Getting Lost in Works of Art

Today was such a great day! I had been wanting to go back to The Art Institute of Chicago since my last visit in high school. In fact, one of my fondest memories of Chicago is when my advanced photography class headed up to the Art Institute to check out the Irving Penn exhibit.

Well, today I got to go back. I’m in Chicagoland for a one-day workshop, but I headed up a day early so I wouldn’t have to get up super early on Thursday morning. I parked my car at The Museum of Science and Industry, hopped on the Metra, and headed over to Michigan Avenue.

There’s something special about art museums, it’s like the ornate frames are a window into the world of the artist. Everytime I go to an art museum, I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’ll stand far away and look at it from a distance and then I’ll get up close and look closer at the details: brush strokes, use of color, the texture of the canvas.

One of my favorite things today was just floating from gallery to gallery and looking at all the artwork: paintings, furniture, decorative pieces, etc. Paintings have a way of drawing me into that world and time. When I look at a work of art, I wonder what’s going on outside of the frame that we can’t see: What sounds are going on around the subject? Are there smells? It’s funny, I know, but these are the things I think about.

As you can probably tell, I love more realism art rather than abstract. As a photographer, I photograph the world as I see it and so I appreciate painters who can do the same. Then there are those painters who can read a piece of literature and be inspired, or have a dream and can take that dream and turn it into a vision for a piece of art.

And while I don’t have an acquired appreciation for decorative pieces like tea sets and furniture, I love to imagine how those pieces were used when they were originally created. And as I look at the date on the placard next to a work of art, I just can’t imagine how many places that piece of artwork has been, how it’s been used, what’s the story behind it?

I walked out of the Art Institute feeling like I spent a couple of hours glancing into so many different time periods, looking into the imaginations of so many artists, and have a greater appreciation for the artists and their work. Yep, it was a good day.