song: Naul - Great is the Lord (나얼 - 주 여호와는 광대하시도다) // download HERE



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mine's going great !
started summer school. kinda a drag b/c i don't have the textbook still (eeek ! =T) and the homework.. is kinda difficult. -__-;;

BUT that's not what i wanted to talk about.
i want to talk about my awesome experience @ the art institute on tues.. that lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes.

after class on tues. i decided to hop on the #7 cta bus to the art institute and spend some time there. yea, it cost $7 and i wish i didn't spend the money, but lemee tell you, it was so worth it. i grabbed a map of the AIC and i immediately looked up the european paintings & impressionism section. i walked up the grand staircase anxious to see what i would come across. and there it was. caillebotte's rainy day. this incredible painting caught my attention and i stood in front of the painting for a good 10 minutes. it absolutely captures the moment of a regular street in paris. altho i wish the rain was more obvious. upon closer inspection, i could see each individual stone in the ground was carefully executed and shaded and colored. i love how the buildings are cropped and even the person on the right. these people are not posing for the picture. if this were a real live scene, which it probably was, in the blink of an eye, the person who's cropped would no longer be cropped. the couple walking towards use might be looking at each other. the two men walking towards the sidewalk may have reached it. the carriage would probably be out of our sight. i also like how the lamppost divided the painting in half. then i took a huge sigh and kept on walking around the gallery. i saw a number of renoirs and even a vuillard. i entered the next room and i had to hold my breath again because there it was: seurat's la grand jatte. this painting that brought myriad criticisms in the late 1800s was standing right before me! the painting that i had learned so much about in class--right in front of me! i even read renowned scholars' interpretations and a book from the library about the making of this painting.. and now i got to see it for real. i really liked the book about the making of this painting because seurat more than any other impressionist painter took his time sketching, drawing, and this painting is merely a compilations of all his earlier paintings and sketches. everything from the soldiers to the monkey, the lady fishing to the nurse. all of it was premeditated and not just randomly thought of on the spot. even the trees, some were deleted and some added. seurat was almost more scientific in his approach to painting and he is noted for the invention of pointilism and divisionism. when you look closer, the painting really is comprised of mostly dabs and dots of paint. and on the woman on your right, her top is dappled with a little bit of orange so that the darker color stands out. in the grass there is dots of yellows and oranges so that the green seems brighter and greener. the red on the women's dresses have little spots of blue to enhance the red color. and seurat is categorized as a neo-impressionist for precisely the reason that this painting is not portraying life as it is. but the subject is still impressionistic. but his new painting styles places him slightly outside of impressionism.

seeing these two paintings totally made my day, until i walked into the next gallery full of monets ! AIC owns like 6 grainstacks (i think. i didn't count exactly. the online collection only shows that AIC owns 4... i don't think they put every single monet on the online collection) ! CMA could only get 3 grainstacks for the exhibition Monet in Normandy, and here AIC owns 6 of them. Each from a diff. time of day and season. It was incredible. many of monet's other paintings were spread out throughout the impressionist gallery, but it was a joy seeing so many of them in one gallery.

i ventured out on to the other side of the grand staircase to see the european paintings in the 1800s. on the side of a hallway there were a series of odilon redon drawings. (for a list of the works shown @ the MOMA in oct2005-jan2006, go HERE and then click on "all works"). yea his works are kinda disturbing and not exactly pleasing to the eye. but he was another artist that we studied in class and he was one of the first to start doing something different in the late 1800s and became part of the genre: symbolism. he'd put monstrous faces on abnormally large spiders, make an eye disproportionately larger than the rest of the head, etc. i can only imagine what the people during the time thought about this painting. were they horrified? or were some of them finally relieved that someone knew what they were really feeling? that an artist was able to express himself through fantastical images and odd representations of people and animals? i'm sure that all of them felt something. but i really wonder what redon was thinking about. what made him start drawing such images? and then later on in his life, he started using color but it's not like the subjects changed that much. he even drew images of biblical, mythological, and historical characters like john the baptist, venus, and saint anthony. but as i was walking down the hallway, a chill ran down my spine and even after 100 years after he executed these drawings, they still evoke something from the viewer.

i didn't get to explore much further than the european paintings of 1800s, but next time i go to the AIC it will be because i'm gonna get interviewed for my volunteer position and then get the position and then get my student membership ! wOot-woOt. =) and then i can go as often and whenever i want.. at least within that year. ^ ^

i'm so lucky to be living in chicago ! now i just wanna go to the MOCA in cleveland, MOMA in new york, washington dc gallery, london gallery, and all the art museums in paris !~ so much to see. i'm so thankful that i can also see. just walking into the AIC helps me calm down, even though there are a lot of people and they're all crowding around.

i'm so glad blogger has the "save now" button just like gmail does. so now i don't hafta worry about accidentally deleting my post or refreshing the page while i'm typing up the blog. it's all saved so no worries! ^ ^ whew.

hope you're all enjoying your summer.
by the way there are a lot of really good programs coming up @ ravinia. check the website. tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, rachmaninoff's piano concert no.2, vivaldi's four seasons, a number of mozart's piano concertos, and much more!

i hate the summer........ but because of all these goodies, i love the summer. =)