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Congratulations are in order for Mount Fuji, which was adopted on June 24 of this year as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In Japan, thousands of people celebrated by trying to be among those witnessing the first raiko, or sunrise, since the announcement. At the Art Institute, we are celebrating by putting on view Katsushika Hokusai’s dazzling Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, including the great Great Wave, which hasn’t been on view at the museum for many years. (Okay, we’re kidding about that—we decided to put Hokusai’s series on view long before the UNESCO designation was a done deal—but we are very serious that this would be a great time to visit the museum and see Hokusai’s prints.)

Somewhat surprisingly, Mount Fuji was named as a cultural, rather than natural, heritage site, recognizing the extent to which the mountain has permeated Japanese cultural and spiritual life for centuries. It has been venerated as a sacred mountain since ancient times, but it was in the Edo period, roughly from 1600 to 1850 when the Japanese capital moved from Kyoto to Edo (modern-day Tokyo), that the popularity of Mount Fuji soared like the mountain’s snow-capped peak. Even though it is about 60 miles from Tokyo, Mount Fuji is visible from many points within the city, and a cult developed around the mountain. Called Fujiko, members of the cult gathered offerings and selected representatives who would climb the mountain. It was believed that the spirit of those who successfully ascended the mountain would be purified and they would be able to find happiness. Climbing the mountain was, in a sense, a rebirth: pilgrims who entered Mount Fuji, which was viewed as a female deity, would come out reborn and rejuvenated.

Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei) was a product of the popularity of this cult. While the protagonist of the series is of course Mount Fuji, many prints also feature the pilgrims on their way to the mountain or to a famous view of Mount Fuji. In the print Soshu Nakahara [1925.3230], for example, two pilgrims wearing large round hats are depicted on the bridge, and the taller pilgrim wears the traditional white garb. The traveler at the far right, a peddler, takes a step toward the mountain as if to begin his climb, despite the distance between them.

The popularity of the Fuji cult waned after the Meiji period when people began to consider mountain climbing as a pastime rather than a ritual. Yet even today, about ten groups make the pilgrimage up to a shrine near the summit of the mountain, and they wear white and carry a long walking stick as they did more than two centuries ago. When asked if people around the world understand the significance of Mount Fuji, the chief priest of the Fuji Hongu Sengen Shrine located in the southern foothills of Mount Fuji and guarding the “front entrance” to the mountain, recently said, “The word for tourism [in Japanese] is kanko, which is written ‘to see the light’ [in Chinese characters]. If visitors who visit this land feel something through viewing Mount Fuji, that is good enough for me.”

—Janice Katz, Roger L. Weston Associate Curator of Japanese Art

Image Credit: Katsushika Hokusai. The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei), c. 1830–32. Clarence Buckingham Collection.

 

Contrary to what the composition of James Tissot’s The Circus Lover might suggest, the real subjects of this painting are the female spectators in the foreground, not the trapeze dandy—a member of the Parisian aristocracy taking part in an amateur circus—in the upper center of the picture. The work is one of 18 large paintings made by Tissot in a series called Women of Paris, which depicts women of various social classes as they might have been encountered around town: taking in the circus, at lunch, on the streets of the city. Tissot is recognized today for his meticulous documentation of Parisian fashion; as you can see in the Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity exhibition, Tissot would often paint different models in the same dress, so enamored was he with contemporary fashion. In the same vein, The Circus Lover is not so much about the circus as it is about the women watching it and what they’re wearing.

Two women are seated in the foreground of this amateur circus, forming a gorgeous counterpoint to each other. One faces us with a slightly haughty expression; the other has her back to us. One woman wears a light pink dress, the other a bright red. One fan, cream-colored, is closed and cocked over a shoulder; the other is black and spread across the woman’s chest. It is almost as if Tissot had to represent two women who would serve as the second half of the other; in this way the artist could represent the back and the front of dresses, hats, and fans, always with lavish details.

What Tissot has mainly captured in The Circus Lover, though, is the newfound and hard-won liberty of women in Paris in the late 19th century. While the audience is a mix of men and women—segregated though they may be—these two women, and many others, appear to be unaccompanied. Their clothing suggests utter respectability, but the fact that they are out for an evening unescorted—and even pointedly ignoring the ardent gentleman leaning into their box—showcases the extent to which la Parisienne was becoming a force in French culture. Fashionable, bold, maybe even slightly superior, this new category of women was a critical step in redefining femininity for the modern age. Send in the clowns!

 

James Tissot. The Circus Lover from the series Women of Paris, 1885. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection, 58.45.

 

Go get your vintage sewing machine tattoo touched up, because this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival starts tomorrow! The annual festival is an institution at this point, bringing dozens of bands and thousands of canvas shoe enthusiasts to Chicago’s Union Park. It has become a tradition here at ARTicle to dig through the Art Institute’s collection for pieces that evoke the names of a few of the fest’s featured artists. Below is this year’s selection. The current popularity of band names that are just a noun or adjective+noun should hopefully make most of the answers pretty straightforward. Leave your answers in the comments. First person to get them all correct wins 2 free tickets to the Art Institute. GO!

 

White dresses were de rigueur for fashionable Parisian women during the summer, and they were a favorite of Impressionist painters as well, many of whom depicted not only the popular white muslin dresses but flowering lace curtains or diaphanous drapery in the same painting, reveling in the play of light on white. White fabrics challenged painters and their palettes with their transparency and undertones of different colors, and they occur frequently in Impressionist painting.

But the real star in this painting—Édouard Manet’s sketch of Jeanne Duval, who was his friend Charles Baudelaire’s former mistress—is the absurdly billowing skirt Duval wears. The skirt, which takes up nearly half of this painting, is really a caricature of a woman under the influence of a crinoline, a cage worn under a skirt to help keep its form. Some of the earliest forms of the crinoline in France were stiffened petticoats meant to keep the skirt in shape, but by the 1860s the crinoline had “evolved” into a steel cage that was fastened around a woman’s waist, giving a skirt the appearance of a bell. Crinolines were widely ridiculed—as Manet is doing here—and grew, in cartoons and prints, to hideous proportions (Check out our related installation Fashionable French Farce in Galleries 223A and 225A, featuring Honoré Daumier’s and Felicien Rops’s take on couture, including women parachuting through the skies with crinolines and parasols.)

The reign of the steel-cage crinoline was quite brief, and by the time Manet made this painting, crinolines had started to change from the dome shape he represented here to a version that was gathered in the front and sides, leaving the roundedness of a skirt to the area of the derriere. This, of course, was the beginning of the bustle, famously celebrated in the rhythmic lines and swoops of George Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884.

Historians agree that Jeanne Duval—or any fashionable woman in Paris—would not have actually worn a skirt or crinoline so large. Rather, Manet took liberties in his representation of Jeanne, emphasizing and exaggerating the marks of modern femininity. While not quite a parody, Lady with Fan brings to the fore the artifice of being a woman in this era—corseted, caged, powdered, gloved, and, most of all, dressed.

 

Credit: Édouard Manet. Lady with Fan, 1862. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 368.B.

There are 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms in the Art Institute’s collection (including the French Dining Room pictured above), but we presently have 69 on view with the addition of our German Rococo loan room. It is my pleasure to take care of these rooms, as well as research their history and construction. This has led me to take up making miniatures of my own as a means of practice and to further my knowledge and appreciation of the art of fine miniatures. One of my great opportunities to practice comes once a year in a tiny coastal town in Maine called Castine. A group of miniature artists descends upon this town for Guild School, which is part of the International Guild of Miniature Artisans.  I just got back from this weeklong study trip and thought it might be interesting to share some of the things I learned.

But first a view of the town. It’s beautiful here but the trip is all about miniatures…

All kinds of skills are taught, from creating miniature furniture to silver- and other metal-smithing to making plants and even miniature gold fish.

We have the opportunity to work with many amazing miniatures teachers and students from around the world. While I was there, I ran into fellow Chicagoan and artist Mary Grady O’Brian.

Some of you might remember her work as a part of our annual holiday decorations for the Thorne Rooms. She created the little Victorian doll and a bulto (or saint figure) for our New Mexico room.

Here I am studying how to make a miniature basket in a class led by Francine Coyon.

Weaving…..

and at the end of the week a hinged lidded basket!

And now learning miniature painting techniques with South African artist Beth Freeman-Kane.

Here is my finished painted bird and landscape from her workshop.

My new skills will be put to the test later this year as we bedeck a new Thorne Miniature Room this year for the holidays. Which will we pick? You’ll have to wait and see, but feel free to leave your guesses in the comments!

—Lindsay Mican Morgan, Department Technician, Thorne Rooms

Image Credit: Mrs. James Ward Thorne. French Dining Room of the Periods of Louis XV and Louis XIV, c. 1937. Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne.

“Immoral”—that is the judgment the Salon jury handed down to this painting by 26-year-old Henri Gervex, firmly rejecting the work from the 1878 show. Surprisingly the offending element was not the slumbering nude blissfully draped across the bed, or rather it was not her alone. Nudes, especially classically beautiful ones like this, had long been an admired tradition in academic French painting. What really shocked the Salon jury—and the hoards of people who flocked to see the scandalous painting in the gallery where it hung after its exclusion from the Salon—was the pile of clothing on the floor next the bed.  The pink dress, stiff white petticoat, rose-colored garter, and red (red!) corset—there they were, undeniable evidence of the libidinous speed with which they had been removed, undeniable evidence that the woman stretched across the bed was no classical idealized form, no abstract idea of Woman, no mere artist’s model, but a lusty prostitute in the flesh.

Well, “in the flesh” might be a little much; she and the rest of Gervex’s racy scene were inspired by fiction, an 1833 poem by Alfred de Musset. The poem, perhaps sparked by Musset’s despair over his and novelist George Sand’s fitful love affair, recounts the downward spiral of a bourgeois gentleman, Jacques Rolla, who amid his debaucheries, falls for a teenage prostitute, Marie, and lavishes his every last cent upon her. Gervex’s painting depicts the antihero’s final moments; looking upon his young lover and realizing his utter ruin, he is about to commit suicide by drinking poison. In case viewers were not familiar with the story of Musset’s poem, Edgar Degas reportedly advised Gervex to include “the dress she’s taken off” and “a corset on the floor.” When the Salon jury and everyone else were so outraged by Rolla, Degas was apparently thrilled, proclaiming, “You see… they understood she’s a woman who takes her clothes off.”

Those clothes, in addition to being so hastily thrown to the floor, contain another clue to Marie’s line of work. The corset—splayed open to show its white underside, her lover’s cane suggestively poking out from underneath—is red! Corsets were, of course, a staple of all women’s fashions in the late 19th century, but respectable women wore plain white cotton or linen undergarments. Only the more fashionably adventurous, i.e. courtesans and actresses, ventured into the just blossoming world of erotic undergarments—sensuous fabrics like satin and silk, eye-catching colors like pink, blue, and red, and embellishments of lace and ribbons. Such seductive underattire eventually became more widely popular between the 1890s and the 1910s, but in 1878 when Gervex painted Rolla, these titillating wears were still the reserve of a certain kind of lady, a clear signal that they were meant to be seen—and as Degas suggested, quickly and passionately removed.

—Lauren S., Associate Director of Communications

Image Credit: Henri Gervex. Rolla, 1878. Musée d’Orsay, bequest of M. Béradi, 1926, LUX 1545.

For Frederick Gustavus Burnaby, that would hardly be an exaggeration. Burnaby, the subject of this painting by portraitist James Tissot, was the real-life version of the great swashbuckling adventurer. He made a pioneering journey on horseback across Central Asia—in winter and essentially alone—meeting up with the murderous Khan of Kiva and finding him a “cheery sort of fellow.” He took a similarly wild trip across Asia Minor and raced off to join deadly British military campaigns in Sudan—without obtaining leave from his then-current military post. He was a hot-blooded hot-air balloon enthusiast, becoming the first man to make the journey across the English Channel. And he was a heroic (though somewhat independent-minded) soldier, regarded as the strongest man in the British Army. Needless to say, he was quite the celebrity of the late 19th century. His tales of his exotic expeditions enthralled audiences whether recounted in person in a salon or wittily written in books. In fact, his best-selling A Ride to Kiva won him both kudos from Henry James and a dinner invitation from Queen Victoria. Oh, and did we mention he spoke seven languages?

Tissot captures the legendary daredevil in a casual yet slightly swaggering pose. Burnaby wears the debonair “at-ease” version of his Royal Horse Guards captain’s uniform, the red stripe down his pant leg calling attention to the impressive length of his 6 foot, 4 inch frame. The more formal military accoutrements—the parade helmet, full-dress tunic, and cuirass—rest nearby, while a map of Asia and Africa behind him and stacks of books at his side allude to his famous exploits. Together the pose, the uniform, the symbolic props all infuse the somewhat feminine salon setting with a good whiff of manly bravado, creating a portrait that seems to ooze the captain’s virile charm.

After all, who doesn’t love a man in uniform? Well, it turns out the Impressionists, that’s who. Depictions of military men are rare among the works of the Impressionists. Military service didn’t become universal until 1872, so uniformed soldiers weren’t part of the urban landscape, and they just didn’t fit into the Impressionists’ goal of capturing modern everyday life. Tissot, on the other hand, painted many gallant officers parading in their uniforms and holding court in salons. And really we can’t blame him. Burnaby might not be so of the moment fashion-wise, but he was certainly of the moment in terms of celebrity—and well, he does cut a fine figure.

—Lauren S., Associate Director of Communications

James Tissot. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby, 1870. National Portrait Gallery, London.

On first glance, this painting by Gustave Caillebotte may seem fairly clear cut. After all, each of the subjects’ place in Parisian society is readily discernible by his or her clothes alone. The man at the right leaning on the bridge railing is a worker, identifiable by his cap and smock. Another worker, also in a cap and a loose fitting jacket, walks away from the viewer, just to the right of the lone woman. She, undeniably stylish, wears all the trappings of the sophisticated and fashionable Parisienne. Black had just become the new black; and her chic ruffled black walking ensemble is complemented with a dainty embellished parasol and coordinating red bows on her veiled bonnet and shoes. Finally, the man to her right (likely a self-portrait of the artist) strides confidently in his tall top hat and well-cut overcoat, emblems of his status as a bourgeois gentleman.

But just how these members of distinct social classes relate to each other is much more fuzzy. The top-hatted flaneur and stylish woman are well suited to each other in terms of dress, but they do not walk side by side or arm in arm as a couple. He is several steps ahead, and while she certainly seems to be eying him, it is not clear whether his sideways glance is an untoward over-the-shoulder proposition to her or a gaze in the direction of the worker at the railing. Before arriving at this final enigmatic composition, Caillebotte played around with the fashions and placement of the figures—and thus their relationships—in several preparatory sketches and on this canvas itself. At one point the possible propositioner sported a bowler hat and walked side by side with his female companion in more polite fashion. As they each became more independent strollers, her ensemble and parasol became more ruffled and flamboyant—perhaps more eye-catching and enticing to the gentlemen of the city.

As suggestive as this would all seem, the painting was received much more favorably when it debuted at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877 than the other work Caillebotte showed, Paris Street; Rainy Day. That one was criticized as “big and boring,” while Pont de l’Europe was viewed as “more truthful and at the same time more graceful.” What perhaps made it more truthful was the ambiguity of the scene; that was certainly what made it modern. The mixing of worker and gentleman, the murkiness of relationships—these were all very recent developments of the new widened boulevards and intersections of Paris. By portraying the new mingling and haziness of the urban streetscape, Caillebotte truly captured the contemporary moment and left us wondering still over a century later—are they or aren’t they?

Image Credit: Gustave Caillebotte. Pont de l’Europe, 1876. Association des Amis du Petit Palais, Geneva.

—Lauren S., Associate Director of Communications

Fashioning an Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
Curator Gloria Groom discusses the origin of her idea for the exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, savors the fruits of collaboration, and serve... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 6 0 ratings Time: 02:10 More in Education

The work of James Tissot is well represented in the exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, proving to be the most singular and telling counterpoint to the painting produced by the Impressionist artists during this period. Tissot’s documentary-style paintings are some of the best records we have of the attire of high society Parisians from the 1860s through the 1880s—not only of women but also, critically, men. His Circle of the Rue Royale, from the Musée d’Orsay, is the 19th-century equivalent of a spread in today’s GQ. And we would expect no less from an artist of Tissot’s background; he was the son of a fashion seller and a milliner.

The Circle of the Rue Royale was an actual club for men founded in 1852, the members variously composed of aristocrats, railway barons, and military officers. To be part of this commissioned group portrait, each of the twelve men pictured in the painting paid 1000 francs to be included. The final owner of the painting was determined by lottery. (If you’re wondering, the winner was Baron Hottinguer, seated on the right of the sofa, casually leaning on it.)

All of the men in the painting—marquises, princes, barons—are identifiable, as one would expect for a commissioned group portrait. Less obvious, though, is the way that Tissot has depicted the shifting political affiliations of the members of the Circle of the Rue Royale as the Second French Empire began to give way to the Third Republic. In this paean to male elegance, Tissot has included symbols of this burgeoning political tempest: discarded on the ground at left is the newspaper Le Constitutionnel, representing the rejection of the monarchy; the seated figure at right, Prince Edmond-Melchior de Polignac, holds a copy of the Vie de Louis XVII, a  nod to those with continuing monarchic loyalties. And, political affiliations aside, the man standing in the doorway at the far right is Charles Haas, who was apparently one of the sources of inspiration for Proust’s Charles Swann.

Representing the cream of Parisian society, The Circle of the Rue Royale lavishly pictures the height of masculine elegance in 1868. And it would appear that few choices were available to the well-dressed man. All of the men wear muted colors and ties, accessorized by walking sticks and top hats. The cut and lines of men’s clothing were far more important than color, emphasizing a wide torso, narrow waist, and flat stomach—particularly important as the male corset was no longer considered part of the wardrobe as it had been in previous eras. And clearly much more research needs to be done on facial hair of the era; not one of our 12 gentlemen is clean-shaven.

Image Credit: James Tissot. The Circle of the Rue Royale, 1868. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 2001 53.

Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day is one of the landmark paintings of this era, and there are many things we know about it. We know why everyone is dressed so somberly—outdoor clothing at this time was predominantly dark. We know where our pedestrians are—the carrefour created by the intersection of the rues de Moscou, Turin, Saint-Pétersbourg, and Clapeyron. We know that this was a neighborhood extremely familiar to Caillebotte—he lived not too far away on the rue de Miromesnil. And we know why it would appear that everyone has the same umbrella.

As you look across this monumental painting, you’ll notice at least 13 (my unofficial count) virtually identical umbrellas, all seemingly made of gray silk over a steel frame. The journal Le Radical at the time suggested that the umbrellas could have been purchased from a department store like Le Bon Marché or Les Grands Magasins du Louvre. Thus the umbrellas of Paris Street; Rainy Day are just as real as the intersection Caillebotte depicts.

Umbrellas—newly widely available during this era—conveyed some existential beliefs about city life. Writers of the day saw umbrellas not just as protective covers, but also a mark of anonymity in the hustle and bustle of city life. Compared to Paris’s former tight streets and densely packed blocks, the “new Paris” designed by Georges-Eugène Haussmann regularized the city into grand boulevards and turned entire blocks into standardized apartment buildings. Amidst this changing Paris, some feared that uniformity was replacing individual character and a sense of humanity was being lost. In this sense, Caillebotte’s plethora of umbrellas that create literal space around their carriers suggest the creation of figurative space as well. And, in fact, all of the people in this painting—together or not—look alone. Interactions, even between the featured couple, seem nonexistent, with everyone in the painting occupying the respective bubbles created by their umbrellas. Some figures appear so deeply absorbed in their own worlds that they are about to crash into fellow pedestrians. Caillebotte might appear to be using umbrellas to picture a philosophical state as much as an urban scene.

One thing we don’t know about the painting is whether it’s actually raining. Critics harped on this ambiguity at the time and argued with one another about whether the painting depicted a fine drizzle, the aftermath of a rainstorm, or even snow.

Image Credit: Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection.

How many artfully-draped centaurs, bacchantes, and nymphs does it take to make a dirty magazine? Only one early 20th-century periodical has the answer: The Aesthetic Nude (Le Nu Esthétique), an amazing period piece culled from the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries for the Department of Prints and Drawings’s Undressed: The Art of Privacy.

Illustrated entirely with unclothed models enacting quasi-mythological imagery, the covers alone range from a rapturous Leda and the Swan to a centaur’s semi-consensual abduction of a nymph. Inside each issue appear even more views of studio models in increasingly far-fetched poses, all of which were ostensibly meant to supplant the live model in studio practice.

It’s not clear that anyone ever copied these compositions in paint, but the effort that went into cutting out the photos in lively shapes, and the publication’s run of several years (c. 1902-06), suggests a market existed for it!

These ‘aesthetic nudes’ beg the question of what constituted nudity, as opposed to nakedness in the late 19th and early 20th century. Was it simply the academic and mythological guise that made these images acceptable, even collectible?

In Undressed’s adults-only Prostitution gallery (127A), less is definitely more. In fact prices increased inversely to the amount of clothing removed by skilled Parisian courtesans in the 19th century! While those often-raucous images must be experienced in person, the nearby gallery with the Aesthetic Nude (127B) focuses on the purer nude. Full of academic studies of (mainly) male models, this space offers a curious contrast to the scores of women caught in the act of undressing elsewhere in the exhibition. Drawing from the nude was a necessary step in artist training, for only after apprentices had mastered copying from sculpture casts and engravings could they attempt the live model. The emphasis remains on classical form; indeed, these figures are so detached from the context of clothing, the final result is hardly provocative. Even discounting the novelty of photography, these ‘aesthetic nudes,’ however, are something else entirely.

Undressed:  The Art of Privacy is an exhibition of works on paper (open through September 29 in the Prints and Drawings Galleries) complementing the Art Institute’s summer extravaganza, Impressionism, Fashion, & Modernity.  Undressed strips the veneer of fashionable public clothing and shows European and American women and some men from the 18th into the early 20th century anywhere from a state of nature to fashionably deshabillé.

Image Credit: Selections from Émile Bayard, Le nu esthétique: l’homme, la femme, l’enfant,  (The aesthetic nude:  man, woman, child), no. 36 (September 12, 1905).  Ryerson and Burnham Libraries.

Though this painting was initially titled Portrait of Madame ***, we know exactly who this lady is: Pauline Croizette, the wife of the artist Charles Carolus-Duran. His portrait of Pauline was an immediate success, wining a medal at the French Salon the same year it was painted, 1869. The French Salon at this time was the “official” exhibition of French artists, part of a tough system that required artists to submit paintings every year in order to ultimately earn commissions, gain students, and make a living as artists. At least initially, the Impressionists were less than successful in gaining entry into this universe of official artists. Just six years before this painting, the French government actually sponsored its first exhibition of rejected artists—the Salon des Refusés—after artists protested the rejection of more than 3,000 works for that year’s Salon.

Carolus-Duran had a foot in both camps. He would go on to be a well-known portraitist with a highly regarded atelier, but his Lady with the Glove demonstrates his avant-garde leanings—not a surprise when you learn that he counted “rejected” artists such as Manet, Degas, and Monet as his friends. This painting is, on the one hand, a beautiful example of “society portraiture” with its invisible strokes and nearly microscopic level of detail. (In fact, Carolus-Duran’s attention to dress and costume was so fastidious and lush that later one Salon art critic would refer jokingly to the “Carolus-Duran Line of Velvets.”)

But there are elements of his portrait of Pauline that point to modernist tendencies. Carolus-Duran has lavished attention on a hat and hair accessories that would quickly become unfashionable, thus engaging in the same transitory subjects as the Impressionists and their emphasis on la mode. And perhaps even more “impressionistic” is that Pauline is captured in the act of removing her gloves, one being peeled off with the other already dropped at her feet. “High life” portraiture at this time would have depicted women in a much less transitional state.

During this period, gloves were worn extremely tightly—see the real-life examples in Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity and try to imagine fitting even a pencil into the fingers—and the act of removing them held a sensual allure. A woman who was liberating her fingers from her gloves often fluttered them to regain circulation, a coy and feminine act. Compared to many of Manet’s renderings of gloves—slashing and indeterminate strokes—Carolus-Duran’s gloves are charged with a quiet yet keen allure, perhaps the promise of things to come.

Image Credit: Charles Carolus-Duran. The Lady with the Glove, 1869. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 152, RF 2756.

Abelardo Morell, whose retrospective The Universe Next Door opened June 1, has become known for making pictures that get to the heart of photography. He has turned entire rooms into cameras, employing a phenomenon that has been known since antiquity: that light entering a darkened room (“camera obscura”) through a small aperture will project an image, upside-down and reversed, on the opposite surface. More recently, he has been making pictures with the tent camera, a kind of portable camera obscura he designed himself. A lens in the top of the tent projects the outside scene onto the ground—whether rocks, sand, grass, or city sidewalk—and he then photographs the combination of the two.

Morell’s influences, however, are not strictly from the field of photography. In fact, he finds himself looking more to painting for models. When he was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine, he discovered Winslow Homer, the 19th-century painter who so famously depicted the New England landscape, especially the sea. One of the foremost scholars of Homer, Philip Beam, taught at Bowdoin, and Morell—who had dropped out of college but remained in town working at the university art museum—ended up photographing numerous paintings and book reproductions for the professor.

With his tent camera, Morell says he now feels more like a painter. In the Modern Wing’s Bucksbaum Gallery, where the tent camera pictures are on view, you can see how gravel on a Manhattan rooftop starts looking like pointillist dots, or how cracked earth along the Rio Grande begins to mimic thick flourishes of paint. He took his tent camera to Winslow Homer’s home and studio in Prouts Neck, Maine, an isolated stretch overlooking the ocean, where the painter lived and painted seascapes for much of his last 25 years. Morell positioned the tent over a patch of sandy grass and directed the periscope lens onto the sea. The resulting picture shows wisps of clouds over the ocean’s horizon, rendered more abstract through the tangled mesh of plants. In an homage to an artist he admired, Morell merged the present and the past and combined painting and photography.

Take a look at this watercolor from the Art Institute’s collection (above) and Morell’s tent camera photograph (below):

—Elizabeth Siegel, Associate Curator of Photography

Image Credits:

Winslow Homer. Breaking Storm, Coast of Maine, 1894. Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection.

Abelardo Morell, Tent Camera Image on Ground: View of Sea from Winslow Homer’s Studio Backyard, Prouts Neck, Maine, 2012. High Museum of Art, gift of the artist in honor of Daniel W. McElaney, Jr., 2012.218.

Fashioning an Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
Curator Gloria Groom discusses the origin of her idea for the exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, savors the fruits of collaboration, and serve... From: ArtInstituteChicago Views: 1040 16 ratings Time: 02:10 More in Education

Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte rarely moves. As one of the masterpieces in the collection, it’s almost always in the galleries for your viewing enjoyment. It’s also one of the very few works in the Art Institute’s collection that absolutely does not travel.

In fact, the last time it left the museum was over 50 years ago. The occasion was a Seurat retrospective that began at the Art Institute and traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in March 1958. The painting was famously insured for one million dollars and accompanied by a conservator and an armed guard during its trip. The exhibition was a hit in New York and all was fine until Tuesday, April 15. On that day, workmen were busy installing a new air-conditioning system and when they left for lunch, combustible painting materials close by caught fire. The blaze quickly spread and although the consequences were severe—one electrician was killed, dozens of firefighters were injured, and a Monet water lily was destroyed—the fire narrowly avoided La Grande Jatte, which was quickly ushered to another building. After that close call, trustees made the decision that the painting would never again leave Chicago.

So here it stays. But it will be included in our upcoming Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, so just this morning, a multitude of art handlers, conservators, and the exhibition’s collection manager had the complicated task of moving this 10-foot painting from our Impressionist galleries to Regenstein Hall, where the exhibition will open to members on June 23 and to the public on June 26. We’re pleased that the move was successful and here are some pictures of the journey. . .

Image Credit: Georges Seurat. A Sunday on La Grande Jatte–1884, (1884-6). Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection