Paint, paint, paint
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
El Greco, View of Toledo, ca. 1599-1600, Metropolitan Museum of Art, all detail photos Rachel Cohen.
On Monday, I went to the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time in six months. It was quiet; everyone had a mask. There were people with devices to check you in electronically and you were informed by text when there was enough space in the one exhibition that is drawing any kind of crowd. The atmosphere was reserved, cautious.
But the paintings.
El Greco, St. Louis King of France, and a page, Louvre Museum
El Greco, Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino, 1609, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The paintings came pouring and leaping off the walls. The paintings were full of news and observations. The paintings had just left the Louvre and the Prado, and had come out of private homes for the first time in decades, had had the chance to be quiet together in their home in Chicago. They were busy conversing with one another. In the photos I took, and I took a great many, they spoke of humanity, struggle.
El Greco, Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias y Leyva, about 1600, Louvre Museum
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1887, Art Institute of Chicago
And of reflection.
El Greco, View of Toledo, ca. 1599-1600, Metropolitan Museum of Art, detail photo Rachel Cohen
Paul Cézanne, The Bay of Marseilles, Seen from L'Estaque, c. 1885, Art Institute of Chicago
Claude Monet, Vétheuil, 1901, Art Institue of Chicago
But mostly they returned to one subject, one of infinite interest and variation:
paint,
paint,
El Greco, St. Louis King of France, and a page, Louvre Museum
paint.
El Greco, View of Toledo, ca. 1599-1600, Metropolitan Museum of Art, detail photo Rachel Cohen.
At the museum, it was delirious and quiet.