Saturday morning, our group spent wandering around the Art Institute of Chicago. We began in the museum’s new modern wing and then made our way through the classical works.

Modern Wing
My tour of the museum began in Architecture section of the Modern wing. The room was filled with architecture, furniture, and other contemporary works. One piece that immediately caught my eye was this sketch by Frank Gherey.

I’m not sure if it should, but knowing that Frank Gherey could be successful and give sketches like this to portray his original concepts just makes me feel a little better about my lack of drawing skills for my thumbnails. I think what I liked most about it, is that it’s still in the rough stages, it isn’t a complete work like everything else in the museum. It shows the work that goes on before the project is completed.

Another piece that I found interesting was Sagmeister’s interactive piece “Being Not Truthful”. The image below is of Heath VanSingel and Alissa Rader interacting with the spider web.

The way it worked was a small sensor in the wall. When someone walked by the sensor the spiderweb was pulled and ripped. If the web stretched to its limits, a new one was spun on the wall. I liked this piece mostly because it was interactive. Also, probably because I had heard of it before going.

Classical Wing
This part of the museum I had seen the last time I was in Chicago, about 2 years ago, but there were a lot of new pieces as well. Though I had already seen a lot of the pieces it was different seeing many of them, after taking Art History classes, the works had a lot more meaning to them.

There was one room that was filled with the art of one of my favorites, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The piece below is of his “Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret”.

I really enjoy the style of the works by Toulouse-Lautrec, I think it has to do with the simplistic look that it has with parts that are more detailed. I also like the typography that is used in his works and how well it goes with the imagery.

There was also an entire corner of the museum that was dedicated to the works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Walking into the room I was amazed at the sheer size of the works. The piece below, El Greco’s “Assumption of the Virgin”, was on the end wall of the last room and really caught my eye.

The size of this painting was simply amazing to me. It took up almost the entire height of the wall. All of the works in this room were large but this one left me in awe. It’s inspiring to see what people so long ago could do and the size at which they could do it so well.

In the end, the trip to the Art Institute was quit refreshing and enjoying. It felt good to be able to recognize many of the pieces of artwork and to know what most of the symbolism in the artwork meant. I was able to look at the work from a whole new perspective.