Art Stuff

Yesterday we finally got around to visiting the Art Institute. It was superb. On Thursdays and Fridays after 5 the museum is free, and there's nothing like something being free to make it more fun. It was a very drippy muggy overcast evening. Colin spent the day at school and I spent the day at home, but we met at the Art Institute at 5, which was romantic. Lots of people were waiting to get in free but not horribly many. We waiting under Colin's umbrella, admiring the cloud-obscured skyscrapers. They opened the doors and people poured in, but the wave dispersed though the big halls, so the place barely felt crowded. We saw the Asian art first. Especially wonderful were these wooden Chu tomb figures. That wacky Chu culture. I loved how these guys were so flat. And the one on the right definitely resembles Edvard Munch's "The Scream"--no?


We were admiring the Chinese bronzes and jades first but caught a glimpse of a roomful of Korean celadon to one side. "That's Korean celadon," I remarked to Colin. "They lost the recipe for it, so although there are lots of imitations, they're not quite the same." We went on admiring the Chinese stuff, including some very cute pottery pigs in a pottery pigstye. Colin said, "The celadon can't have been very tasty if they lost the recipe." I thought he was making a joke, so I laughed and then I said, "Well, that's specialization for you. Probably there were just a few families that made it and kept it a family secret and then they got wiped out somehow without passing on the secret." After a while, we made our way through the Japanese woodblock prints and to the celadon room. Suddenly Colin, intently reading captions, said, "Oh! you meant the glaze is called celadon." "What did you think I meant?" "I thought it was some kind of tasty Korean food that they used to put in those dishes, but now they don't know how to make anymore." I had a good laugh! But I will admit that it was my fault for saying "recipe" instead of "formula."

After we had enjoyed the Asian art for a good long time, we went down to see the photography exhibit. We are both huge fans of photography in museums, I'm not sure why. It's just fun and inspiring, and makes us look at the world differently when we come out. The one they had going at the Art Institute was Henry Callahan. We thought he was really great. As Colin said, he seemed to have a good grasp on what's interesting about photography. The picture I chose to put up here is one he did of some trees in Chicago by the lake. But he had a lot of interesting one of people especially his wife, who is the subject of one of the most famous ones.

When we got out of the museum it was getting dark and the tall buildings looked silver and beautiful in the rain. We dropped by an art store to get clay for one of Colin's lectures (lumpl and Goliath for those of you who know something about the philosophy of material constitution--Colin's students soon will). Colin got a teacher discount. It was a cool art store, called Blick. But it was an ART store, NOT a craft store--so no crochet cotton, which is what I was looking for. I have almost finished a big crochet project, but I ran out of thread halfway around the last row. What a bother. Oh well, I'm still looking. Meanwhile, I got a Micron pen because they really come in handy sometimes.

Then we wanted to take lots of pictures. We took pictures of each other while we were cooking dinner, inspired by Harry Callahan and by the fact that we will soon be apart. I have not really played with them very much yet, but I include a couple of them below: