Is it crowded in here...?

Lately, whether due to inclement weather or perpetual lack of funds, the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) has been crowded. This isn’t news to anyone who regularly commutes during rush hour(s). But the other day 5 trains passed me by before I squeezed myself between two large coats and was carried onto the train by sheer force of the tide.

Both on the platform (which was so crowded, people began to sort themselves into layers) and on the train I began to think about crowds. In the 19^th century, Charles Baudelaire mused that his vision of the painter of modern life would be a “Man of Crowds:

“[The artist] loves mixing with the crowds loves being incognito, and carries his originality to the point of modesty…

Sitting in a cafe, and looking through the shop window, a convalescent is enjoying the sight of the passing crowd, and identifying himself in thought with all the thoughts that are moving around him.

The crowd is his domain, just as the air is the bird's, and water that of the fish. His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd. For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite.”

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1865

As I watched the trains arrive, one after the other they were packed like sausages, too full to accept additional passengers. When the doors opened it reminded me of the dangers of unbuckling one’s belt after a full meal—there is a chance one might not be able to rebuckle! To be perfectly honest, the rush and hurry towards the open doors seemed a little like this:

Luca Giordano, The Abduction of the Sabine Women, 1675/80 (Gallery 211, AIC)

It may not have been as violent as Giordano’s retelling of the ancient Roman story. Certainly, half of the figures are in struggle with another half but certain details of hands on heads, elbows jutting into knees and shoulders to the ground evoke that body-on-body frantic pushing and shoving that ignites in peoples’ minds once they hear the clicking and scraping of the subway car doors opening.

For 19^th century Parisians, the city was a place of new anxieties. New forms of transportation invited more and more people into the city. New roads allowed more and more people to traverse the streets. There was more and more opportunity for people to mix, purposefully and accidentally. The constant threat of coming into physical contact with strangers was a particularly wrought worry among upperclass women, the fear of which might have dissolved into the state of chaos in Giordano’s paintings. Though there was worry that the crowd would never dissipate, there was an excitement as well. There was an energy to be drawn from the hustle, bustle, constant bumping and  “’scuse me’s.” 

Camille Pissarro, The Place du Havre, Paris, 1893 (Gallery 201, AIC)

With quivering brushwork, Pissarro squiggles in a crowd. If we didn’t read them as people, we might read them as pleasant greenery, nicely trimmed topiaries at the base of the newly built Haussman-style architecture. Even the streets have a powerful directional flow. One that reminds me of the dance floor at a honky tonk where the traffic of two-steppers goes in a constant circle—break it and be crushed. If we get too caught up in the whirl of traffic below, the shouts of carriage drivers, the murmur of calls, laughter and pointing by the sidewalk traffic we need only to step away from our balcony. Pissarro has given us respite from the crowd by placing us above it where we can survey its entirety or immerse ourselves in conversations and interactions using the zoom lens of our imagination. We become Baudelaire’s observer of modern life and its crowds with that ability to absorb oneself in it’s intricacies while still remaining distant.

Contemporary artist, featured on PBS’s Art:21 series, Kimsooja might be Baudelaire’s Man of Crowds for our own age.   

This is a short clip that featured excerpts from her video pieces. The full episode is here. Kimsooja’s works are discussed in the first 20 minutes.

She stands, as she says, “like a needle” stabbed into the earth so that its motions, traffic and constant flow of people and words flow around her. Something about it is beautifully stubborn. Her stillness, however, is quickly absorbed by the crowd. She is among the crowd but not a part of its movement and flow. We, too, become observers of the mass of moving people and she becomes a surrogate for us to participate much like the viewpoint from Pissarro’s balcony.

I wouldn’t recommend taking a sudden halt the next time you are in a crowd as this may lead not only to a domino-effect but some scolding words as well.  If you stop in a crowd, take note of that slight mental shift from when one is a part of the traffic and flow to when one is distant from it while still being a part of it. Perhaps, as Baudelaire suggests, it will feel a bit “incognito!”

Reflexive Images

 Anyone who has ever taken French 1 has had the pleasure of vous vous asseyez ("y'all sit yerselves down" is the best example of an English/Texan equivalent). The verb is reflexive and the action, in this case, is performed upon the same subject that is enacting (woah nelly!). Reflexive verbs refer back unto the subject and, in the same way, one can also have reflexive images or objects. Works of art that refer back unto themselves, either by their subject, material or function. Many moons ago I wrote about a tureen shaped like a cauliflower. It is likely that such a tureen might be used to serve a cauliflower soup or it might be reserved to serve other winter vegetables like turnips or parsnip dishes. Consider these other examples:

Dominique-Vivant Denon

Baron Denon and Mauzaisse, 1819

Lithograph on off-white wove paper

This print has been recently put on view (our works on paper are regularly rotated to minimize exposure to light and maximize exposure of he collection). It is a lithograph by Dominique-Vivant Denon illustrating a well-dressed lady demonstrating the process of lithography to a group of gentlemen (with the odd child and distracted and/or pensive lady in the background). In this doubly-pedagogical work, the subject is reflected in the process. Lithography is a print-making method where by one draws or transfers an image onto a lithography stone (usually the porous limestone) using an oily or waxy crayon or ink. Prints are pulled directly from the stone. One of the observable benefits of lithography is that the method retains the sketchy, immediately quality of a drawing but could be reproduced. In the 19^th century it became a quite popular medium for fashionable ladies. It was Denon himself who popularized lithography as an after-dinner amusement. Ladies would exhibit their skills for a crowd and friends and admirers could take home a souvenir of the evenings delights. So what would be more appropriate than to illustrate the merriment of lithography than with a lithograph! 

Charles Ray

Hinoki, 2007

Japanese Cypress (hinoki)

A favorite of many staff members and visitors at the Art Institute is a contemporary sculpture by the Chicago artist, Charles Ray. It gets it’s own gallery and guard. Measuring over ten feet long it is an inch-by-inch representation of a fallen tree that Ray came across during a hike in coastal California. Riddled with bugs, mildew and the decaying effects of time, the log was not long for this world. Struck by the deep hollow cavity and the  pocked texture the artist decided to preserve the object in a unique way. After sawing it into sections, Ray created molds of each section and traveled with them to Japan where he commissioned a small workshop of woodcarvers who specialized in large-scale Buddhas to recreate the tree using the same method used to create the religious sculptures. The wood chosen was a Japanese cypress, called hinoki, known for its hardness and, from what a Japanese visitor once told me, its lasting fresh aroma. The original log would have withered away by now but froze in its present state of decay it will remain that way for 400 years before it begins its own process of decay.

Perhaps one of the most delightful forms of reflexive art is when the function is reflected in the medium or form of the work. Think of 17^th century Dutch tulip vases that were shaped like tulips with little tulips decorating the surface. Woah! For what it’s worth, I’ve got a creamer that’s shaped like a cow. 

This form of reflexivity finds its most intense manifestation in medieval reliquaries, objects which contained holy relics, which could be bodily remnants, clothing, hair, or a particular object associated with the person (i.e. a fragment of the cross that Jesus was crucified on). Consider this reliquary casket from Leon, Spain dating from the 12^th century in the AIC’s collections. Around the sides it illustrates the martyrdom of Saint Adrian, a Roman soldier in Emperor Galerius’s army in Nicomedia (in present-day Turkey). After observing the demonstrated faith of a group of Christians he was moved to confess his own faith and was subsequently imprisioned where his wife, Natalia, secretly visited him ask for his prayers. He was martyred by dismemberment which is brutally depicted on the sides of the casket. Arms, feet, hands and head float in an empty space above the bodies. On a shorter side, one can see Saint Natalia carrying the hand of Saint Adrian back to Agryropolis. 

When the reliquary came into the Art Institute’s collection in the 1940s there were no relics contained within, or record thereof. However, I suspect that the original relic was some bodily fragment of Saint Adrian. Several medieval reliquaries survive today with relics intact and when the reliquary imagery refers to the life or martyrdom of a specific saint (or is even shaped like the saint) you can bet your bottom dollar on that what was inside was probably who was on the outside. Check out this reliquary bust of Saint Yrieix from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is in the shape of the saint’s head and once contained a fragment of his skull. 

Louis Sullivan’s maxim of “form follows function” could be flip-flopped around when considering works of art where form is function!

Have a Seat!

On Wednesday of this week fellow Fellow in Museum Education, Kate Moioli, gave an express gallery talk on the Art of Chairs. Her choices inspired me to revisit my favorite pair of chairs in the Art Institute, a pair of musician’s chairs from the 18^th century.

I have always been drawn to these petite perches for the posterior because they embody everything social about the 18^th century interior. These would lend an air of luxury and elegance to the home is ways beyond the rich materials used (the original leather upholstery is a finely dyed red) but in its skill and craftsmanship as well. The artisan has carved and ornate, ribboned vegetal design on the fronts and backs of the chairs. But, as the scholar Mimi Hellman has discussed, there was luxury (a joy in fact!) to owning sets! In this day of mass production we are apt to forget that to create an identical series of the same object requires more than just molds, patterns, and exact measurements. Each object is unique, with its own set of problems (err, features) be it grain, warping, dryness and any other  natural occurrence that comes about in the process of growth. It’s the same reason why, as a potter, you’ll never receive a tea set or set of bowls from me as a present.

That said, the joy of owning sets went beyond the mere expense and showiness of the home’s décor. In the 18^th century hundred of pamphlets and manuals on the art of furniture arrangement were published (think: the predecessor of the feng shui craze in mid-American households in the 1990s). The lady of the household could make or break social encounters merely by the coy placement of a settee or pair of chairs. A marriage proposal or physical rebuff could be facilitated by a chair cornered just so. It was a testament to the social elegance of the woman who arranged her own interiors. What is fascinating about these chairs is that their décor is our first clue as to how and where these were meant to be placed. Though they are called musician’s chairs, I have my doubts if that name refers to their actual function. In looking at the object as a whole one finds that the most elaborate decoration is on the backs of the chairs. So that presents a tricky problem for how place them in the room—one certainly can’t face their guests to the wall! Unless…you see, there are two of these chairs. It could only mean that they are meant to face each other and away from the main action of the room. Oo la la!

18^th century European interiors followed the fashion of the French court and the style in the late 18^th century was dominated by Louis XV and the maîtresse-en-titre (the officially titled royal mistress), Madame du Pompadour. The Madame du Pompadour designed tiny, intimate worlds for the king to escape from the world of politics (which were getting quite sticky!), small hunting lodges, tiny private theaters and small gatherings of choice guests. These types of private encounters needed a new form of furniture, a kind that was so drastically different from the very majestic, grand and public style of court held by Louis XIV.

These chairs could be arranged to facilitate a whispered conversation while still allowing the sitters to turn around and briefly join the wider conversation(s) throughout the room. The low backs also allowed the wide carriages of stylish dresses (see images from the Metropolitian Museum of Art’s exhibition, Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century.) Imagine how the body must position itself to balance yourself and your clothing on this teeny perch. It would take a great deal of elegance and graceful movements. One awkward move would expose any façade of gentility!

The intimacy of these two chairs reminds me of another pair of chairs on view right now in the Art Institute. In the recently installed Hyperlinks exhibition in the Architecture and Design galleries are two chairs designed by Arik Levy called Confessions (2010). They allow the sitter to crawl up into them and turn to their partner to whisper a private word or conversation in the same way one behaves in a confessional booth of the Catholic church. But what’s innovative and different about these chairs is that they are meant to swing around. Their openings can meet and close in the occupants allowing for an even more private encounter, à la Louis XV!

Blue Genes

At the museum, we have an internal database that catalogs every (or almost every, save an odd teaspoon or stamp) object in the collection. The database is searchable by date, title, material, when the museum acquired it, exhibition history and other parameters. Oftentimes, however, when searching by "keyword" some interesting and seemingly unrelated finds can come up. I don't know how this next object came up when I was searching for objects to feature in an upcoming Arts of Islam talk but nevertheless it caught my attention.


Levantine (possibly Syria)
Portrait Head (Glass) 1st century B.C.-1st century A.D.

To be honest, the first thing it reminded me of was an episode of the show Pete and Pete (early 1990s children's show on the cable channel, Nickelodeon) whereby a blue marshmallow portrait of President Eisenhower gets stuck up Pete's nose. It was an odd TV series. That aside, I tried to pinpoint what exactly about the little azure portrait that drew me to it. It isn't exactly unusual to come across portraits in molded glass in ancient Rome and there were equivalent objects and workshops in the Levant during the first century. So what was it about this portrait? If it were a snake it would have bitten me right between the eyes. It's blue! The face, a youth perhaps when Augustus-style hair and a clean shaven face were trendy in the early Roman empire, is saturated in ultramarine blue. It almost appears as if it were carved from the stone, lapis lazuli (which would have been very pricey to acquire at the time). But this particular shade of blue had a particular resonance. I'd seen it before. But where? Could it be that this was International Klein Blue?!


Yves Klein, installation view of Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers. ©2010 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © Artists Rights Society, New York/ADAGP, Paris. Photo by Lee Stalsworth.

Yves Klein was one of the first modernist painters to experiment with monochromatic paintings in the 1950s. He is most known for his monochromatic blue paintings where he developed a specific blue that he patented, "International Klein Blue." Painting in monochrome was a way for Klein to not only experiment with paint but to move beyond limitations of the rectangular canvas. A recent retrospective of Klein's monochromatic works at the Hirschorn in Washington, D.C. (pictured above) had sponges, sticks, and globes all tinted, painted and dyed International Klein Blue. For Klein, blue had spiritual, mystical properties that other colors could not offer. In 1959 in a lecture at the Sorbonne, Klein stated,

"Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not… …All colours arouse specific associative ideas, psychologically material or tangible, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract."

Klein's association of the color blue with the sea and sky is not without its historical precedents. In the late 19th century the Symbolists, a group of artists who valued expressing abstract ideas through indirect means (thus through symbols, metaphors...), valued the color blue because of its celestial association. Blue for the Symbolists symbolized spirituality (one of the unwieldy concepts the Symbolists believed could not be captured by mere representational description or Realism) because it could reference the sky, thus celestial realm.

Klein's monochrome experiments with IKB got quite conceptual and even performance-based when he painted nude young women with the color then rolled them about a canvas. His patenting of the color was less about protecting a formula and more about the application of an idea. How monochrome, or IKB, can transform not only the idea and what we expect from a 2-D painting, but everyday objects as well. Perhaps Klein couldn't have patented the blue of our Levantine youth after the fact but that sapphire hue to the face, hair, neck permeates every highlight and shadow across the molded surface. It transforms it from being a mere bottle topper (as it likely would have been) to something quite celestial.

New title for blog

Dear friends: I've changed the name of the blog from the sexy Latin phrase to one that encompasses more of the focus on this blog: Object Lessons! In museum education, when we write lesson plans on objects in the collection for use in the classroom we use the phrase "object lesson" to state the goals and the certain angle with which we want students to engage with the work of art and what we want them to take away from the lesson. But who says lessons are relegated to the classroom?

Personal Things: Patch Boxes

In Berthe Morisot’s Woman at her Toilette (1875/80), we see a woman in a state of undress, perhaps preparing for a ball or having returned from one. Her chemise gracefully falls off her shoulders as she fiddles with the pins in her hair. She turns away from us, making this rather intimate view unto her dressing room a bit awkward for the uninvited viewer. Nevertheless her toilette is spread before us for our perusal. A glass jar for cotton balls, a box for powders and a puff to dust those powders onto the body. These personal things and their reflection in the mirror are the only details Morisot gives us when we want so badly to just see her face.

Items of the toilette are some of the most intimate since they come in contact with the naked body, the body which is not yet dressed for social appearance, yet they play a very public role as well. Consider the painting by Francois Boucher of the Madame du Pompadour at her Toilette, a place where she frequently received guests and if one could use the phrase, held court. Thus these boxes, jars and cases not only held expensive mineral powders and scented oils but they themselves were items of luxury.

There is a poem, written around 1700, by Mary Evelyn in which she writes a humorous travel guide through a lady’s boudoir. As to the accoutrements of the dressing table she writes:

A new Scene to us next presents,
The Dressing-Room, and Implements,
Of Toilet Plate Gilt, and Emboss'd,
And several other things of Cost:
The Table Miroir, one Glue Pot,
One for Pomatum, and what not?
Of Washes, Unguents, and Cosmeticks,
A pair of Silver Candlesticks;
Snuffers, and Snuff-dish, Boxes more,
For Powders, Patches, Waters store,
In silver Flasks or Bottles, Cups
Cover'd, or open to wash Chaps;

You can access the whole poem here and I would very much recommend it (and don’t miss the introduction and “fop dictionary”!)

I want to occupy my thoughts with the “patches” with which Mary Evelyn mentions in her verse. There are two Patch Boxes on view in the American galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago, both of silver and about the size of a pill box. These were made for holding patches, one of the most fascinating things about the 18th century face. One is pictured below, the oval about the size of a half-dollar.



Patches were part of an elite woman’s cosmetic attire. They were cut from black silk, velvet or luxury papers from Spain and placed in various places on the face. Their origin was in the courts of Louis XIV, on the faces of youths with blemishes to hide. But what fun and fantastical ends patches attained when they became the height of courtly fashion! Far beyond the simple circle or oval, patches came to resemble comets, moons, and stars. It was even reported that women could have silhouettes of their dear friends made and pasted onto their bosoms. One satirical print shows a woman with a full carriage with six horses across her forehead.

And what is in fashion in France is in fashion in New England. The wives of Whigs wore their patches on the opposite side of the face than those of Tories. During the Great Awakening, a time of religious fervor, moralists cried out against the use of such vain foppery. In the case of one patch box, it was found buried in the garden, an attempt to hide the precious item by the wife of a preacher who came under critical fire. This patch box was made by the silversmith, John Dixwell, the same maker of the patch box pictured below, on view in the American galleries of the AIC (look for something the size of a quarter).



With a folksy tulip pattern on the cover, this may have been given to the owner by the time she reached adolescence. In fact we are able to trace the owner quite easily because her name, Abigail Taylor, is engraved on the bottom. As if that wasn’t enough to stake her claim, she scratched “AT” right over her name. Patch boxes must have been quite cherished by their owners as most all of them are inscribed with their name and are always mentioned in surviving household inventories.

As I powdered my face today, it occurred to me that our make up and cosmetic cases still play a very public role today. Except that historians centuries from now might wonder as to why so many of them were owned by “CG” or “M.A.C.”

Two Quilts

"My mother always said that if you used a machine to make it then it wasn't a quilt!"
--visitor to the National Quilt Museum, Paducah, KY



The Art Institute of Chicago has recently re-opened the Textile Galleries, which will be dedicated to rotations of the permanent collection as well as a space for temporary exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition Contemporary Fiber Art: Selections from the Permanent Collection features fiber arts from the late 1960s to the present day. One work, titled Denim Cubes by the Australian artist, Lyn Inall, could in some respects be considered a quilt. It is pieced together and involves geometric patterning akin to what one might be accustomed to seeing in traditional quilt patterns (in fact, it bears a resemblance to the Amish "box" pattern as one docent related to me). Inall became familiar with the American quilting tradition during her tenure in New York in the 1980s and constructed this piece from recycled bits of blue jeans. It hangs amongst pioneers of inventive and innovative approaches to the fibers arts like Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney and Claire Zeisler as well as lesser known masters from the late 20th century who experimented with the boundaries of weaving, dying, quilting, and traditional concepts of textiles.

(photo from http://quiltmuseum.org/exhibits_current.htm)

Over Thanksgiving I had the pleasure of spending some quality time at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. Such a visit was long overdue since I've visit family there every year! In addition to the permanent collection, the exhibition, The Machine Age of Quilting: Treadle to Computer comes highly recommended (pictured above). Featured in the exhibition were several early 20th century quilts, some of the first to be made with foot-powered sewing machines. Quilting is a process consisting of multiple layers of fabric. The top layer is usually the most decorative and can be made of different fabrics pieced together. The middle layer is the cozy, insulating material, called the batting, which is sandwiched between the top and the backing material (which can also be decorative). All layers are stitched together at points throughout the quilt (this is the act of quilting). Quilting can be basic or involve incredibly intricate designs. And, most importantly for this post, can be done either by hand or machine. After departing from the exhibition I overheard the statement quoted above and was struck by the sentiment. Honestly, it wasn't too surprising as it's a rally cry one hears often in the official Quilt Capital of the World, but after seeing that some of the oldest surviving quilts were among the first crafts to embrace that indicator of modernity, the sewing machine, one sees that the tension between handicraft and the machine is still relevant.



The NQM is a contributor to the online Quilt Index (http://www.quiltindex.org/) which is a great resource to browse. I came across an early 20th century quilt made in Depot Harbor in Ontario. The quilt is made of alternating blocks of color, a creamy white and "turkey red," which gives it a pulsating overall effect. It was machine pieced which means that the quilter cut the shapes and then used a sewing machine to attach them together (a process which itself involves lots of pinning, ironing and cussing). What is unusual about this quilt is that it is a "signature quilt" a rarer genre of quilts which contain the John Hancocks of family members or even a small community. Here is a close up of some of the names embroidered into each block of color. While some signature quilts were made as "friendship" quilts, signed by friends and family of an individual about to emigrate, others like this one were designed to raise money. Folks would pay an amount of money to have their names put on the quilt and the finished product would be auctioned off. This charitable quilt was made to raise funds for the building of the Childerhouse Presbyterian Church in Deport Harbor in 1906. The signature quilt was the ancestor to modern communal projects such as the monumental AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Even though there is almost a hundred years separating these two quilts they have a lot in common. Both are pieced using the same method and both are constructed from blocks of fabric that are tied to the personal lives of those who sat in, scuffed, tore holes in and shoved their hands in the pockets of their blue jeans or those who belonged to the Deport Harbor Presbyterian community, now a ghost town. Denim itself has its origins in being a fabric suited for intense labor in the age of mechanization ("denim" comes from "de Nimes" its place of origin in France). One would need an industrial sewing machine to power through the coarse fabric. The statement I overheard concerning the boundary between handicraft and machine production is still representative of a highly politicized line not only among quilters but among museums, collectors, designers and artists. But both of these quilts show not only the meaningful melding of machine and handwork but the tie between individual and communal craft.

Treasure your quilts. Whether by machine or hand, they have a story to tell even if so much of that history is lost.