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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.

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.

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

A few months ago, I wrote about how the Art Institute participated in two amicus curiae briefs filed in two significant copyright cases. I am thrilled to report that we are 1-for-1 so far, with a huge victory today in the Supreme Court!

To recap, the Art Institute helped prepare a brief in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., regarding the scope of the “first sale” doctrine of United States copyright law. The first sale doctrine permits an owner of a lawfully made copy (including the original copy) to sell, loan, and display the copy without the permission of the copyright owner. Art museums and many other industry and consumer groups were alarmed when an influential appellate court held that the first sale doctrine applied only to copies made in the United States. Would this mean that museums would no longer be able to acquire, loan, borrow, or publicly display works of foreign-made modern and contemporary art without the permission of the copyright owner?

Thankfully, the Supreme Court decided that the owner of a lawfully-made copy does not need to obtain permission to do these things regardless of whether the copy was originally made in the United States. It was very satisfying to read the court acknowledge our concerns in today’s opinion:

Art museum directors ask us to consider their efforts to display foreign-produced works by, say, Cy Twombly, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and others. . . A geographical interpretation, they say, would require the museums to obtain permission from the copyright owners before they could display the work. . . even if the copyright owner has already sold or donated the work to a foreign museum. . . What are the museums to do, they ask, if the artist retained the copyright, if the artist cannot be found, or if a group of heirs is arguing about who owns which copyright?

The Court expressed concern about upsetting museums’ established practices:

For another thing, reliance upon the “first sale” doctrine is deeply embedded in the practices of those, such as booksellers, libraries, museums, and retailers, who have long relied upon its protection. Museums, for example, are not in the habit of asking their foreign counterparts to check with the heirs of copyright owners before sending, e.g., a Picasso on tour. . . That inertia means a dramatic change is likely necessary before these institutions, instructed by their counsel, would begin to engage in the complex permission-verifying process that a geographical interpretation would demand. And this Court’s adoption of the geographical interpretation could provide that dramatic change.

The Court described these as “intolerable consequences” and concluded that “the practical problems that petitioner and his amici have described are too serious, too extensive, and too likely to come about for us to dismiss them as insignificant—particularly in light of the ever­growing importance of foreign trade to America.”

Boom.

Image Credit: Vladimir Ivanovich Ladiagin. Untitled, May 10, 1945. Gift of the USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

Gary Winogrand’s publication Women Are Beautiful (above) is an actual binder full of women. This portfolio includes 85 photographs of women that were originally presented at New York’s Light Gallery in 1975. The images highlight Winogrand’s signature aesthetic that encouraged appreciation of chance juxtapositions and an erratic shooting style.

One of the images showcases a group of women in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade (this image is circa 1975). If you’re a Chicago resident, it’s easy to tell that the group is traveling down State Street with the Chicago Theatre and the El in the background. All of the images are currently on view in the museum’s photography galleries.

Recent blustery conditions in our fair city—remember, Chicago’s moniker is the “Windy City”—has caused me to reflect on the weathervanes in the American Folk Art gallery. Weathervanes have been part of the American landscape for many years; originally, they were introduced by English colonial settlers as an instrument to reveal wind direction, or as decoration for a rooftop. But they were also coveted by American folk art collectors of the early 20th century because of their visual impact as silhouettes, appealing to collectors’ and artists’ modern aesthetic.

A wonderful newly acquired weathervane (top image, left side) by Henry Driehaus (1860-1943, in his studio immediately above) from this time period was recently installed in the Grainger Gallery of American Folk Art at the museum. Above four silhouetted fish bearing the four cardinal points, Driehaus crafted a hunting dog obediently waiting behind his master and a Native American wielding a bow and arrow, with the exaggerated spikes of his headdress complementing the form of his pants and the bush below him. Born in the United States to Prussian immigrants, rural blacksmith Henry Driehaus trained as a smith in the European cities of Essen, Basel, and Zurich and learned ornamental ironwork in a monastery before returning to Pennsylvania in 1880. A few years later he opened a permanent shop in Hendricks Station, Frederick Township, where he executed multifaceted ironwork—from shoeing and ironing wagons to ornamental ironwork (such as andirons, coat hooks and hinges). This hand-wrought weathervane, which is actually signed by the blacksmith, illustrates Driehaus’s predilection for and specialization in decorative ironwork.

Complimenting the weathervanes in the gallery is a whirligig (top image, right side) made by Lithuanian immigrant Frank Memkus (1884-1965). Whirligigs have been made in America since at least the early 19th century. Unlike weathervanes, which functioned as indicators of wind direction, whirligigs were mainly intended for fun and ornamentation, and therefore, tend to be more personally decorated. Naturalized as an American citizen on May 24, 1945, Memkus could have made the whirligig as a commemorative gesture toward his newly adopted country.  As a new American, he might have been inspired by his recent naturalization, in combination with the Allied victory in Europe, to construct this overtly patriotic object. It employs the colors red, white, and blue to highlight the nation’s flag, and atop it stands a saluting seaman surrounded by airplane propellers, which, along with the flags, whirl and flutter in the wind.

These objects (and so many others) may be viewed in the Grainger Gallery of American Folk Art! But we apologize in advance for the lack of wind.

—Monica Obniski, Assistant Curator of American Art

Image Credit: Image courtesy of Guy Reinert files, Winterthur Library

The recently opened Picasso and Chicago will celebrate the long history of the artist’s relationship with the city. But 100 years ago this month, when the art of Picasso and his contemporaries was displayed at the museum for the very first time, it was met with shock, controversy, outrage. . . and record-breaking crowds. In 1913, the Art Institute hosted the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known today as the Armory Show. That revolutionary exhibit introduced the Chicago public to some of the most radical art of the day.

The Armory Show had such a huge impact on modern art in America that critics and art historians have continued to write about it for the last 100 years. To offer something new, we wanted to create an in-depth and interactive resource about how the exhibit came to be, what the public thought about it, and even what it looked like. This month we’ve launched a special online exhibition all about the Armory Show in Chicago and its legacy.

Just as the organizers of the Armory Show wanted to embrace the “new spirit” of the times, the online exhibition marks this important anniversary in a way that celebrates 1913 but belongs to 2013. A permanent part of the museum’s website, the Armory Show online exhibit will be a lasting tribute to the show that established the Art Institute as a venue for modern art and that changed the course of art collecting in Chicago. This project called for a museum-wide team, involving many different departments. Old newspapers were scoured, personal letters were brought to light again, and the original exhibition pamphlets were tracked down and digitized. Now you can tour the 1913 show on your phone or tablet while walking through the very same galleries today. Or read about the fate of “Henry Hairmatress” at home in your pajamas.

Possibly the most exciting part of the website is the gallery explorer. Looking at photographs of the exhibition found in our Archives, we went through each image trying to identify as many works of art as we could. High-res scans of the photos let us zoom in incredibly close, and we were able to recognize previously unidentified works. Now on the website, you can take a virtual tour of the Armory Show, wander through the museum galleries as they looked 100 years ago, and find out where many of the artworks can be found today. Try and spot the works that now belong to Art Institute’s permanent collection—many of which are currently on view in a special presentation in the third floor of the Modern Wing.

Visitors to the website will quickly learn that the Art Institute’s audience was not shy about voicing their opinions back in 1913, and we hope you’ll share your thoughts, too.

—Allison Perelman, Research Associate in Medieval through Modern European Painting and Sculpture

I’ve been looking at this painting a lot lately. Partially because we’ve been using it to advertise tonight’s After Dark event—where you can expect almost everything you see here, minus the smoking indoors—but also because it’s prominently featured in the recently opened They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910–1950. This exhibition showcases work created during the waves of immigration and migration that took place in Chicago in the first half of the 20th century. The artists included are predominantly African American artists from the South or foreign-born European artists and often focus on racial and cultural identity.

In this painting from the museum’s collection, Archibald Motley depicts a lively nightclub scene in vibrant shades of magenta and purple. The clock over the bar reads nearly 1:00 a.m. and the party shows no signs of abating, with groups of people drinking and dancing. Some are lost in their own world, while others gesture at and make eye contact with each other across the space. Typical bar behavior even today. Motley was inspired by and frequently painted images of nightlife in Bronzeville, a neighborhood that attracted many African American migrants. As exhibition curator Sarah Kelly Oehler noted in the catalogue, “His keen depiction of of social life would have resonated with migrants seeking to understand the new mannerisms and etiquette of the big city, as his open-ended narratives allowed viewers to imagine themselves in such scenarios.”

Image Credit: Archibald Motley. Nightlife, 1943. Restricted gift of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field, Jack and Sandra Guthman, Ben W. Heineman, Ruth Horwich, Lewis and Susan Manilow, Beatrice C. Mayer, Charles A. Meyer, John D. Nichols, and Mr. and Mrs. E.B. Smith, Jr.; James W. Alsdorf Memorial Fund; Goodman Endowment.

I’ve been a fan of Luisa Lambri since seeing her work at the MCA a few years ago, so I was happy to see the recently-acquired Untitled (Strathmore Apartment 13) hanging up in Griffin Court. Lambri’s work offers an inverse and unorthodox version of architectural photography. Rather than explicitly depicting a structure, her images describe an experience of inhabiting a space at a specific moment. Lambri photographed Richard Neutra’s Strathmore Apartment in Los Angeles from the inside looking out. Venetian blinds obscure the view, giving us a scant look at the balcony and trees beyond the window. She pays tribute to the design of the building with a composition marked by rigidly organized symmetry and repetition—the stuff of modernist architects’ dreams. But then she contrasts the rigidity with sunlight streaming through the slats of the blinds—the stuff of photographers’ dreams. The result is nearly abstract despite containing very recognizable elements, and I could look at it all day long.

Luisa Lambri. Untitled (Strathmore Apartment 13), 2002.

Hear not only from exhibition curator Stephanie D’Alessandro, but also from curators across the museum as they discuss Picasso’s varied artistic influences.

MacArthur Fellow Kara Walker is perhaps best known for her large-scale cut-paper silhouettes exploring issues of race, gender, and power. These nearly life-size silhouettes often present stereotypical characters from the history of slavery in America. Walker has said, “The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that’s also what the stereotype does.” And yet the flat caricatural silhouettes are often more evocative and thematically complex for their ambiguity.

Walker’s new commissioned installation in the Modern Wing, Rise Up Ye Mighty Race!, presents monumental silhouettes alongside large graphite drawings and small-framed mixed-media drawings. The title of the show refers to comments made by Barack Obama in his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, about the challenges of community organizing in Chicago. Walker refers to the work as “a kind of paranoid panorama” exploring the notion of the “race war” in the contemporary imagination.

Kara Walker: Rise Up Ye Mighty Race! is now on view in Gallery 293.

Please note: This installation contains explicit content. Visitor discretion is advised.

Despite the fact that he never actually traveled to the United States, Picasso and Chicago (opening on February 16 to members and February 20 to the public) celebrates the artist’s strong connection with our fair city. Perhaps the best example of this relationship is the sculpture known as the Chicago Picasso in Daley Plaza.

When the Chicago Civic Center (now known as the Richard J. Daley Center) was completed in the early 1960s, architects from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) met with administrators from the Art Institute to begin to discuss plans for the plaza. According to SOM architect William Hartmann:

When we discussed how this open space or plaza should be designed ultimately, we came to the unanimous conclusion . . . that this is the location for the most important public sculpture in America. We also concluded that we would like to determine if the man who we regard as the world’s greatest living artist, would be interested in exploring this problem. We are thinking of Pablo Picasso.

Hartmann and others visited Picasso in France in 1963 armed with a model of the building, images of the Art Institute’s collection of works by the artist, and an album of photographs of famous Chicagoans. Picasso showed interest and took inspiration for the project from ideas he had been working on over the past year (see above drawing from 1962). The piece evolved, but remains remarkably consistent with these early drawings.

On August 15, 1967 the 50-foot tall, 160-ton sculpture was dedicated in Daley Plaza in front of thousands of people. Although you can see the real thing any time you’d like (and we recommend that you do), stop by the museum over the next few months to delve a little deeper into the creative process. The exhibition includes multiple drawings of the sculpture, as well as a maquette, and related photographs. There’s also an amazing recording by Studs Terkel on Chicagoans’ reactions to the sculpture. Spoiler alert: it was not universally beloved.

Image Credit: Pablo Picasso. Sheet of Studies for the Chicago Sculpture IV-XI, 1962. The Art Institute of Chicago, restricted gift of William E. Hartmann. © 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Many people may have spent $50 or more on their Valentine today. But how many would shell out that much for a card with a dead bird on it? In 1860s London, a decorative box with an intricately designed, three-dimensional valentine inside could cost half a guinea ($50 in 2013) with no aphrodisiacs, champagne, or chocolate in sight. The Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute holds an amazing and extensive, but little-seen collection of early Valentines. Its star may well be one of these very expensive three-dimensional items. This little white satin pillow is studded with artificial flowers (feather fronds, sprays of wax baby’s breath, acorns, and pink cloth rosebuds), surrounded with perforated printed lace in white edged with gray, and topped with  . . .  a real taxidermied hummingbird!

While some stuffed-bird valentines from this period have seen better days, and look roughly like something the cat dragged in, this particular specimen was given to the museum relatively early by an Illinois resident in 1937. It was evidently kept free of moisture until then in a box—which, if not necessarily original, afforded it plenty of protective clearance—and so the hummingbird retains its glossy blue, green, and brownish red feathers in their initially sleek, careful arrangement. Its eyes were replaced with beads in the stuffing process, and so lack a little life, but not surprisingly so considering how delicate the task of preparation and preservation must have been for such a small creature. A colorful printed label at the bottom of the pillow (showing musical instruments and even more flowers) marks the concoction as “A tribute of my Love.” Unfortunately, there are no other inscriptions that might give us a clue as to the 19th-century giver or recipient. The care with which the object was maintained, however, suggests the gift was happily received!

Birds, particularly lovebirds, have been tied to romantic love and the selection of a mate as far back as the poetry of the 13th century. Hummingbirds were native only to the Americas, but found immediate appeal overseas once the New World served as a viable trading ground, and the tiny birds became part of costuming and even hairstyles, as well as ostentatious gifts. However, by the 1890s, this style would become not only outdated, but even offensive to certain members of the public, especially those engaged in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in England or in various Audubon Societies in the United States. The painter George Frederick Watts created his Sorrowing Angel around 1899 to aid an anti-plumage campaign, which he inscribed with the words: “A Dedication to all who love the beautiful and mourn over the senseless and cruel destruction of bird life and beauty.” Reproduced several times, and quite poignantly in the case of the Art Institute mezzotint with white chalk heightening, this image shows an angel weeping over the bodies of several birds crushed on an altar with a relief design denoting the pure evil of those who would mindlessly buy or sell these bright feathers.

So, this Valentine’s day, consider the full historical significance of the iconography of the birds and the bees, including the comedic bird-themed valentine, whether angry, lovey-dovey, or sophomoric (Owl be Yours?). If your Valentine disappoints, appreciate the fact that their gifts are at least taxidermy-free.

Image Credits:

British, possibly Jonathan King (active 1845-1869), Hummingbird Valentine, 1845/69, 1937.1118

Sir Frank Short, after George Frederick Watts, The Sorrowing Angel, 1901, 1991.622.

The first thing that always strikes me about this painting is the size. It’s nearly 10 feet tall, making it very close to life-sized. The second thing is just how realistic the figure is. Zurbarán’s Jesus is idealized to be sure, but it’s also a deeply humanized one. The face is individualized and the strong lighting that comes from somewhere outside the painting calls attention to anatomical details, like the musculature in his torso and the way his toes curl slightly over the too small platform.

When the painting was first shown in the monastery in Seville that commissioned it, people were awed. It was only visible from afar through a grill, and spectators were amazed by how three dimensional it seemed. Later commentators noted that it appeared to be a sculpture rather than a painting. This appearance is heightened by the fact that the scene doesn’t appear within a historical context, but on a stark black background, strongly contrasting with Jesus’ white figure. Painted at a time when Catholics were aggressively campaigning for new believers, this painting achieved its goal of evoking intense religious feeling.

Image Credit: Francisco de Zurbarán. The Crucifixion, 1627.

Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando is one of the most beloved paintings in the Art Institute’s already beloved Impressionist collection, and it’s easy to guess why. The painting features two innocent-looking, fashionably-costumed young circus performers who are taking their bows before a seemingly adoring crowd. But as you look closer—and as you learn more about the painting—the innocence and beauty is cleverly manufactured.

The two sisters, Francisca and Angelina, were actually part of a roving German acrobatic troupe. And this painting supposedly does capture the performers’ nuances. Renoir’s own brother Edmond wrote of the painting:

There really is no sense of arrangement. [Renoir] has captured the two children’s movement with unbelievable subtlety and immediacy. This is exactly how they walked, bowed, and smiled in the ring.

But despite these truths, the work also has some fictional elements. For one, the girls are not nearly as young as they look. At the time this was painted, the two sisters would have been 14 and 17. Here, Renoir has enhanced their youthfulness and they appear to be closer to 10 and 12. Renoir also refused to paint them as they would have appeared under the circus’s gas lights, deeming them too harsh. Instead, he painted them as if en plein air, building up layers of diaphonous paint to give the girls an almost luminous quality. They also—purposefully—match their environment, with their outfits complementing the gold tones of the floor and the oranges that Angelina holds. Renoir also avoided the more unsavory parts of the circus, giving us just a hint of the probably mostly male crowd who comprised the 19th century nocturnal demimonde.

One person who was definitely able to overlook the painting’s inaccuracies was the original owner, Mrs. Potter Palmer. She loved the painting so much that she kept it with her at all times, even when she traveled abroad!

Finally, one of the things I discovered in my research is that this is not the only painting is the Impressionist galleries of the Cirque Fernando. Do any Art Institute aficionados know of other paintings that feature this popular 19th-century destination?

Image Credit: Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando (Francisca and Angelina Wartenburg), 1879. Potter Palmer Collection.