Gatsbys Gardens: Art Institute

Showing posts with label Art Institute. Show all posts

Sunday, March 11, 2012

An Unexpected Treasure

The Chicago Art Institute Study Group went to a local art museum located in the western suburbs of Chicago. It was quite a wonderful and an unexpected surprise!

Elmhurst Art Museum

Built in 1998

The Elmhurst Art Museum was built to match the design of this Mies Van Der Rohe home built in Elmhurst in the 1950's. The home was later moved piece by piece to the property where the Elmhurst Art Museum would be built. Robert McCormick, a Chicago real estate developer, was the first owner for nine years and there was only one other owner for twenty-nine years before it was sold to the developers of the Elmhurst Art Museum. Mies Van Der Rohe only built three of these innovative aluminum and glass homes, Elmhurst and Plano, Illinois and Connecticut.

His dream was to revolutionize the building industry after WWII thinking that everyone would want one of these glass homes.

This is the only room open in the house at this time furnished in mid-century furniture. Other rooms will be completed as funds allow.

A little background on Mies Van Der Rohe is that he was a student of the German Bauhaus movement which we see so prevalent in mid-century design. He designed many high rise buildings in Chicago and is known as the "father of the high rise."

Original Bauhaus Chair

The museum is unusual in that they display the works of up and coming artists who have not quite made it yet. They are all alive and most are local to the Chicago area and recently being shown in Chicago galleries.

Hanging stainless steel replicas of dried garden plants by Carolyn Ottmers who is also the Director of Sculptural Art for the Art Institute of Chicago

The above are digital photographs shot by David Weinberg through the glass of a dilapidated greenhouse.

Hand cut pieces of photos from art books, catalogs, magazines to form collages of plants by Stephen Eichorn

Molly McCracken Kumar is the only non-local artist in this exhibition. She is from San Francisco and works in a layering process.

Terrariums are back big time even in the art world. Meghan Q. McCook calls these Terra Hives, blown glass and copper with small plantings inside.

Art is a wonderful way to have a garden inside your home!

Thursday, December 09, 2010

A Winter Wonderland

What an appropriate name for a presentation by Dr. David Stark of the Art Institute of Chicago. This time the Art Institute came to us in a suburb of Chicago to a wonderful century old golf club on picturesque snowy grounds.

Dr. Stark presented each area of art by its style and century the piece was excuted. We were first introduced to Bruegel, Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, 1565

Friedrich, Graveyard Under Snow, 1827

Renaissance to Rococo Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century

Limbourg Brothers, Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry (February) 1413-1416

Goya, Winter Scene, 1786 (Sometimes these scenes were painted for weavers who wove them into tapestries to be hung on wall). A simplier version of this painting was first done for a tapestry.

Boucher, Winter, (Four Seasons Series) 1765 - All of them of loving couples. Don't you love this sleigh?

Avercamp, Scene on Ice, 1625

Romanticism

Friedrich, Winter Landscape, 1811 - If you enlarge this painting you will see a man sitting by the large evergreen with his crutches thrown in the snow looking at a religious cross. It is debatable if he has been cured or if he has come to die.

Turner, Snowstorm, 1837

Realism

Courbet, Fox in the Snow, 1860

Impressionism and Post Impressionism

Monet, Sandvika, Norway, 1895

Pissarro, Rabbit Warren at Pontoise, Snow 1879

Monet, Ice Floes, 1880 (painted after his wife Camille (32) died of cancer), symbolizes the breaking apart of his life.

Ashcan School, early twentieth century, realism, depicting people the way they lived

Henri, Snow in New York, 1902

Bellows, Morning Snow - Hudson River, 1910

Twentieth Century

Burchfield, Orion in Winter, 1962

Richter, Ice, 1989

I think I have changed my mind about winter, it is certainly art! I still do not like the shoveling and the driving in the snow, but it is a fascinating happening each year in many parts of the world and to the artist has very life cyclical meaning. If you would like to see Dr. Stark's complete visual presentation you can access it at

http://mdid.artic.edu/ , log in is public, password is public. left menu bar select Slide show, under Slide show select author Stark, David, select Slide show Winter Wonderland.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Uptown Girl

I love that song by Billy Joel, and he could have written it about me, or maybe my theme song should have been Downtown by Petula Clark. Anyway, I went to Chicago on Thursday with my Art Institute Group to hear a presentation by Terry Evans, My Expeditions: Prairie and Other Landscapes. Terry is a world class photographer who moved from Kansas in the 90's to Chicago and transferred her skills to many other types of prairies, city, inhabited, aerial, etc.

I am going to show you a sampling of her work at the beginning of the post because there was none available to photograph at the Art Institute. Her photos were shown to us on a powerpoint presentation so I downloaded some of the available photos from the Internet.

On with our adventure . . .

Standing with her camera waist high Terry took pictures of the prairie.

The prairie skyline

Bison on the Kansas Prairie

Prairie Specimens from past centuries

Downtown Chicago by Terry Evans

Oak Street Beach in Chicago

We took an early morning train into the loop (another name for Chicago downtown), long ride because it made every stop, certainly not the business express.

This structure above the city is call the El. This is an elevated train system that runs above the city in the downtown area. I came in from the suburbs on the Metra system train, not the El.

As we walked to the Art Institute, we couldn't help admire all the beautiful planters that line the city streets. Our current Mayor Daley is a huge proponent of beautification. He is retiring so I hope his successor continues his work on the greening of Chicago.

The flowers do not seem to have been nipped by frost yet. However, the downtown temperature tends to stay warmer in the fall because of Lake Michigan.

I grew up in Chicago but far south of the downtown area. As a child and young adult we came into the city often for shopping and after high school dances and proms. I remember seeing Johnny Mathis at the Chez Paree after a school dance before he was ultra famous, going to the Empire Room after a prom and later on going to just about every college dance at some big hotel, even saw a very young Bob Newhart perform at his alma mater Loyola University.

Plantings at Millennium Park

The band shell at Millennium Park

The shorter building in the middle is the Prudential Building which used to be the tallest building in Chicago!

The Bean at Millennium Park

Beautiful fall colors in Millennium Park against the skyline

I worked downtown for several years on Michigan Avenue, frequented the local hotel restaurants like the Blackstone, Conrad Hilton, Palmer House and The Pick Congress Hotel for lunches and after work get-togethers. There weren't many great places to go once you got out of the city proper, so we socialized in Chicago. I guess that's why so many young people now want to live in the city - I lived at home!

Art Institute of Chicago

Chagall's Stained Glass Windows

(They have been replaced in their home after five years of rejuvenation)

I finally got a clear shot of three of them without people standing in front!

We had some time to stop at the Museum store across from the Art Institute (Arts & Artisians) http://www.artsartisans.com/ - loved these glass flower sculptures. I wonder if they would hold up outside?

Lots of sightseeing buses as we traveled along to lunch

A little pigeon looking for his lunch!

Lunch at Heaven On Seven (Cajun food on the seventh floor of the vintage Garfield Building) No Credit - good thing we brought cash!

I think they had lots of this in everything!

They even had hot spice pouches hanging from the chandeliers.

We had to really hustle to get back to the train station or we would have had to wait an hour for the next train. I don't recommend this after eating Cajun crab cakes for lunch!