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Kara Walker’s Antebellum cutout installation at the Art Institute pushes the boundaries of what black and white silhouettes can do to combat stereotypes. Here’s a look at some of the more curious nineteenth century silhouettes in the Art Institute’s permanent collection that came before Walker’s bold racial re-envisioning of the medium.

Silhouettes based on shadows have been called the origin of the art of painting since antiquity. By the modern era, the most popular function for the silhouette was for single or family portraits in profile, possibly due to theories that the profile and the soul were visibly connected. Valentines with silhouetted imagery and memorial cards were similarly popular. These were made from black paper cut out and adhered to a white background, or white paper laced with holes on a black background. The unknown maker of a nineteenth-century scene from an album in Prints and Drawings narrowly avoided turning their work into a full-fledged doily. Thankfully, instead, they provided the contrast of a bright blue backing to its floral image of a woman tending a funerary urn.

The overhanging tree suggests the cutter might have been German, or familiar with the German Romantic tradition of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A prominent theme was the melancholy over premature death (as in the suicide of the lovelorn protagonist in Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther), which became a craze.

Another album in Prints and Drawings was compiled around 1837 by the German-born Queen Adelaide of England (1792-1849), who enlisted her female friends at court to provide drawings of children, landscapes and costume balls. One of them, Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg (1770-1840), was apparently English by birth, but traveled with her German husband through the Vogelsberg part of his territories. Her contribution was two black cutouts of peasants she saw working in those fields. The figures wear traditional peasant garb, but some abstracted details have become ambiguous to the modern eye.

Elizabeth has focused on several family interactions coinciding with the workday tasks. A father may be keeping a toy away from his dancing child, or perhaps shaking a tambourine for her during a rest. The children on the ground may be working the fields, or simply playing dangerously with abandoned scythes. In contrast, the child on a leash significantly predates modern apologetic attempts to tether the young. Age-old feudal attitudes seem to remain in full swing when Elizabeth described the figures below the cart as “Group I saw in the field as I visited the Vogelsberg (and) struck me as lovely.” Was the main purpose of these peasants simply to form a charming tableau vivant for the entertainment of the nobility? Perhaps we should have exhibited these two cutout gems near Walker’s, as they so clearly display the assumptions the aristocracy made about the picturesque workers of their farmlands!

I’d describe today’s weather as February-esque. But the fact of the matter is that it’s almost MAY. So no matter how bad it is, spring and summer are definitely around the corner. It’s always happened like this. I checked some old calendars and summer is for sure on its way. At this point it’s just a numbers game. (Full disclosure: I don’t actually know what that phrase means.)

Reminders help, though—some brief sunlight, a flower here and there, dudes who’ve already switched to cargo shorts and aren’t looking back. The Art Institute has a few reminders on its walls, too, like Georgia O’Keeffe’s appropriately-named Spring from 1923/24, on display in gallery 265. The sun’s coming in at a relaxed 45-degree angle, so you can imagine it’s a mild morning, with a breeze pointing the house’s weathervane to the east. The palette is all fresh greens and purples and bright whites. The whole world is going to look like this soon, trust me.

Not today, though. Sorry. You should spend today inside—at the Art Institute! Bam.

LaunchPad: Ancient Glassmaking—The Roman Mold-Blown Technique
From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 1 0 ratings Time: 03:42 More in Education

LaunchPad: Conserving Ancient and Byzantine Art at the Art Institute of Chicago
While the Art Institute of Chicago's ancient and Byzantine collection was off view during the construction of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 13:52 More in Education

LaunchPad: Ancient Greek Vase Production and the Black-Figure Technique
Used for the storage and shipment of grains, wine, and other goods, as well as in the all-male Greek drinking party, known as the symposium, ancient Greek va... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 04:16 More in Education

LaunchPad: Ancient Glassmaking—The Roman Mold-Blown Technique
Beginning in the 1st century A.D., Roman glassmakers determined that blown-glass vessels could be mass-produced using molds. This method of production, which... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 3 0 ratings Time: 03:42 More in Education

LaunchPad: Ancient Glassmaking—The Free-Blown Technique
Around 40 B.C. the ancient glass industry changed dramatically with the innovation of blowing glass. By blowing air through a long hollow tub, the glassmaker... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 1 0 ratings Time: 03:40 More in Education

LaunchPad: Ancient Glassmaking—The Core-Formed Technique
From 1600 B.C. to the first decade of the 1st century A.D., the core-formed technique was the most common means of making colorful glass vessels in ancient N... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 1 0 ratings Time: 03:35 More in Education

The Art Institute is proud to announce the recent acquisition of Thomas Hart Benton’s Cotton Pickers. Best known for his sinuous lines and frank treatment of rural subjects, the Missouri-born Benton is considered a critical figure in the history of American art for his mediating role between American Regionalism and the emerging forces of abstraction and modernism. He was deeply influenced by the work of the Old Masters , but also energized by modern art, including that by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Signac. In a very rare combination for the time, his work was both formally and politically progressive, as can be seen in Cotton Pickers, which brought into focus the bleak social and economic landscape of the South in the early 20th century in an inventive visual idiom.

Cotton Pickers is based on notes of a trip he made through the South in the early 1900s. Rendered on a relatively large scale, the painting shows the dignity of African American cotton pickers enduring backbreaking labor and southern summer heat. As the workers pick the cotton by hand, to be collected by the horse-drawn wagon in the background, one woman offers another a drink of water from a pail. A makeshift lean-to protects a sleeping child from the relentless sun. Benton renders the unforgiving Georgia clay, the dry fields, and the contorted bodies of the workers in a unified composition, the delicacy of which almost belies the progressive agenda of the work. Cotton Pickers , one of a limited number of large paintings created by Benton, will be shown alongside Grant Wood’s American Gothic and John Steuart Curry’s Hogs and Rattlesnakes at the Art Institute and will complete an important chapter in the museum’s representation of American Regionalism.

Image Credit: Thomas Hart Benton. Cotton Pickers, 1945. Prior bequest of Alexander Stewart; Centennial Major Acquisitions Income and Wesley M. Dixon Jr. funds; Roger and J. Peter McCormick Endowments; prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection and Cyrus H. McCormick Fund; Quinn E. Delaney, American Art Sales Proceeds, Alyce and Edwin DeCosta and Walter E. Heller Foundation, and Goodman funds; prior bequest of Arthur Rubloff; Estate of Walter Aitken; Ada Turnbull Hertle and Mary and Leigh Block Endowment funds; prior acquisition of Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize; Marian and Samuel Klasstorner and Laura T. Magnuson Acquisition funds; prior acquisition of Friends of American Art Collection; Wirt D. Walker Trust; Jay W. McGreevy Endowment; Cyrus Hall McCormick Fund; Samuel A. Marx Purchase Fund for Major Acquisitions; Maurice D. Galleher Endowment; Alfred and May Tiefenbronner Memorial, Dr. Julian Archie, Gladys N. Anderson, and Simeon B. Williams funds; Capital Campaign General Acquisitions Endowment, and Benjamin Argile Memorial Fund.

LaunchPad: Coin Production in the Roman World
Coins were made of pieces of gold, silver, or bronze, known as blanks, which were cast or cut to specific weights. To make a coin, a blank was sandwiched bet... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 02:36 More in Education

LaunchPad: Coin Production in the Ancient Greek World
Coins were made of pieces of gold, silver, or bronze, known as blanks, which were cast or cut to specific weights. To make a coin, a blank was sandwiched bet... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 02:36 More in Education

LaunchPad: Ancient Greek Vase Production and the Red-Figure Technique
Greek vases were produced in many parts of the ancient Mediterranean world that were inhabited by Greeks, including mainland Greece and the Aegean Islands. T... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 0 0 ratings Time: 04:21 More in Education

LaunchPad: Making Ancient and Byzantine Mosaics
There's more to mosaics than meets the eye. The design and arrangement of hundreds or thousands of tesserae (stone or glass cubes) was a complex process invo... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 2 0 ratings Time: 03:34 More in Education

LaunchPad: Ancient and Byzantine Mosaic Materials
In the ancient Mediterranean world, the earliest-known mosaics, which date to the 8th century B.C., were made of large, water-smoothed pebbles arranged in ge... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 6 0 ratings Time: 02:38 More in Education

Manet’s Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers represents a foray into religious imagery that was rare for the artist and his peers in the French avant-garde. It is in fact only one of only two major works on religious themes executed by Manet in the early 1860s.

In this striking work, Manet depicted the moment when Jesus’s captors taunt him by crowning him with thorns and covering him with a purple robe. According to the Gospel narratives, these soldiers then beat Jesus, but Manet portrays them as almost ambivalent as they surround his pale, stark figure. One gazes at him, one kneels in mock homage, and one holds the purple cloak in such a way as to suggest that he wishes to cover Christ’s nakedness, rather than strip him. This painting would have been shocking to viewers at the time because Christ’s figure is unheroic and unidealized, emphasizing him more as a man.

Image Credit: Édouard Manet. Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers, 1865. Gift of James Deering.

On one level, this large painting of a nude was inspired by Picasso’s second wife Jacqueline Roque. But it also belies a number of the artist’s life-long thematic and stylistic interests. Over 40 years after Cubism’s impetus, he continues to draw from that vocabulary with his use of geometric, flattened forms. It also takes inspiration from classical themes, with a reclining nude in a seemingly eternal landscape. The landscape, in fact, was in Provence, where Picasso lived with Roque. The location was also close to Mont Sainte-Victoire, the mountain that Cézanne memorialized.

If you find yourself at the museum, visit Picasso’s Nude Under a Pine Tree, and then head up to the Post-Impressionist galleries for a deeper look at Picasso’s connection to Cézanne, who Picasso referred to as his “one and only master.”

Image Credit: Pablo Picasso. Nude under a Pine Tree, 1959. The Art Institute of Chicago, bequest of Grant J. Pick. © 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The Art Institute’s museum-wide celebration of Picasso is certainly anchored by Picasso and Chicago, but you’ll find evidence of the artist in almost every corner of the museum. No fewer than nine curatorial departments have explored Picasso’s wide-ranging artistic interests and influences, with some being more familiar than others.

For example, Picasso’s affinity for African art is well documented. Paintings like Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (which is not in the exhibition) clearly illustrate how he took inspiration from African masks. In fact, Picasso was an avid—and early—collector of African art. The presentation in our African galleries includes pieces that would have been comparable to works once owned by Picasso. At the time of his death, Picasso had collected some 100 African objects, of which nearly one third were masks from present-day Mali. Many of these Malian masks, including the Art Institute’s mask above, depict human-animal hybridity and metamorphosis, themes often explored by Picasso  in his work.

Similarly, the museum’s Ancient Art department has also taken a look at another of Picasso’s influences, although this one is arguably less well-known. In his quest for a modern aesthetic, Picasso looked back in history to the art of the ancient Mediterranean. He studied Greek antiquities at the Louvre, including Cycladic sculptures and Greek vases painted int he black-figure technique. Mythological figures from these pieces appear in works throughout his career. In particular, satyrs—half-man, half-horse creatures driven by insatiable appetites for food, sex, and wine—appear on both ancient Greek vessels and in Picasso’s work. In the Art Institute’s storage jar, horse-eared satyrs appear on the neck, suggesting that it may once have contained undiluted wine.

Image Credits: Mask for Ntomo. Late 19th/early 20th century. Segou region of Mali. African and Amerindian Art Purchase Fund.

Amphora (Storage Jar). c. 520 B.C. Greek, Athens. Close to the style of the Antimenes Painter. Costa A. Pandaleon Endowment.

 

 

We’ve talked about this year being the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show, but this Sunday, March 24, marks the exact day that this landmark exhibition opened at the Art Institute a century ago. We’ve also talked about the exhibition Picasso and Chicago, which celebrates the artist’s connection with our fair city, beginning with the Armory Show. And so for our work of the week, I thought an object that was in both the 1913 and 2013 shows would be most appropriate.

Picasso created this Cubist sculpture of his mistress, Fernande Olivier, in the fall of 1909, during which time Fernande served frequently as a  subject for the artist. Cubism—as conceived by Picasso and fellow artist George Braque—presents an object from several perspectives simultaneously. Here we see faceted forms that give us a sense of both the inside and outside of Fernande’s head, illustrated as repeating convex shapes.

At the time of the Armory Show, the sculpture was owned by photographer, collector, and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. After Stieglitz’s death, it came to the Art Institute as a gift, along with many other works, including the drawing for the sculpture seen adjacent to it in the exhibition.

Image Credit: Pablo Picasso. Head of a Woman (Fernande), 1909. The Art Institute of Chicago, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. © 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

 

What do Japanese accent marks and opportunistic online pornographers have to do with each other, and with the Art Institute of Chicago’s rich collection of pre-20th-century Asian art? While raucous behavior (including at least one eye-catching display of bodily function) lurks within the two Chinese painted hand scrolls and one Japanese woodblock printed book that are now available online, nothing truly untoward seems to be happening on the surface.

These three artworks (above and immediately below) reflect an interest in everyday public life—whether in a 14th-century painted scroll of a bustling street, a book of playful woodblock prints of common people going about their business c. 1800 (that was meant for artists to copy), or an important, 13th-century painting of a scholar moving with his family to a new city (viewable in extreme, zooming detail). All of these artworks benefit from the animated movement of the Art Institute’s Turning the Pages™, a roster now thirty fascinating objects strong.

For the first time on our website however, the movement goes from right to left. For the street scene (the top image) in particular, the scrolling motion creates the illusion of actual movement down a real street, whether the figures are parading by, or the viewer strolls along. Take your time to amble through these scenes; recognizable character types from pious to provocative abound, and not everyone is what they may seem, whether beggars, astrologers, or nobles.

While the two scrolls were relatively easy to prepare for the web by splicing together a very long image from photographs, the accompanying text for the street scene mainly consisted of collector’s seals and commentaries about the image dating over several centuries. Yang Pu may well have included such texts, but lost them during remounting. The book below proved more difficult to describe for an English-speaking audience, as it has a lengthy preface, requiring a good bit of research and technical fiddling from intrepid interns Mai Yamaguchi (Asian Art) and Liana Jegers (Prints and Drawings/Turning the Pages). The transcribed Japanese characters have appeared as question marks or empty boxes in the explanatory captions in a rather capricious manner.

So if you made it this far, you might be wondering where the opportunistic pornographers mentioned above come in. Well, consultations with our programmers in London have already resulted in the successful implementation of the needed diacritical mark, a macron, above the ō in the artist, Bumpō’s Romanized name, but consistency failed us once again on our home turf! A technical difficulty resulted in our website being unable to properly display any sort of mark of this sort for fear that it might be html code with nefarious intent! We link to our Turning the Pages™ books through our “My Collections” interface, which allows any viewer to assemble illustrated lists of their favorite Art Institute artworks from the museum database, and then type in comments on their choices. In the past, entirely inadvertently, users gained permission to include any type of formatting in the comments section, including live image and page links. These could be viewed by anyone, and were no longer restricted to referring to artworks owned or sanctioned by the museum. In fact, at least one enterprising individual took this to mean the Art Institute was offering free advertising space for their porn site. It wasn’t pretty. A few missing macrons are a small price to pay for the museum’s digital dignity.

Click below for access to any of the newest Turning the Pages resources:

Bumpo Sketches Book

Street Scene Handscroll

Yang Pu Handscroll

LaunchPad: Enameling Glass
This video was created for LaunchPad, a program of digital interpretive materials that supplement the viewing of works of art on display in the Art Institute... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 9 0 ratings Time: 02:46 More in Education