Tag Archives: Chicago Art Institute

Norwegian Wood

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Fisherman's Cottage, Harald Sohlberg, Norwegian, 1906

Fisherman’s Cottage, Harald Sohlberg, Norwegian, 1906

I once had a girl
Or should I say she once had me
She showed me her room
Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?
– The Beatles

This painting was photographed at the Art Institute, when we visited Chicago earlier this year. Sohlberg’s Norway is close enough in latitude to Michigan’s UP to share some similarities. Both locals are part of the boreal forest that rings the Earth’s northern pole. Both are situated on the shore of a large body of water. Both places have a cabin by this water, his was white, while ours is black.

Riffing off this painting, I was reminded of the Beatles tune, Norwegian Wood. Per Wiki, this song was a collaboration between Lennon and McCarthy. Lennon’s motivation was an affair that he had had. According to McCarthy, his then future brother-in-law had his room done out in wood, “A lot of people were decorating their places in wood. Norwegian wood. It was pine, really, cheap pine. But it’s not as good a title, ‘Cheap Pine’, baby.”

Two Sisters

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Two Sisters (On the Terrace), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881

Two Sisters (On the Terrace), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881

Renoir painted this delightful homage to springtime, youth and beauty on the terrace of the Fournaise family’s restaurant on the Seine River at Chatou, where six years before he had made Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise. This painting was already under way, when at lunch in Chatou with the American painter Whistler, Renoir spoke of postponing a planned trip to London: “The weather is fine and I have my models; that’s my only excuse.” The young woman in this painting wears the blue flannel dress favored by lady boaters at the time. She and the girl at her side were not actually related. An art dealer invented the title Two Sisters when he bought the painting.

Happy Easter!

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Black Cross, New Mexico, by Georgia O'Keeffe

Black Cross, New Mexico, by Georgia O’Keeffe

Black Cross, New Mexico is one of a series of cross paintings that Georgia O’Keeffe produced in her first summer in the Southwest in 1929. She was fascinated by the omnipresence of these crosses in New Mexico, later recalling, “I saw the crosses so often … like a thin dark veil of the Catholic Church spread over the New Mexico landscape … For me, painting the crosses was a way of painting the country.” Here O’Keeffe contrasted the man-made cross’s powerfully stark geometry, isolated flat against the picture plane, with the distant brilliance of nature’s sunset and rolling hills.

Horses, by Saul Steinberg

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Horses Closeup #2
Horses Closeup #3
Horses
Horses Closeup #1


The pictures with this post show a panel and close-ups of a furnishing fabric entitled Horses (c.1949/52). This fabric was designed by Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) a Romanian-born artist who is best remembered for his distinctive, quirky, and humorous illustrations that graced the pages of publications, especially the New Yorker, for over six decades. Steinberg’s whimsical style caught on quickly, and his fame and commercial success led to commissions by home furnishing companies, particularly for drapery and wallpaper designs. Between 1949 and the mid-1950s, Steinberg designs were adapted to textiles. Horses presents an array of shrewdly observed horses, typically Steinbergian with precise drawing and touches of color, engaged in a wide range of activities.

A Matter of Principals

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Le Corbusier Chaise Lounge

Le Corbusier Chaise Lounge

No, le Marquis hasn’t again confusedly conflated two homophones. I did it on purpose this time. Anne was the Early Childhood Center’s principal today. One of the perks of Anne’s job as a substitute teacher is that she gets to experience a wide variety of different jobs. She has taught every grade from high school seniors on down to pre-school. She has been a gym teacher and a music teacher too. She has been the librarian and even the school nurse. After today, about the only educational positions she hasn’t held yet are bus driver and custodian. Her work day began with a breakfast club. Think Molly Ringwald, but with much younger students. She packaged birthday pencils and did a lot of recess duty. The rest of her day was made up of filling in where she was needed.

The pictured Le Corbusier chaise lounge is part of the collection of the Chicago Art Institute. It is always a shock to see an everyday item in an art museum. I know, because this has happened more than once. My mother had purchased a very similar piece of furniture to the one pictured above. My mom’s and the museum’s chase lounges were designed in 1928 and first manufactured 1933. I expect that the museum’s is an original, while my mother’s is a modern copy. It’s designers were Le Corbusier, who was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (French, Swiss-born, 1887-1965), his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, (Swiss, 1896-1965) and Charlotte Perriand (French, 1903-1999). It’s construction includes a tubular chrome-plated steel frame that is adjustable and is mounted on a painted black metal base. The museum’s model was upholstered with brown and white pony skin and includes a brown leather pillow. My mother’s is upholstered in black leather and includes a black leather pillow.

Nude under a Pine Tree

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Nude under a Pine Tree, Pablo Picasso

Nude under a Pine Tree, Pablo Picasso

The woman portrayed in this painting is Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline. The contours of her body follow the outline of the southern French mountain, Sainte-Victoire. Her right-hand forms the abrupt western most face of the mountain, where Picasso had just purchased a château. Pablo Picasso painted Nude under a Pine Tree in 1959. So, it was painted too late to have appeared in the Armory Show that occurred in 1913 and whose centennial was the basis for this year’s Picasso show at the Chicago Art Institute. A hundred years ago Picasso was a relatively unknown artist and also a strikingly unconventional one. In 1913, at the advent of his first American tour, no New York museum was willing to host his show. His work had to be displayed at the NYC Armory, hence the name given to the event, the Armory Show. Recognizing an important new artist, the Chicago Art Institute interceded and became the first US museum to host Picasso and they’ve been rubbing New York’s face in it ever since.

Our great snowfall came to an end some time late last night. I awoke to about 10” of wet slushy snow on the ground, heart-attack snow. The first thing that I did was to call the employee emergency hotline. Anne and the rest of the Saint Louis educational system had bagged it last night. Even Scott, our neighborhood Air Force base was offering delayed start times, but there was no joy for me. After I was showered and dressed, I tried the hotline one more time. The message had changed and for a brief moment my heart soared, but the update pertained to a site in Virginia and there still was no joy for me.

I bundled up to dig out and clean off the snow. I got both vehicles fired up and then proceeded to clear all the walks. With a broom I swept off the cars and moved them out onto the already plowed street. What was I thinking? If my little street had been plowed then the way to work had to be clear too? And so it was. Work was half-staffed, giving me a quiet start to the work week. Risking the wrath of the Black-Ice Police, I hadn’t salted the walk, deciding to let nature take its course. When I came home, there was dry pavement to greet me. I felt both vindicated in my judgement and ecologetic too. Afterall, there was no reason to kill off yesterday’s freshly spread grass seed.