SPECIAL EDITION: "Art Institute of Chicago"

On Saturday, February 11, 2012, I went downtown via Metra train to meet up with Nathan Peck and my classmates at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Just in case Mr. Peck was still hungover and could not remember who was there that day, I have provided a picture of him as proof.  I have also included the three pictures he told us to take before venturing into the museum and starting the tour:

To be honest, I cannot say I REALLY liked any of the works of art I got to see in the museum.  It is just not the style I like.  On the other hand, I can say that I really did appreciate many aspects of some artworks.  I know that many of these were done with limited resources, low technology, took a lot of time and/or effort, and have their own story to tell which I truly admire.  I especially learned to value the era of accurateness.  I admire those who had the patience and talent to depict the realism in everyday life: to be able to take a visual scene and put it on canvas. 

When we started moving toward the modern art, which was based more on style and experimentation rather than emphasizing precision and accurateness, I felt that they were interesting works of art, but just did not catch my eye.  I have a preference for something that depicts reality pretty accurately while still using some sort of style (not counting photography).

There are many masterpieces that I could talk about but the one that almost blew my mind was Michele Marieschi's The Church of Santa Maria della Salute, in 1740 Venice.  The concept had grandeur in itself because it depicted such detailed and beautiful architecture but it was not spectacular.  The composition caught my eye because it really looks like you are standing there watching through your own eyes.  The people at the foreground give a sense of going about their daily lives, which gives me a sense of time.  This single moment makes it feel like this artist captured a split moment in time and painted it on canvas just like a modern day photograph.  The buildings in the background are made to scale and have a feeling of depth to them.  Even though they are supposedly far away, there is still an enormous amount of detail in them to add to the realism.  For me, this showed a great deal of talent and skill.  What really came as amazing to me was the craftsmanship.  The fact that Marieschi painted all the windows black to achieve total darkness and drilled a hole in his wall to have light only come in through there shows a level of ingenuity on his part.  The light is able to enter through the tiny hole and show the other side, which was essentially this scenario.  Due to light refraction, the image of came out to be upside down.  Even back when there were no cameras, artist still found ways to capture a moment in life a make it concrete through painting.