The Art Institute of Chicago is currently featuring an exhibit called Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, which runs through January 3, 2010. A total of forty pages were framed and on display, as well as eleven albums. These are accompanied by “virtual albums” on computer screens, where you can page through the entire album. The exhibit will continue on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (February 2 – May 9) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (June 5 – September 5)
Photocollage became a popular pass-time with upper-class English ladies during the Victorian Era, particularly the 1860′s and 70′s. The force behind this art form was the Carte de visite. This photographic style was invented in France by Andre Disderi in 1854. These were small scale albumen prints – multiple images were taken on one plate and then cut out. England was beset by “cardomania” – millions were sold and exchanged, particularly those of the Queen and Prince Albert. The exhibit also featured a collection of Carte de visites, some by Disderi, including one uncut original, which I found of interest from a historical standpoint.
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American Gothic - Grant Wood
Today I’m going to upload a few photographs of paintings that I took at the Art Institute of Chicago last Sunday. The first, American Gothic, by Grant Wood, needs no further explanation. To my surprise, I found the following huge statue of these folks just up Michigan Avenue from the museum:
American Gothic - Statue
”A 25-foot interpretation of Grant Wood’s famous (and often parodied) painting American Gothic sits at 401 Michigan Ave., just down the road from the original painting that hangs at the outstanding Chicago Institute of Art. The sculptor is J. Seward Johnson. It’s awesome in its incongruity: earnest farm folk among gleaming skyscrapers, the Midwest’s salt of the earth among the Midwest’s most sophisticated urban backdrop, humble farmers blown up to giant urban dwellers. “[Gunnar Johnson, eccentricroadside.blogspot.com, 07/28/2009]
Black Cross - New Mexico 1929, Georgia O'Keefe
“I saw the crosses so often — and often in unexpected places — like a thin dark veil of the Catholic church spread over the New Mexico landscape,” said Georgia O’Keeffe of the Southwestern territory near Taos, where she would eventually settle.
Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 - Gustave Caillebotte
Caillebotte painted some 500 works in a style often more realistic than that of his Impressionist friends. The painter will illustrate himself particularly in views of Paris streets made from high balconies, in scenes of working life, natural landscapes of gardens and parks, and in nautical scenes. His great concern for a realistic painting, his colored notes, and his treatment of light make him well known as a great Impressionist painter whose work is original and diverse.
Vincent van Gogh; Self-Portrait, 1887
