Today’s photo essay was not exactly planned.
If you’ve been reading PopCult, you know that your humble blogger and his lovely wife just got back from our annual trip to Chicago a week and a day ago. My plan, something I’ve been attempting to do recently, was to just go and enjoy the trip and not try to turn it into content for the blog. However, I also take my camera with me everywhere out of habit, and part of our trip involved going to The Art Institute of Chicago, so it’d be criminal not to take a few photos.
Our main reason for making our first visit to The Art Institute since 2018 was so Mel could see one of their prints of Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. They have four copies of this piece, but due to their fragility, they only display them every few years, and then only for a few months at a time. This is a big deal and there were ads for the event all over Chicago. Light and the elements can damage the prints, so they are displayed in a dimly-lit area.
Mindful of this, I did not use a flash for any of the photos I took the entire time we were at the Art Institute. But we were also there on a very cold day in December, and extreme weather exacerbates my Myasthenia Gravis, so most of the pictures I took, both with my camera and with my now-retired phone, came out at least a little blurry, and in some cases as accurate depictions of my double-vision.
So while comments are always welcome, please don’t be a jerk and point out the obvious. Also, if I appear to be bright red in the photos, it’s because we got there twenty minutes before they opened to the general public, and had to wait outside in sixteen-degrees weather. By the time we left four hours later we had almost returned to normal.
And a few words of advice if you wish to go to the Art Institute: Periodically, the Art Institute opens their doors and lets any Illinois resident in for free. Do not go on those days; Go when the weather is really nice; Try going on a weekday; Go with the intention of spending the entire day there: Pace yourself because they have tens of thousands of amazing pieces of artwork to see, and you want to spend enough time with each piece that you enjoy.
Oh, and be sure to stop on the way in for the free map to where the galleries are.
I had only intended to run a dozen or so photos, but when I started going through them, I came up with more than twice that. Let’s look at ’em…

Mel and The Great Wave, out of focus (it was very dim and I didn’t want to use the flash).

The Great Wave, almost in focus.

Better luck with the focus with the phone set to selfie mode

The Great Wave was part of an exhbiit of Edo-era Japanese art, like this amazing scroll

Mel and Rudy with a Japanese Concubine

One of them there Golden Buddhas.

Look at that guy trying to sneak up on me!

A magical place for fans of Sondheim and John Hughes.

Notice how, in every selfie, I look like I’m trying to figure out how to use the camera phone

Y’know, I have my favorites at the Art Institute, too.

Look! I’m with NIGHTHAWKS!

I was able to shoot around the crowd, but there was no way I was going to get a selfie with American Gothic with so many people in the way

Even the hallways look cool here.

Chagall’s Windows. After March 15, 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for these
PICASSOLAND

You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Picasso (NOTE: both swinging dead cats and hitting Picassos are strictly forbidden and will result in immediate ejection and criminal charges)

Seriously, it seemed like there were multiple rooms of nothing but Picasso (not a complaint, by the way)

There’s just something mildly overwhelming about finding yourself surrounded by the first artist who you knew by name (when he was still living, no less)

The problem with so much Picasso overload is that you start mistaking works by Henri Matisse as being by him. Like this one.
MAGRITTE

While I was initially a little disappointed that “Time Transfixed” is not currently on display, my appetite for Magritte was more than filled by “The Banquet” and other works that were hidden away the last time I was here

I had no idea that “On The Threshold of Liberty was so enormous.

On the Threshold of Rudy

On the other hand, “The White Race” was a little smaller than I thought. Also, when it’s fine art, it’s okay to show bewbs in PopCult
HELLO DALI

There were also several pieces by the third artist I knew by name, Salvador Dali. (Number two was Norman Rockwell, and I don’t think I saw anything by him there).

This piece by Dali I call, “The Bean Dropper.”

This was painted by Dali while he was sucking on a chili dog, outside the Tastee Freez–that joke would probably work better if I hadn’t got my John Mellencamp songs mixed up

We wrap up this photo essay with a view, from behind and above, of statues of The Lone Ranger, Batman and Abraham Lincoln…who used to team up to fight crime.
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