – was delayed until 1979. The hundreds of thousands of dollars for the production and installation of Joan Miró’s Chicago was provided by a private-public partnership in Chicago.
SOURCES:
A Guide to Chicago Public Sculpture, Ira J. Bach and Mary Lackritz Gray, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1983, pp. 73-74.
FEATURE Image: Cook/DuPage Cos., Willow Springs, IL. The Worker, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Camp Chicago-Lemont, Company 612, est. June 4, 1933. Author’s photograph, 6/2018 6mb.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a major program in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to combat the devastating effects of the Great Depression. Called “Mr. Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” there were over 50 such camps in Illinois alone and over 1000 special projects in the state between April 1933 and July 1942. The camp at Willow Springs was one of FDR’s first such camps established in spring 1933. The Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy indicates June 4, 1933, as the establishment date for Camp Chicago-Lemont, Company 612 in Willow Springs, Illinois.
The recent statue called The Worker was dedicated on June 3, 2001 to commemorate the dedication and spirit of the young men, aged 17 to 28 years old, who served in the CCC and specifically in Willow Springs, Illinois. The larger-than-life-sized bronze CCC Worker Statue stands at the intersection of Archer Avenue (Route 171) and Willow Boulevard in Willow Springs Woods, and is one of many such similar statues that stand on the American landscape in tribute to the men of the CCC.
The purpose of this government “alphabet” program, one of the New Deal’s most successful, was multi-faceted. The primary motivation was to address staggering unemployment numbers of up to 25% (and higher in certain pockets of the country) caused by the collapse of the private enterprise system in the Great Depression that started on Wall Street in October 1929. The CCC was specifically designed to give jobs to young men and so to relieve their families who had great difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression.
Camps proliferated all over the country in every state. In its nine years and 3 months duration the CCC employed upwards of 3 million young men between 17 and 28 years old. For their manual labor jobs related to conservation and the development of natural resources provided by the federal program, these men received their food, clothing, lodging, medical and dental attention, along with a paycheck of $30 a month (around $600 in today’s dollars), most of which ($25) had to be sent home to their struggling families. The popular program enjoyed wide bi-partisan and public support.
Each camp could house around 200 men and, while the lifestyle was quite simple, it beat panhandling on the streets in the mind of most of the CCC’s young enrollees.
FDR during a presidential radio broadcast in 1933. Library of Congress. Public Domain.
The Emergency Conservation Work (EWC) Act, or CCC, was part of the Emergency Session of the 73rd Congress that FDR called on March 9, 1933, just days after his first inauguration. FDR promised if granted emergency powers he would have 250,000 men in camps by the end of July 1933. Senate Bill S. 598 was introduced on March 27, 1933, passed both houses of Congress and was signed by FDR on March 31, 1933, less than one month into his 4-year term. Though opposed at first by Big Labor who feared that jobs would be filled by this army of non-union workers, the Roosevelt Administration went ahead and mobilized the men, material, transportation and necessary bureaucracy to establish the CCC on a scale never seen before in the United States in peacetime. Dated April l5, 1933, Executive Order 6101 authorized the program, appointed Robert Fechner (1876-1939) as its first director and established an Advisory Council with representatives from the War, Labor, Agriculture and Interior Departments. It was part of “the 100 days” that marked the passage into law of a series of 15 major bills during FDR’s first 100 days as the 32nd U.S. president.
The Federal program provided that these work projects took place mostly on rural lands owned by government entities. CCC workers throughout the country were credited with renewing the nation’s decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees between 1933 and 1942. Their work also revived the nation’s crumbling or nonexistent infrastructure.
The CCC was immensely popular, but Pearl Harbor effectively ended it. With the establishment of the draft and industry involved in the war effort, the government no longer needed to subsidize work. In 1942, the last CCC camps were dismantled or repurposed for the army.
With the exception of Social Security and the Rural Electrification Act, no program of the New Deal era has ever had a greater influence on the country. In Illinois alone, the impact was remarkable. Over 92,000 men worked in the CCC in the state. An estimated 60 million trees were planted, 400 bridges built, 1,200 miles of trail made and nearly 5,000 flood-control apparati put in place.
FEATURE image: The large bronze statue was the first prominent public depiction of the 16th U.S. president as a young adult man. Author’s photograph, June 2017. 4.70mb. Capt.
Young Lincoln was stationed in Dixon, Illinois, at Fort Dixon on the Rock River in today’s Lee County where the statue stands. “Rock River Fall_03” by markellis_1964 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Capt. A. Lincoln looking onto the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois. Young Lincoln enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers on April 21, 1832 and, following more enlistments, finally mustered out of military service on July 10, 1832. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 8.26mb.
Illinois in the early 1830s was the edge of the American frontier and virtually wilderness. The Native American tribes were being expelled from the northern tier of the state established in 1818 by ceding their lands to the U.S Federal Government. Most of the Native Americans were pushed out of the state by treaty by the end of the 1820s. This quickly changed the landscape of a rapidly growing Illinois by way of new arrivals of settlers from the East in the 1840s and 1850s. Settlers were accompanied by ambitious commercial projects such as transportation canals and, even more impressive, the railroads, all of which worked to open up the Middle West of the United States to global markets and industrial prosperity.
Abraham Lincoln, born in a Kentucky log cabin in 1809, was 21 years old when he arrived into Illinois in 1830 with his family from Indiana. During the 1832 Black Hawk War, the 23-year-old Abe Lincoln lived in New Salem, Illinois, and was elected captain in the Illinois National Guard. The bronze statue, cast in 1930, of Lincoln in Dixon, Illinois, depicts for the first time a yet untapped aspect of the 16th president’s life and career for his ever-expanding public iconology – that of the youthful adult Lincoln starting out in his career.
Lincoln enlisted in the Illinois Volunteers on April 21, 1832 near Richland Creek in Sangamon County which was located about halfway between New Salem and Springfield, Illinois. The next day, Lincoln mustered into state service at Beardstown, Illinois, about 40 miles to the west on the Illinois River.
The 6-foot-4-inch Lincoln was elected captain, a position he said he was both surprised and proud to receive.
Lincoln mustered into U.S. service near Janesville, Wisconsin on May 3, 1832. He mustered out on May 27, 1832 in Ottawa, Wisconsin. Lincoln never fired a shot.
On that same day of May 27, 1832 Lincoln re-enlisted as a private in Captain Iles’ company. When that enlistment expired, Lincoln re-enlisted again in Captain Early’s company.
Lincoln finally mustered out of military service on July 10, 1832 at Whitewater, Wisconsin.
Young Lincoln was stationed in Dixon, Illinois, at Fort Dixon on the Rock River where this statue — unveiled in late September 1930 — stands. The sculptor is French-born Leonard Crunelle (1872-1944).
The artist leonard Crunelle (1872-1944) with the head of his heroic-sized Lincoln the Debater completed in 1929. Fair Use. The following year he completed Capt. A. Lincoln in Dixon, Illinois, which was another heroic-sized statue of an even much younger Lincoln
Crunelle’s immigrant family arrived in Illinois in 1889 and settled in Decatur, about 40 miles east of Springfield, Lincoln’s hometown. When Crunelle worked in the local mines, he started making fired clay sculptures. His work was brought to the attention of prominent American sculptor and teacher Lorado Taft (1860-1936) who brought young Crunelle to Chicago to study at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At the same time, Crunelle began to do decorative work for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
Lorado Taft made his Black Hawk statue monument in 1911 in Oregon, Illinois, also on the Rock River about 16 miles upstream from Dixon, Illinois. It is all part of the area that saw action during the Black Hawk War in 1832 and led to the complete surrender and expulsion of the last Native American group in Illinois. “Black Hawk (aka ‘The Eternal Indian’)” by Dan Brekke is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
The bronze sculpture of Lincoln – who later as a lawyer and politician expressed pride in his brief military service – is one of the first attempts to depict the Great Emancipator in his youth. Though Crunelle had made a statue called Lincoln the Debater for display in a park in Freeport, Illinois, in 1929 the slightly later Capt. A. Lincoln in Dixon, Illinois, depicted Lincoln more than half the great debater’s age.
Plaque. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 9mb. Capt. A. Lincoln 1832. Dixon, Illinois. The 6-foot-4-inch Lincoln was elected captain, a position he said he was both surprised and proud to receive. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 6.87mb. “Rock River Fall_49” by markellis_1964 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Reconstruction of log structure typical for the early 1830’s in Illinois when young Abraham Lincoln served at Fort Dixon on the Rock River in Dixon, Illinois, in the Illinois National Guard. Author’s photograph, 6/2017 6.75 mb.
FEATURE Image: Flamingo by Alexander Calder is a masterwork stabile in Chicago’s downtown. It was unveiled on October 25, 1974 in a dedication ceremony with the artist. It is one of Chicago’s iconic outdoor public artworks. 6/2022 7.73 mb
In downtown Chicago’s Federal Center Plaza on South Dearborn Street between Adams Street and Jackson Boulevard is Alexander Calder’s 53-foot-tall painted steel plate “stabile object” entitled Flamingo. The Chicago Federal Center was completed in 1974 with Calder’s artwork. The design project began in 1958 and included three International-style government buildings by modernist architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) within a public plaza design that was completed in 1974. Flamingo, commissioned after Mies’ death for $250,000 by the Government Services Administration, was unveiled on October 25, 1974 with the 76-year-old Calder present for its dedication ceremonies and festivities. With the commission Calder understood the significant impact of his artwork for the Federal Center Plaza in Chicago.
Calder’s prolific and impressive art career started in the early 1920s. Fifty years later, Flamingo (a.k.a., “the Calder”) in Chicago’s historic Federal Center Plaza is a later work, whose maquette Calder made before it was intended for Chicago.
During his artistic career’s many decades and years, Calder never stopped developing in his art. The 1974 steel sculpture painted red-orange is four stories tall and makes a powerful impact on the streetscape where it is an integral part. Along with Chicago’s Picasso in 1967 and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (“the Bean”) in 2004, Calder’s Flamingo in 1974 has taken its well-deserved place among Chicago’s most iconic outdoor public artworks.
From the inventor of the mobile, Calder turned later to the development of the stabile of which Flamingo is a masterwork. Starting in the mid1950s and into the 1970’s, Calder produced scores of stabiles in many shapes and sizes for display around the world.
“Most architects and city planners want to put my objects in front of trees or greenery. They make a huge error. My mobiles and stabiles ought to be placed in free spaces, like public squares, or in front of modern buildings, and that is true of all contemporary sculpture.” – Alexander Calder.
6/2022 7.24 mb
Titled Flamingo, the towering abstracted “Calder red” painted stabile object can evoke reactions to it that are unexpected. Calder’s stabile masterwork was unveiled in October 1974 which was the same year the Sears Tower (in the background) was completed and which was at that time the world’s tallest building (today it is ranked no. 26). From Federal Center Plaza, Chicago’s 20th century architectural history is readily on display in its downtown buildings in a range of shapes, sizes, textures and design styles.
5/2014 3.28 mb
Flamingo can be intimidating because of its monumental size. Actual flamingo shorebirds vary in size, but are usually no more than 3 to 5 feet tall, and weighing about 5 to 7 pounds. At 53 feet tall, Calder’s immense stabile in Chicago is about the size of a giant sauropod dinosaur which could weigh around 60 tons.
11/2015 260kb 25%
Alexander Calder trained and worked as a mechanical engineer before he became an artist. The graceful design and construction of Flamingo is expressed by nearly one-inch-thick steel plates buttressed by ribs and gussets joined overhead by lofty arches and resting on three legs as if it is nearly weightless. Even his largest stabiles (of which Flamingo is one) are made so they can be easily unbolted, and taken apart to be transported and assembled at the place of destination.
5/2014 4.82 mb
In Federal Center Plaza is a complex of three buildings of varying scales by Mies van der Rohe: the broad 30-floor Everett McKinley Dirksen Building at 219 S. Dearborn Street completed in 1964 (at right), the lean 45-floor John C. Kluczynski Building at 230 S. Dearborn Street completed in 1974 (not pictured), and the single-story U.S. Post Office building at 219 S. Clark Street (not pictured). Calder’s Flamingo sits on its three pillars like a lunar lander that reflects the arcaded bases of Mies van der Rohe’s buildings that surround it as well as provide a sweeping contrast of curves and bright stand-out color against the surrounding modernist buildings’ monochrome glass-and-steel grid appearance. Calder’s artwork achieved more than the sum of these parts – it transformed Mies’ overall somber architectural trio into a more dramatic and complex quartet that included Calder’s art. The 30-story Dirksen Building is across Dearborn Street.
11/2015 484 kb 25%
Calder’s Flamingo after dark with the one-story Post Office illumined within behind it.
6/2022 6.87mb
Calder’s stabile is one of the most monumental public art commissions in Chicago. Flamingo’s height and breadth (it fills a space of about 1440 square feet) achieves a largesse that does not forgo a human scale as it allows pedestrians to freely walk around, under and through it. The 45-story Kluczynski Building is at left.
11/2015 3.77mb
Flamingo lighted at night in late November where there is already a snow pile on the sidewalk in Chicago’s Federal Center Plaza presaging the Chicago winter. In summer months there is a regular farmer’s market on the Federal Center Plaza. It is also the location for a variety of political gatherings year-round.The Kluczynski Building is behind.
6/2022 6.20mb
In October 1974 Alexander Calder was in Chicago for a “Calder Festival” where two of his major works were being dedicated – Flamingo for Federal Center Plaza (depicted above with the Kluczynski Building) and Universe, a motorized mural for the Sears Tower. Reflecting the artist’s lifetime interest in circuses, Calder joined in the city’s circus-themed parade in his honor. In another major cultural event in Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art held a large retrospective exhibition of Calder’s art from October to December of 1974.
10/2015 3.90mb.
Looking from the Marquette Building south to Calder’s Flamingo in situ in Federal Center Plaza.
Jacob Watts, Moose Bubblegum Bubble, 2014, 33 E. Congress, Chicago, 11/2017 5.19 mb
Jacob Watts is a photographer and visual storyteller based in Chicago, Illinois. A graduate of Oswego (Illinois) High School (class of 2008), Watts received his B.F.A. from Columbia College Chicago in 2012. The photo-illustration of a moose blowing bubblegum hangs on a blue wall in the South Loop of Downtown Chicago at a size of 48′ by 43′.
Jacob Watts has been passionate about the medium of photography since before he was a teenager. From the start of his interest in photography, Watts was wholly intrigued by Photoshop. Today the artist creates illustrative and conceptual images with an emphasis on post production. Most of Watts’ work consists of graphic, imaginative, surreal, and composited works from his own images. His current headline work includes images in areas entitled Strangers, Recovery: Movie Posters, Some Time Alone. Portraits, Hvrbrd, Motion, Conceptual, Things are Strange, and Building A Universe.
According to the artist’s website, he is passionate about collaboration and finding creative solutions to exceed expectations. Watts is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago.
In the spring of 2014, Columbia College Chicago’s Wabash Avenue Corridor (WAC) Campus Committee launched a student and alumni competition to install artwork in the heart of the South Loop. Watts’ Moose Bubblegum Bubble was selected as one of the winners.
The scores of educational and cultural projects and programs that WAC advances strengthen the ties between students, artists, curators, academic institutions, cultural organizations and local businesses. Artists and curators from around the world have participated in WAC projects and programs to create murals, performance, installations, actions and large-scale projections that are always free of charge and open to the public.
This public arts program brings together the visual, performing, and other arts and media which are expansive, diverse and accessible so to provide a transformative experience to the many tens of thousands of urbanites who live, work and play in the city on a daily basis.
Starting in 2016 WAC began a focus of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and developed one of the largest street art and public art collections of women artists and artists of color. This effort continues in 2021.
September 2001. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 70% Progress of Women was completed by artists Larissa Preston Danowitz and Cesar Viveros and collaborators in 2001. At 1307 Locust Street the mural shows work of the New Century Guild to promote women in the workforce. At the top of the mural is the visage of Eliza Turner (1826-1903) who founded the New Century Guild in 1882 and lived in Philadelphia.October 2003. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The Renoir-inspired outdoor sculpture (“Dance at Bougival,” 1883, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts) was in conjunction with that year’s exhibition called “The Impressionist Tradition in America.” Closed in 2014, the former museum is today the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. November 2017. Crown Fountain, Jaume Plensa [Krueck + Sexton Architects], Millennium Park, Chicago. 368kb 35%October 2015. Chicago. 4.48 mbJune 2018 Chicago. 4.65 mbJuly 2015. Chicago. 4.32 mbMay 2014. Chicago. 4.72 mbJune 2022. Chicago. 7.89 mb 86%December 2013. Chicago. 6.79 mbJune 2022. Chicago (Rogers Park). 4.20 mbJune 2022. Chicago. 7.66 mb 84%June 2022. Chicago 2.38 mb 50%June 2022. Chicago 11.71 mbAugust 2015. Chicago. 7.92 mb 96%August 2018. Chicago. 7.29 mbAugust 2015. Chicago. 5.26 mbOctober 2016. Chicago. Daniel Buren (b. 1938), Attrape-soleil, 2013. 4.49 mb.June 2022. Chicago (Englewood). 7.83 mb 87%August 2021. Chicago. 7.23 mb 99%2021. Chicago. 7.82 mb 90%May 2021. Chicago. Cloud Gate (“The Bean”), 2006, Anish Kapoor, Millennium Park. 7.97mb 97%July 2015. Chicago. 7.10 mbMarch 2014. Melrose Park, IL. 4.06mbApril 2013. Chicago. 1.07 mb 40% January 2024. Downers Grove, IL 7.75 mb 97%September 2015. Chicago. 5.82 mbApril 2013. Chicago (Pilsen). 3.46mbApril 2013. Chicago (Pilsen). 4.96mbApril 2013. Chicago (Pilsen). 4.63mbAugust 2024. Chicago. 87% 7.75 mb _1500 (1)October 2016. 99% 7.59 mb DSC_0828November 2017. Chicago. Opened in July 2004, Crown Fountain in Millennium Park was designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (b. 1955) and executed by Krueck and Sexton Architects. 66% 7.91 mb DSC_3423April 2013. Chicago Pilsen. 4.89mb102_0165 (1)July 2015. Chicago 5.66mb DSC_0083 (1)December 2015. Chicago (State Street). 5.13mb DSCN1936 (1)May 2016. Chicago. 4.97mb DSCN2708 (1)May 2013. Chicago (Pilsen) 4.37mb 102_0387 (1)
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.
September 2015. 7.68 mb 99%
Michigan Avenue entrance of The Art Institute of Chicago.
May 2015.
Sculpture Court, The Art Institute of Chicago.
September 2015.
Modern Wing, The Art Institute of Chicago.
June 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 20th Century. American. Pop.
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.
June 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 40%
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
June 2014. 5.59mb
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.
September 2015. 6.25 mb
Modern wing, The Art Institute of Chicago.
August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 21st Century. American.
Frances Stark (1967-) from Intimism, 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.
August 2015. Alexander McKinlock Memorial Court. AIC. 20th Century. Nordic. Sculpture.
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.”
September 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 21st Century. American. Sculpture.
Charles Ray (1953-), Young Man, 2012, Solid Stainless Steel.
May 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Lorado Taft (1860-1936), Fountain of the Great Lakes, 1913. South Garden. The Art Institute of Chicago.
November 2017. North 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.
November 2017. North Garden, The Art Institute of Chicago. Partial view: Flying Dragon, Alexander Calder, 1975. November 2017. North Garden, AIC. 20th Century. British. Modernism. Sculpture.
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.
March 2010. Washington, D.C.
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.
August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 1.43 mbMay 2015. Art Institute of Chicago. 3.34 mb
Indian and Islamic Art.
September 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 6.90 mbMay 2015. Frédéric Bazille. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. France. Impressionism.
Frédéric Bazille, Self-portrait, 1865/6. The Art Institute of Chicago.
November 2012. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art. 18th Century. France. Terracotta.
Clodion (1738-1814). The See-Saw. 1775. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
November 2012. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art. 17th Century. France. Sculpture.
Michel Anguier (1612-1686), Amphitrite, marble, 1684. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
November 2012. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
Venus, Roman, Asia Minor, marble, c.165 CE, Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art.
September 1993. Museum of Anthropology, UBC, Vancouver, B.C. 20th Century. Canada.
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.
August 2005. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
“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.
September 2016. Milwaukee Art Museum. 20th Century. Germany. France. Fauvism. Expressionism.
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.
August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 16th Century. Japan.
Mikazuki (male deity) Noh Mask, cypress wood, brass, colors. The Art Institute of Chicago.
May 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. Impressionist galleries.
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.
September 2013. The Art Institute of Chicago. Impressionist galleries.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Woman in a Garden, 1882/3, The Art Institute of Chicago.
September 2012. Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, Indiana. 20th Century. American. Realism.
William Glackens (1870-1938), The Dressing Table, c.1922, oil on canvas. Snite Museum of Art, Nore Dame University, South Bend, Indiana.
September 2016. Milwaukee Art Museum. 20th Century. Germany. Expressionism.
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.
May 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Above and below: Bodhisattva; Diety; Buddha. 4th-6th Centuries. Afghanistan/Pakistan. Stucco. The Art Institute of Chicago.
May 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. September 2015. Room 235, The Art Institute of Chicago. September 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.May 2015. At The Art Institute of Chicago.
Charles Collins (1680-1744), Still Life with Game, 1741. Private Collection. 18th Century. Ireland.
May 2015. At The Art Institute of Chicago.
James C. Timbrell (1807-1850), Carolan the Irish Bard, c. 1844, oil on canvas. Private collection. 19th Century. Ireland.
May 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 256 kb 25%May 2015. At The Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
August 2005. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.
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.
August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Loutrophoros (Bath water vase), 4th Century BCE. Greece. Italy (Apulia). Terracotta. The Art Institute of Chicago.
August 2015. Ancient Greek and Roman Art, The Art Institute of Chicago. October 2014. AIC. 6.64mb 35%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.
August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Oil Jar, 450 BCE, Athens, Greece, terracotta. The Art Institute of Chicago.
May 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. France. Impressionism.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1898), Paris Street; A Rainy Day (“Rue de Paris, Temps de pluie”), 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago.
October 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. American.
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.
October 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. American.
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.
May 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. France. Sculpture. Modernism.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Eternal Springtime, 1884. Bronze. Fonderie Alexis Rudier, Paris (20th century). The Art Institute of Chicago.
May 2015.The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. France. Impressionism. Sculpture.
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.
May 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. French. Sculpture. Modernism.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Adam, 1881. Bronze. The Art Institute of Chicago.
September 2015. Africa. 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.
May 2015. 7.05 mb The Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
October 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
September 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. American. Modernism.
Above and next three below: Fragments, Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. American. Modernism.
September 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 560kb 40%August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 2.87mb DSC_0644 (1)November 2015. 6.38mb DSC_0352 (1)
With the arm detail of Rodin’s bronze Adam (1881), the landing of the Grand Staircase at The Art Institute of Chicago.
September 2015. Help desk, The Art Institute of Chicago. May 2021. 7.35 mb 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.
May 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 18th century. France. (60)
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.
May 2015. 7.73 mb The Art Institute of Chicago.
Joseph Wilson (d. 1800), Adephi Club – Belfast, oil on canvas, 1783.
May 2015. 6.62 mb The Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
May 2021. The Art Institute of Chicago. 16th Century. Spain.
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.
October 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 19th Century. American.
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.
October 2016. Ukrainian National Museum (2249 W. Superior Street), Chicago. 4.55 mbMay 2015. Aurora, IL. The David L. Pierce Art & History Center (20 East Downer Place). 4.15 mbMay 2014. 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.
December 2015. Chicago Cultural Center. 3.62 mb March 2002. Louvre, Paris. 312 kb
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.
November 2017. 74% 7.84mb DSC_3350 The Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
November 2017. 69% 7.88mb DSC_3355 The Art Institute of Chicago.
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.
November 2017. The Art Institute of Chicago. 80% 7.88mb DSC_3315December 2012. 1st century. Roman. The Art Institute of Chicago. .2.25mb 101_1469
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.
May 2016. The Art Institute of Chicago. 7.44mb DSCN2611 (1)
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.
December 2025. 98% 7.84mb DSC_9937The Art Institute of Chicago.
Crèche, mid-18th century, Naples, Italy. Details of daily life are connected to the biblical narrative of the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
December 2025. The Art Institute of Chicago. 7.33mb DSC_9933 (1)
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.
December 2025. The Art Institute of Chicago.7.66mb DSC_9896 (1)
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.
December 2025. The Art Institute of Chicago. 73% 7.86mb DSC_9847
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.
December 2025. The Chauncey McCormick Gallery, The Art Institute of Chicago. 93% 7.89mb DSC_9889September 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago. 3.55mb DSC_1038 (1)
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.
POLLOCK: IF PEOPLE WOULD JUST LOOK AT THE PAINTINGS I DON’T THINK THEY’D HAVE ANY TROUBLE ENJOYING THEM. IT’S LIKE LOOKING AT A BED OF FLOWERS. YOU DON’T TEAR YOUR HAIR OUT OVER WHAT IT MEANS.
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.
September 2014. Modern Wing, Art Institute of Chicago. 3.49mb DSC_1061 (1)August 2015. Modern Wing, Art Institute of Chicago. 3.76mb DSC_0672 (1)August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 3.14mb DSC_0068 (1)August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago.4.14 mbDSC_0181 (1)August 2015. The Art Institute of Chicago. 1.22mb DSC_0014 (1)October 2015. Art exhibit. Oak Park, IL. 4.72mb DSCN1739 (2)November 2015. Art Institute of Chicago. 3.77 mb DSC_0094 (1)September 2016.Milwaukee Art Museum. 2.63mb DSC_0054 (1)
Thomas Hart Benton, Poker Night (from A Streetcar Named Desire), 1948(Whitney Museum of American Art),Milwaukee Art Museum. 2.63mb DSC_0054 (1)
September 2016. Haggerty Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI. 3.54mb DSC_0922 (1)Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Untitled called Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (“Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas y Colibrí”), 1940, oil on canvas mounted to board, 61.2 cm × 47 cm (24.11 in × 18.5 in),Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas. The Ransom Center acquired the self-portrait in 1965 as one of a large collection of artworks assembled by photographer Nickolas Muray (American, b. Hungary, 1892–1965). Kahlo gifted the painting to Muray soon after it was completed in 1940.
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.
May 2014. Édouard Manet, Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers, 1865, oil on canvas, 190.8 × 148.3 cm (74 7/8 × 58 3/8 in.), The Art Institute of Chicago. See – Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers | The Art Institute of Chicago – retrieved April 18, 2026. Author’s photograph, 4.93mb DSC_0577 (1)
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.
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.
EXPO CHICAGO 2018 was held in Festival Hall on Navy Pier in Chicago. The annual event, held since 2012, is in its seventh year.EXPO CHICAGO 2018 attracts thousands of attendees to visit with hundreds of gallery owners and artists from all over the world.Expo Chicago is a major modern and contemporary art event held each year to open the Fall art season. It is held nearby to downtown Chicago and the Magnificent Mile on historic Navy Pier which is one of Chicago’s most popular tourist magnets.One of the information desks at EXPO CHICAGO 2018. EXPO CHICAGO 2018 welcomed 135 international art galleries from 27 countries and 63 cities.Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto. Within the framework of the show’s sections, each booth showcases the artwork of their choosing .Artwork of Marcus Jansen was featured at Casterline/ Goodman Gallery, Aspen, CO, Chicago, and Nantucket, MA.Artist Gina Pellón (center) at Cerunda Arte, Coral Gables, FL.Surrealist painter Fred Stonehouse, Night King, 2018, acrylic on canvas, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee, WI.Richard Hughes, Hot Step, 2017, cast polyester resin and enamel paint, Anton Kern Gallery, New York.Ridley Howard, Blue Dress, Blue Sky, 2016, acrylic on linen, Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL.admissions. Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI. Artist Francesco Clemente, 2018, oil on canvas at Maruani Mercier Gallery, Brussels, Belgium.Artwork of Larry Poons, Yares Art, New York, Palm Springs, Santa Fe.Artwork of Austin White, 2018, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco and New York.In/Situ: Postcommodity, Repellent Fence, 2015, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota.Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA.Artwork by Asmund Havsteen Mikkelsen at the booth shared by Fold Gallery, London, and Galleri Kant, Copenhagen.Prune Nourry, River Man (detail), 2018, patinated copper tubes, Galerie Templon, Paris.Gérard Garouste, The Eagle Owl and the One-Eared Woman, 2016, Galerie Templon, Paris.Jaume Plensa’s Laura Asia in White, 2017, polyester resin and marble dust, at Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago.Jaume Plensa’s Laura Asia in White, 2017, polyester resin and marble dust, at Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago.William Kentridge, Blue Rubrics, 2018, lapis lazuli pigment on thesaurus pages, NFP Field Tate Editions, Royal Academy of Arts, London.Frances Stark, According to This…, 2018, Silk screen on linen on panel, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York and Rome.David Driskell (b. 1931), Jazz Singer (Lady of Leisure, Fox), 1974, oil and collage on canvas, 52 x 44 in., DC MooreGallery, New York City.Jansson Stegner, Swordswoman, 2018, oil on linen, Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles.Brian Calvin, Eternal Return, 2009, acrylic on canvas, Anton Kern Gallery, New York.Margot Bergman, Gloria, 2014, acrylic on linen, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.Ceysson & Bénétière, New York Luxembourg Paris Saint-Étienne.Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait with Nuala, 2018, oil on canvas, Zolla/Lieberman Chicago.Chloe Wise, You would have been a castle for a moment, 2016, Galerie Division, Montreal and Toronto.EXPO CHICAGO 2018. EXPO CHICAGO 2018. Artwork of Devan Shimoyama, De Buck Gallery New York City.EXPO CHICAGO 2018. Chie Fueki, Kyle, 2017, DC Moore Gallery, New York City.Naudline Pierre, Deal Kindly and Truly With Me, 2018, oil on canvas, 56 x 52 inches, Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.Clare Sherman, Sea Cave, 2017, oil on canvas, 84 x 66 in., DC Moore Gallery, New York City.Roberto Fabelo, Gothic Habanero, n.d., oil on canvas, Cerunda Arte, Coral Gables, FL.EXPO CHICAGO 2018 brings the world of modern and contemporary art to Chicago for the collector.EXPO CHICAGO 2018 offers the art lover opportunities to encounter the latest in modern and contemporary art from around the world.EXPO CHICAGO 2018 covers tens of thousands of square feet with modern and contemporary art of many kinds from 27 countries and 63 global cities.EXPO CHICAGO 2018Sculpture, painting, and other visual art forms were in evidence at Expo Chicago/2018. There is a popular on-site cafe that serves snacks and beverages.EXPO CHICAGO 2018EXPO CHICAGO 2018EXPO CHICAGO 2018Juan Roberto Diago, Grito, 1997. The artist talks about his artistic debt to Jean-Michel Basquiat.Fort Gansevoort, New York City.Artwork of Nick Dawes, 2018, Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin.Tsailing Tseng, Black Moor, Spring/ Sun/ Winter/ Dread/ Everything Everything, 2018, oil on linen, SAIC Booth (Tuttle Fellowship).Roberto Lugo, porcelain china, paint, luster, 2018, Wexler Gallery, Philadelphia. PA.Lavar Munroe, Spy Boy, 2018, acrylic and earring stud on canvas, Jenkins Johnson Gallery San Francisco New York.In/Situ: Ivan Argote, Among Us — Across History…, 2017.Richard Hudson, Tear, 2016, polished mirrored steel, Michael Goedhuis London Beijing New York. 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.The Hole NYC.Barnaby Barford (b. 1977), Celebrity, 2018, Giclée Print, David Gill Gallery, London.
FEATURE image: (detail) Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene, John 20:11-18.
INTRODUCTION
One hour’s drive (about 40 miles) south of downtown Chicago—and 90 minutes drive from the University of Notre Dame near South Bend, Indiana—is The Shrine of Christ’s Passion. Within a 30-acre site whose landscaped rocks, hills, and trees envelop the visitor, the shrine is located on busy U.S. 41 at 10630 Wicker Avenue in St. John, Indiana. A pioneer town settled in 1837, St. John still sits among farm fields though there is increasingly more development only minutes from the Indiana-Illinois state line.
On the historic Wachter family farm, the level terrain is a perfect outdoor setting for an array of multi-media and interactive attractions. Most visitors, whether as individuals or in groups, come to the shrine to traverse the half-mile winding concrete pathway that contain over 40 life-sized bronze sculptures which dramatize the Passion of Jesus Christ in the Bible.
The visit to the shrine begins in the well-stocked gift shop and leads directly outdoors to the dramatization of Jesus at The Last Supper and into the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prays. This is followed by the 14 traditional Stations of the Cross. The visit ends at Jesus’s empty tomb and his appearance to Mary Magdalene. Finally there is the dramatic Ascension of the Risen Jesus into Heaven on Mount Olivet.
The shrine opened in 2011 and added its latest attraction– namely, a re-creation of the rock-filled path up Mount Sinai to where Moses has received the 10 Commandments –in 2017.
The Shrine of Christ’s Passion required a decade of planning and over $10 million dollars to build. Each setting or station for Christ’s passion has an orientation kiosk. Each features the well-known recorded voice of American television journalist Bill Kurtis. A push of a button has Mr. Kurtis’s voice over the kiosks’ speakers provide a clear and brief description in English of the sculptures’ scenes followed by a short meditation.
Along the broad concrete pathway the prayer trail is meditative and its easy progression from station to station lends itself to discovery. Formed hills, planted trees, bushes, and grasses as well as many large boulders, provide a complete landscape far from the outside world. The design creates a terrain that is self-contained and works to evoke the arid climate of the Holy Land where the last days of Christ can become vibrant today.
Upon exiting the gift shop with its walls and shelves of tempting religious articles and other items for purchase — all proceeds apparently go to the upkeep of the shrine– one steps into an outdoor pastoral setting which offers the immediate transition into the world of the Bible and following in the footsteps of Christ during his darkest moments. Visitors share the trail with others from around the nation and world. This is part of what makes each visit to the shrine unique and alive. Yet there is ample space and freedom to enjoy one’s own completely personal experience.
Whenever one may visit the shrine — it is open 361 days a year– the prayer trail has an atmosphere that is quiet and respectful. There is always a place to sit and drink in the sculpture art detailing the greatest story ever told. Among its flora, evocative rock and land formations, and realistically-rendered life-sized sculptures depicting Jesus Christ’s suffering –- one witnesses in a a new way Christ’s mission which triumphed over sin and death.
A large and impressive place, The Shrine of Christ’s Passion retains a human scale along with giving the visitor a sense of being serenely out in nature. Depending on how much time a visitor can spend, a visit to the shrine could possibly be accomplished in as little as 30 minutes though at least an hour should be allowed to see and begin to savor everything it has to offer.
In addition to the main prayer trail and gift shop, the shrine includes more attractions such as the Moses, Mount Sinai, and the 10 Commandments trail; The Sanctity of Life Shrine; and Our Lady of The New Millennium, a monumental three-story (34 feet) tall statue of the Virgin Mary constructed out of over 8,000 pounds of stainless steel.
The Shrine is operated by a non-denominational nonprofit, private foundation. Admission to all attractions at the shrine is free. The Shrine is open daily from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Thursdays until 8:00 p.m.The Prayer Trail is open year round, weather permitting.
Main Entrance on U.S. 41 at 10630 Wicker Avenue in St. John, Indiana, minutes from the Illinois-Indiana state line. Just 40 minutes from downtown Chicago, there is ample free parking and tour buses are welcome.
The Gift Shoppe.
The Last Supper Luke 22:19
“And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Garden of Gethsemane Mark 14:34
“My
soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” Jesus said to
them. “Stay here and keep watch.”
THE 14 STATIONS OF THE CROSS AT THE SHRINE OF CHRIST’S PASSION, ST. JOHN, INDIANA.
1. Jesus is condemned to death Matthew 27: 19-26.
“When Pilate saw that he was not succeeding at all, but that a riot was breaking out instead, he took water and washed his hands in the sight of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. Look to it yourselves.”…Pilate had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.”
2. Jesus carries His cross John 19:16-17
“Then Pilate handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers took charge of Jesus, who carried his own cross to a location called “The Place of a Skull,” known in Aramaic as Golgotha.”
3. Jesus falls for the first time Isaiah 53:1-3
“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”
4. Jesus meets His mother, Mary Lamentations 1:12
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me..?”
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross Luke 23:26
“They seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.”
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus Psalm 17:15
“As for me, I will be vindicated and will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.”
7. Jesus falls for the second time Isaiah 53:4-6
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.”
8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem Luke 23:27-31
“A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28 Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children.”
9. Jesus falls for the third time Isaiah 53:10-11
“Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand….”
10. Jesus is stripped of His clothes Matthew 27:27-31
“They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him.”
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross Luke 23:33-34
“When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left.”
12. Jesus dies on the cross Luke 23:44-49
“Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.”
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross Mark 15:39
“When the centurion who stood facing him saw how Jesus breathed his last he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!'”
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb Luke 23:50-53
“Going to Pilate, Joseph of Arimathea asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid.”
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The Resurrection of Jesus.Matthew 28.
1 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning,* Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.
2 And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.
3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow.
4 The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men.
5 Then the angel said to the women in reply, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified.
6 He is not here, for he has been raised just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene John 20:16
“Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned
toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”
MORE of the Prayer Trail
The Ascension Acts of the Apostles 1:9
“…Jesus was taken up before their very eyes,
and a cloud hid him from their sight.”
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The Ascension of Jesus is described twice in the New Testament, and both accounts come from Luke the Evangelist. The first appears at the end of his Gospel (Luke 24:50–53); the second opens the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:6–12).
In Acts, Luke introduces a crucial detail: a forty‑day period (Acts 1:3) during which the risen Jesus appears to the apostles, teaches them, and prepares them for their mission. This time frame is not emphasized in the Gospel account, suggesting that Luke separates the Resurrection and Ascension in Acts not because he inherited two different traditions, but because doing so serves a narrative purpose. Acts uses the forty days to situate the apostles within the larger story of Israel’s covenant history and to frame the early Church as the continuation of God’s saving work.
Once Jesus rises from the dead, the disciples recognize him as the Messiah. It is therefore understandable that, in Acts, they ask whether he will now restore Israel’s political kingdom. Luke, writing for future Christians, places in Jesus’s mouth a deliberately open‑ended reply. The timing of the parousia — the Second Coming — is not for them to know. Their task is different: to wait for the Holy Spirit, whose power will make them witnesses “to the ends of the earth.” Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’s Passion and Resurrection, becomes the starting point of this worldwide mission.
Acts adds further symbolic depth to the Ascension. Jesus is taken from their sight by a cloud, a biblical sign of divine presence and a motif associated with end‑times imagery (Luke 21:27). The event occurs on the Mount of Olives, a location already charged with eschatological expectation. As Jesus is lifted up, two figures in dazzling garments appear — the same angelic type who announced his birth (Luke 2:9) and proclaimed his Resurrection (Luke 24:4–7). Their message links Ascension and Second Coming: the Jesus who is taken up in glory “will return in the same way you saw him go” (Acts 1:11).
Christian tradition understands the mystery of Christ by tracing a single arc from the Incarnation to the Ascension. It begins at the Annunciation (Luke 1:26–38), when the eternal Word — the One who “was with God and…was God” (John 1:1) — takes on human nature in the womb of Mary. In this moment, the divine and human are united in the Person of Jesus.
The Ascension brings this union to its fulfillment. Here, the “new, saved man” enters the very life of the Father, revealing the destiny of redeemed humanity. Christ’s glorified body becomes the perfect expression of what humanity is meant to be in God: a life whose very mode of existence is love, for “God is love” (1 John 4:16). In heaven, the God‑Man embodies this reality completely.
The Ascension is immediately followed by Pentecost, when the apostles receive the Holy Spirit from the risen Christ. From that moment forward, they speak not only of Christ exalted in heaven, but of “Christ in us” — the indwelling presence that makes believers participants in his risen life.
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.
Admissions, Expo Chicago 2017.
Lara Schnitger, Suffragette City, 2015-2017, Cotton, and linen, quilted and bleached, Anton Kern Gallery, New York. 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.
Anton Kern Gallery, New York. 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.
Jackie Saccoccio, Portrait (Bomba), 2017, and Faheem Majeed, Hopscotch I, 2011, and Pause, 2010, Rhona Hoffman Gallery Chicago. Expo Chicago 2017.
Caroline Walker, Grimm Gallery Amsterdam New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Paul Kasmin Gallery New York. Expo Chicago 2017.
Artist’s Signature (Miró). Expo Chicago 2017.