What to See in an Hour

NARRATOR:
Artist Grant Wood discovered the house in this painting by accident. Judith Barter, Field-McCormick Chair and Curator, American Arts, tells the story.

JUDITH BARTER:
Well, he was riding around in the country one day, and he found this wonderful Gothic Revival house. And it is a wonderful house—I’d buy it in a heartbeat. And he said he wanted to paint the perfect couple that would live in a house like that. And so he engaged his dentist and his sister to pose for this picture.

NARRATOR:
As the artist said:

ACTOR (GRANT WOOD):
I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house.

JUDITH BARTER:
Grant Wood never said whether this was a husband and wife or a father and daughter. She’s wearing her apron, and on the left side of the painting are her flowerpots and the domestic chores. He is on the right, with his pitchfork, probably headed to the barn, which is also on the right side of the picture. Over his bib overalls, which mark him as a farmer, he wears a dress shirt and probably his only suit jacket, dressing up for this picture. And she wears her best apron and the family cameo.

Ironically, in 1930, this neat, tidy little farm couple was already a dying breed. In 1920, this country was predominantly urban, and no longer rural. And particularly in the early 1930s, at the depth of the Depression, young people were leaving the farms. This couple would have been sort of left behind in the dust.

NARRATOR:
This work reads both like a satire of the American dream…and a celebration of a way of life that was quickly disappearing.

JUDITH BARTER:
People in Chicago loved this picture because it was something so foreign to them. It was certainly an American scene, but it wasn’t something that people lived in big cities could relate to very well. And they found it rather exotic and fun, and so it was quite popular.

NARRATOR:
This may be the most iconic work of art in the Art Institute. Gloria Groom, David and Mary Winton Green Curator and Chair of European Painting and Sculpture.

GLORIA GROOM:
What you see are a lot of different figures. And these figures represent different walks of life. They’ve gathered here on the banks of the Seine on a Sunday afternoon, and they’re in their Sunday best, most of them.

It seems very alive, because of the color. But no one is really moving. There is really a stillness. Seurat wanted to extract from modern life, to distill it. And to make it, as he said, like the Parthenon frieze, but using modern people in all their traits.

NARRATOR:
There are mysteries here: on the left, the boater with the cap seems disproportionately large in relation to the couple seated next to him. Why is the little girl in orange the only one captured in movement? What are those two orange shapes at the far right?

GLORIA GROOM:
For us,it’s an enigmatic painting. It’s one that we return to again and again. You never get tired of it. Because you’re always finding something else that is unusual, that makes you think differently about what you thought you knew. And that, I think, is the sign of a great painting.

NARRATOR:
Seurat used a technique called ‘pointillism,’ and it’s what he’s famous for. He painted in tiny little dots, often in complementary colors.

GLORIA GROOM:
If you were an avant-garde artist in late 19th century, you would be thinking about complementaries on the color wheel. So purple and yellow, and blue and orange, and red and green.And when you lay them down next to each other, and you don’t blend them,they have a flickering quality.

And so he breaks up the surface with these little dots of pigment. And that is what is his completely different approach to painting. And every artist after ‘the Grande Jatte’ had to reckon with what a painting should be, and how can we now accept this new technique.

NARRATOR:
Judith Barter, Field ¬McCormick Chair & Curator, American Arts.

JUDITH BARTER:
‘Nighthawks’ is a really fascinating painting. It’s such an American painting. The Americanness is in many of the details: The ‘Phillies Cigar’ ad above the diner. The salt shakers, the heavy-duty porcelain mugs. The napkin holders. The big coffee urns in the back. The soda jerk, with his cap on. It’s what America was like and what America liked in the ’30s and ’40s.

NARRATOR:
But look closer. There’s something unrealistic—and off-putting—about Edward Hopper’s scene.

JUDITH BARTER:
It looks real, but it’s not. There’s no sense of real depth. When you try to go deep into this picture, it pushes you back to the surface. He uses acid greens against bright yellows and oranges—the red dress of the woman with her orange hair. These set your teeth on edge, but they do work together; he was a brilliant colorist.] And if you look at the diner, there’s no way in or out except through that orange door that ostensibly goes to the kitchen. So it’s sort of a hermetically-sealed environment with these four people in this diner at night.

NARRATOR:
And…no one is talking. To many, ‘Nighthawks’ evokes a sense of loneliness. But Hopper himself disagreed with this interpretation. In an interview, he said.

[EDWARD HOPPER ARCHIVAL AUDIO]:
I think those are the words of critics. It may be true, it may not be true. It’s how the viewer looks on the pictures. What he sees in them.

JUDITH BARTER:
What I see in Hopper is a sense of everyman. That any of us could be sitting in this diner. it’s really the idea of we are individuals, but we have a collective consciousness as well. I think people just relate to the everydayness of it. They can put themselves in these pictures.

NARRATOR:
Joan Mitchell was born in Chicago and attended the School of the Art Institute in the late 1940s, just as the Abstract Expressionist movement gained popularity.

Kate Nesin, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art.

KATE NESIN:
At the center, we have this tangle of pigmentation, of pinks and reds and oranges and yellows. Buried a little deeper, you see a number of blue tones, different kinds of slash marks and dripping paints. And above and below this central tangle, we have these pearlescent patches of gray and beiges and purples and pinks that seem to kind of wrap around the tangle.

One of the things I love about this painting is its ambiguity. You can approach it from a number of views.

The first time I encountered this painting, I was inclined to see that tangle of pigments as a distant horizon line. Like you’re seeing a bright, vivid, electrified city kind of hovering in the distance. But you could also imagine this as an aerial view on an island like Manhattan, and that gray is the watery environment in which that island sits. Or you could imagine it as a much more zoomed-in, close-up, fragmented view of a city at evening, through a window that’s wet with rain. So that tangle becomes the dripping of lights of cars driving and buildings that are lit at night.

It looks like these drips and slashes of brushstrokes were made quickly. And the representation of speed and energy here is really important, but Mitchell herself tended to work deliberately.

NARRATOR:
Mitchell said:

ACTOR (JOAN MITCHELL)
Sometimes I don’t know exactly what I want [with a painting]. I check it out, recheck it for days or weeks. Sometimes there is more to do on it. Sometimes I am afraid of ruining what I have. Sometimes I am lazy, I don’t finish it or I don’t push it far enough. Sometimes I think it’s a painting.

NARRATOR:
Rebecca Long, Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture.

REBECCA LONG:
For me, this painting by El Greco is important because it’s the most major work by him outside of Spain.

In this painting, we see a great example of El Greco’s fully developed mature style. Which is very dramatic in its bright and bold colors—so we have these acid greens and lemony yellows and pinks and bright blues. The figures are very dramatic in their gestures, in their reactions.

The painting shows the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven. The belief was that the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so holy and so pure that following her death, it wasn’t just her soul that was taken up into heaven, but rather her entire body was physically taken up into heaven.

And so you see the empty tomb with the lid pulled off. Which is where she had been buried. And then you see the twelve disciples, the followers of Jesus, who are reacting in different ways of, you know, astonishment, confusion, et cetera, to this open, empty tomb—and to the fact that she’s rising up into heaven.

You have the earthly level on the bottom, and then the heavenly level on the top where you have the angels and the glow of heaven. The Virgin Mary is in the center, rising up into heaven on a crescent moon, almost like riding up in an elevator.

NARRATOR:
This painting once hung behind the high altar in the church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo, Spain. You can almost imagine it in the flickering candlelight, helping the faithful meditate on salvation, hope, and redemption.

NARRATOR:
In 1890, Claude Monet began to paint this series of wheat stacks, in all seasons, at different times of day.

In 1890, he wrote to a friend:

ACTOR (CLAUDE MONET):
I’m working away at a series of different effects (of stacks), but at this time of the year, the sun sets so quickly that I can’t keep up with it. …but the further I go, the better I see that it takes a great deal of work to succeed in…what I want to render: ‘instantaneity,’ above all…the same light diffused over everything…

NARRATOR:
By this time, Monet lived in the small village of Giverny, northwest of Paris. He could see these fields outside his back door. Gone were the scenes of daily urban life that had once captivated him and his Impressionist peers. Gloria Groom, David and Mary Winton Green Curator and Chair of European Painting and Sculpture.

GLORIA GROOM:
You see him moving not only away from Paris in subject matter, but in the way he’s painting and in the colors he’s using, that are in some ways, very much not natural. They’re moving into a different key that is based on what he feels, rather than what he is seeing.

I think when you’re looking at these paintings you’re seeing something beyond Impressionism in many ways, because it’s no longer about modern life. So there’s no longer a sense of place in the same way. It’s a sense of place recreated in the artist’s mind. He’s taking on a subject that is so banal and so anti-picturesque, especially for the time it was painted.

But it’s rather a very different approach to picture-making. And doing something that no other artist had done. So that instead of painting a one-off and then painting a second one, he’s painting a group that he sees as an ensemble. And one critic talks about them and he says: You don’t understand them except in comparison with one another.

NARRATOR:
At this point, you can continue the Highlights tour by walking back toward the Grand Staircase to find Gallery 211. Or, you could proceed downstairs to America Windows.

BLAIR KAMIN: As you come in, you are going through this kind of forest, this metaphorical forest, and the screens are beyond it. And so there’s a moment of confusion, and then there’s this clarity.

ERIN HOGAN: The Architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago: The Ando Gallery.

So tucked away at the back of the Japanese Art Galleries is a beautiful room that opened in 1992 that the Art Institute commissioned from the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. I tend to spend more time in this gallery wandering through the 16 pillars because I love that every step you take the pillars reorient your visual field.

JANICE KATZ: They are there in order to create a mental transition. And supposedly by the time you get to the other side you should be focused and calm. My name is Janice Katz and I am the Associate Curator of Japanese Art here at the Art Institute of Chicago. Being designed as a gallery for Japanese screens, it certainly functions very well for that because as you’ll note the ground line is continuous from the space where the visitors are through to the cases. And so they are in a way, inhabiting the same space as you are, which is how you would encounter them in Japan.

It’s part of the museum where one can be alone with one’s thoughts, more so than in other parts of the building. One can also being alone with a partner, and supposedly the Ando Gallery used to be one of the best public make out spots in Chicago. I don’t know if it still is.

ERIN HOGAN: What I’ve always appreciated about the Ando gallery is that it is an oasis of tranquility in a very busy museum, at the heart of a major American city, with trains and buses and pedestrians and cabs, but when you are in this gallery you don’t really have a sense of any of that happening around you. This is a really enclosed, beautiful, tranquil space. I’ve always considered it the chapel of the Art Institute.

BLAIR KAMIN: It’s done with great subtly. It’s not a kind of, showy, spectacle. But it’s really done by a master who realizes that quiet moves can speak as powerfully and as profoundly as showy ones. It’s rewarding in a deep way.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: As you walk into the Alsdorf Galleries, the sculpture that takes one’s eye is this very large Buddha who is seated in meditation.

NARRATOR: Alsdorf Associate Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, Himalayan and Islamic Art, Madhuvanti Ghosh.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: This is the first sculpture that I decided to install in these galleries because it’s location determined how everything else fitted around. {musical pause} So the Buddha faces sculptures from South East Asia, which you see on either side of him. I’ve placed a pair of Thai monks in front of him honouring him. {pause} What is really beautiful about him is the fact that he has these markings on his body — these 32 markings that special beings were supposed to have.

NARRATOR: If you look between the Buddha’s eyes, you’ll see one of those markings. A small dot, called the urna, is a sign of divine vision. On the palms of his hands you can see the the symbol of the chakra, or wheel of law.

NARRATOR: Now, start to make your way around the sculpture. From the side you’ll notice his unusually large ears, the shell-like curls of his hair, and the flaming knot atop his head, representing spiritual knowledge. As you circle toward the rear of the Buddha, you’ll see an inscription across his back. The writing is likely a dedication from or about the person who donated this sculpture to its original location, a monastery at the port city of Nagapattinam, near the southwestern tip of India.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: Unfortunately, it’s quite illegible so it so we haven’t been able to decipher it yet. But it also helps us realise that this sculpture would’ve been seated somewhere in the round. It would’ve been possible for pilgrims to circumambulate the Buddha and that is the way in which you honour a sacred being.

MADHUVANTI GHOSH: I hope that seeing this beautiful, big Buddha gives you a moment to just be silent and appreciate what the Buddha stood for… his ideals.

ARCHIBALD MOTLEY: I think every picture should tell a story and if a picture doesn’t tell a story then it’s not a picture.

NARRATOR: ‘Nightlife’ by Archibald Motley, depicts the vibrant scene of a jazz nightclub in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. During the 1930s and 40s, this area was home to 90 per cent of the city’s African-American population, who, like Motley’s family, moved to Chicago from southern states in search of economic opportunity and freedom from racism. Here they faced discriminatory housing policies and a climate of violence. But in Nightlife, Motley depicts the pleasure and sense of community that many people found in the city’s urban nightlife. Field-McCormick Chair and curator of American Art, Judith Barter.

JUDY BARTER: He was well known for his palette. You can see the hot pinks that give this painting a lot of energy and strong diagonals that define the motion of the figures.

NARRATOR: The strong angular lines enliven the painting, making the figures move and dance across it’s surface. The man to the left gestures to a woman at the bar, maybe he’s asking her for a dance? His arm carries our eyes toward the centre of the dance floor, where a couple is frozen in mid-step. The diagonal of their bodies draws us deeper into the crowd of expressive faces and personalities.

Motley complicated stereotypes about African-Americans by painting compelling and diverse groups of people in his works. In an interview in his later years he said…

ARCHIBALD MOTLEY: You notice in all of my paintings where there’s a group of people, that they’re all a different colour — they’re not all black, they’re not all brown. And I try to give each one of them character, you know as individuals.

NARRATOR: The hot pink hue that covers the walls and the floor, is an impression of the interior lighting you might find in a the artificially lit bars of the day. The portrayal of light in an interior scene is a reaction to other works Motley saw at this time.

JUDY BARTER: This picture was painted in 1943. In the next gallery you’ll see Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ which is also a study of interior space and of lighting. Motley saw Hopper’s work, including ‘Nighthawks’, when it was on view here at the Art Institute here in 1942 and chose to do his own rendition of an interior space and nighttime lighting. (0’29”)

STEPHANIE D’ALESSANDRO:
We’re standing in front of Marc Chagall’s “America Windows”, one of the most important stained glass compositions that Chagall made.

NARRATOR:
Stephanie D’Alessandro, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art.

STEPHANIE D’ALESSANDRO:
When I walk into these rooms I often feel like I’m in a pool with my eyes open in the middle of the summertime, just covered with this beautiful blue light.

I think stained glass windows, though something that he turned to late in his career, are perhaps the best carrier of Chagall’s great sensibility with color.

NARRATOR:
Chagall made the windows as a gift for the Art Institute in honor of America’s bicentennial in 1976, and the motifs on each window relate to the arts in this country. From left to right, he celebrates music, painting, literature, theatre, dance—and even America itself. The third window from the right features the Statue of Liberty, an eagle, and even a bit of the Chicago skyline.

Chagall, a Russian who lived primarily in France, admired America. He took refuge here in the 1940s, after fleeing the Nazis, and lived in the United States until 1947. About his time here, the artist said.

ACTOR (MARC CHAGALL):
I lived here in America during the inhuman war in which humanity deserted itself… I have seen the rhythm of life. I have seen America fighting with Allies… the wealth that she has distributed to bring relief to the people who had to suffer the consequences of the war… I like America and the Americans… …Above all I am impressed by the greatness of the country and the freedom that it gives.

STEPHANIE D’ALESSANDRO:
Chagall had a long history of relationships here in our city, dating back at least to 1946. And every time he came to the city he was impressed with the people here who knew his work and who admired his work. It was basically out of his love and admiration for the city and for its support of the arts, and also for the United States that gave him harbor during World War II, that he made these beautiful windows.