Having been employed as a department store janitor during his freshman year of college, Charles Ray (b. 1953) understands the unease that a mannequin — an inanimate object that one might readily mistake for a live human — can inspire. Ray’s work is also charged with purely sculptural tensions that exist between surface and interior, armature and appendage and / or size and scale. With Boy (1992), Ray created a particularly disquieting figure. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Boy By Charles Ray→
Premiering at the Art Institute of Chicago in October 1930, Grant Wood’s American Gothic captivated the public’s imagination and catapulted Wood into the national spotlight overnight. The painting depicts a couple — modeled on Wood’s sister, Nan, and his Dentist — who stand in front of a Midwestern house. The house is notable for its lone “gothic” window, a typical feature of the then-popular Carpenter Gothic style of architecture, in which gothic elements are used in otherwise simple, modern wood structures.
OK, everybody recognizes the painting above, which is called A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, by French Post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, from the movie Ferris Buellers Day Off: that much we can agree on. However, this is not that actual painting but, rather, it is a study, or a sort of trial run of the finished painting. Even though it looks very much like the painting that Cameron stared at for ages during their visit to the Art Institute of Chicago in Ferris Buellers Day Off, it is not that painting. Continue reading Georges Seurat, Study for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte→
James Rosenquist’s Volunteer is dated 1964, but, according to Rosenquist, [it was] finished shortly before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I think one of the coolest things about this painting is the use of fragmented symbols to depict the American life in the mid 20th century. The washing machine in the upper right speaks to a viewer as a symbol of American technological progress. The man in the business suit speaks as a symbol of how the American professional was dressing during this time. The ice cream speaks of American’s desire for “gustatory pleasure” (James Rosenquist. Volunteer. 1964. Art Institute of Chicago). Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: James Rosenquist, Volunteer→
You might have noticed that posts on the blog were a little on the thin side last week, because I was away vacationing with my sister in the lovely American city of Chicago. No one will argue that Chicago is a pretty happening place for a vacation, especially if you like to visit amazing sites, eat delicious food and suffer wildly unpredictable weather. In fact, due to last weeks’ extremely shitty inclement weather in “The Windy City,” we ended up doing a lot of “indoor activities” – including one afternoon spent wandering around aimlessly inside the massive Art Institute, Chicago, which is just insane.
