Flying carpet ride

Magnet #675 - The Modern Wing

I picked this up in Chicago - love when I can get image magnets of the actual museum. Of course, it's cool when the building's so darn cool to merit a magnet, I guess.

If ever you're hanging out in Chicago with a spare few hours, definitely go see the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. It's one of the biggest museum projects in years, and likely to be one of the last on this grand of a scale for a while.

Go for the art, but go for the building, too, which was designed by famed museum architect Renzo Piano.

Remember how I was talking about artists' visual vocabulary? To my untrained eye, I think that it's the same thing with architects. As I learn more about each architect, I'm starting to recognize the telltale hallmarks of their respective work.

For example, I visited the Morgan Library for the first time a few weeks ago and just by looking at around, I totally knew who did the addition before I even Googled it. It probably has more to do with the fact that I'd been watching the progress on the Modern Wing for months before it opened, and also, because Piano's designed several buildings that I've both seen and visited recently, including the Morgan and the relatively new New York Times Building, both buildings with a lot of glass and steel.

Rather than solid, closed exterior walls, his work seems to always have this slatted look of steel and glass - allowing for as much light through as possible, making the interior space seem brighter and bigger, lighter and airy. That slatted look extends to his ceilings - where they create this sort of flying-carpet kind of canopy above.

Though the existing museum space, was no slouch, The Modern Wing was no exception - I loved it, from the main hall, to the staircases, to the overlooks, and terrific interiors. A fantastic space - and well befitting all the supercool artwork they're exhibiting.

Modern isn't boring

Magnet #527 - Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884

Yay, I finally got to visit the Art Institute of Chicago!!

I loved every minute of it - even when we got lost and had to pass the same little elephant statue in the Asian art gallery four times. There was entirely too much to see in one day, let alone half a day. Though, detours and funny layouts made for a heck of a lot of walking around!

After reading so much about Renzo Piano's new Modern Wing, I was happy for the chance to check it out myself - yes, there's a separate magnet for that.

Dudes - most of what we saw today, I haven't seen in person - from Hockey's Collectors and Ruscha's City to Motley's Nightlife to architectural drawings by Louis H. Sullivan and Louis I. Kahn and Mies van der Rohe, and remants of reliefs and doors and windows saved or scavenged from various buildings around town. Good gravy, I could spend days there.

The AIC had a few Monet magnets that I've blogged on - the Artist's house at Argenteuil, and of course, different versions of his haystacks, and his Japanese footbridge at Giverny. But, they also had an extraordinary number of his paintings that I've never seen - ever. Which is just fantastic, if you've scoured the eastern hemisphere for all the magnets Monets you can possibly see.

The AIC collection also includes the final Sunday on La Grande Jatte that was submitted for the 1886 Impressionists Exhibition. I actually bought this magnet in NYC, because I've been visiting the piece at the Met for years. Of course, now I have to go read the back of the magnet, or pop on by the Met to verify, but, from what I can tell, the Met has one of the 50 studies he did for that final piece. Who knew?

Honestly, while I'm glad to have seen it here in town, I'm slightly annoyed that what we have at the Met is a study. (But then again, I also have issues with all the various Monet haystacks and lillies running around this giant Earth.)

Anyway, I've uploaded the unedited, somewhat haphazard (for now) FB album for the AIC and the supercool Millennium Park, sans any real captions yet.

Enjoy. Then, get your bums to the AIC and have a looksee for yourself. You won't be sorry.

"Note: We are now in the domain of virtuosity, romance & symbolism."*

Magnet #526 - Frank Lloyd Wright's Saguaro Forms and Cactus Flowers

Picked this one up at BEA, again from the Pomegranate folks, and using this one for today, since we had a pretty good Frank Lloyd Wright day in Oak Park.

We spent the morning at the new Modern Wing, and then we booked it through an hour traffic to finally arrive at FLW's house and studio by 3:35pm...only to make our way toward the back of the gift shop to see the sign above their heads say, "Next Tour: Tomorrow" and hear the cashier explain to several people that they were sorry, but there were no more spots available.

You have to hand it to the guy - he was incredibly patient with the huffy visitors there - to the folks ahead of me, and to at least half a dozen more people asking for the tour while I was browsing the gift shop. I mean, telling people who traveled from states and countries all over that they couldn't see the one thing they had come for can't be an easy thing.

So, we didn't get to take the tour. And that's fine, that'll give me something to look forward to on my next trip out.

I did get to visit the little shop - though it was supertiny, they did carry the Gug and Fallingwater lego sets. And, shocker! I did walk out without them. The Gug is priced out at something like $45 - which would normally be ok for something like that, but the darn thing is seriously not taller than my hand! Crazy. And, the Fallingwater is also pretty cool, but priced at $100 and not all that much bigger than the Gug, I just couldn't justify the cost.

In the end, I picked up even more Pomegranate magnets, and an Oak Park area map that plotted the houses of FLW and his ilk, plus other important houses, and created our own drive-by tour.

*A handwritten note from a Louis H. Sullivan ornamental drawing, which really has nothing to do with this FLW magnet, or day, other than I just liked the lyricism and thought behind the turn of phrase.