Artic

I have been visiting the the Art Institute of Chicago for the last few weeks, for the most part because it is free on Thursdays and Fridays. It has been a fun learning experience.

I have come to be more open to different styles of painting. Its quite interesting to see the transformation of painting style from the precise and picture perfect in the 17th century to the increasingly stylized and abstract today.It is not so surprising that much of the move into abstract representations came with the influx of photography. The change in the end consumer of the art is also quite evident, from churches to rich old men to modern 20th century folks who need something to decorate their steel and glass homes.

However, what I don't get are those morons who do something inane (3 stripes green, blue and black or put a shark in a tank or mix random colors, splash and waste good canvas), throw a convoluted uber-intellectual spiel onto it and pass it off as art. To distinguish between skill and idiocy I propose a test. If a painting cannot be made by a 4 year old kid under instructions from his/her teacher or through complete randomness (splashing paint on canvass), it must be art.

In a museum there are 2 types of visitors, no make that 3. People who know nothing about art and would like to impress Uncle Silvio/Chen/Al Haj/Kumar back home. People who know nothing about art but find it interesting and a good substitute for staler forms of entertainment (e.g. movie at AMC Cinema), and those who know their art and actually have some artistic skill. Its quite easy to distinguish between varieties 1 and 3 though 2 is a tough one. Anyone belongs to category 1 if the first impulse on sighting a painting is to go as close up to it as possible and squint at it. Those in 3, first capture the overall effect of the painting from a healthy 10ft and then move in to take in the micro technique employed by the painter. The ones in 2 come in multiple hues, starting of as 1 and ending up somewhere close to 3. In any case, let me make my case why it is not beneficial to look at a painting as if one were examining a bacterial infection.

For example,
This conveys little or no information to you while this

is most striking. The shades of blue emphasize the sadness and loss felt by the old guitarist. This is especially true for impressionist paintings where the overall scene conveys a larger visual effect that one misses by close staring.

For e.g.,
The very specific effect of the light and the rustic coarseness of the scene comes to you only from a distance.

What I find most shocking about the Museum Shop, are not the prices which by the way are a complete rip-off. As a matter of fact, high prices are a good idea. It allows the re-distribution of capital from the inept to the deserving, from bone headed tourists to talented but impoverished artists. What I find shocking is the kind of material that the museum attempts to sell. The available prints are the same old set of "famous" paintings that have been publicized for eternity. For a museum with a most impressive impressionist collection, it really does not need to make one more copy of "Sunflowers" by Van Gogh which is not even part of the collection.Who really needs one more copy of Dali's melting timepiece?

There are a number of things I like as well - the breadth of the collection, the care that is taken to preserve and promote art, the ambience, the list goes on. It is a great way to spend an evening. Part meditation, part education.