202407192012 Artwork I like
I really enjoy visiting art museums. Last week, I spent some time at the Art Institute of Chicago and took notes on the pieces that caught my eye. I wish there was a way to share your favorite artworks on a public profile, as I believe your art preferences reveal a lot about your personality. In the absence of that, here are my thoughts on some of my favorite pieces at the Art Institute.
Obvious disclaimer: I'm not an art critic and don't know anything about art.
I love paintings like Willem de Kooning's Excavation because they're why you go to art museums. This painting is HUGE. There are so many details about paintings like these — the texture, the play of colors on the canvas, and the immersive experience of having the painting fill your entire field of view — that you simply cannot appreciate from a photo.
The Second Part of the Return from Parnassus by Cy Twombly gives the vibe, at first glance, of one of those paintings that you feel like you could have just created yourself. A closer look reveals more -- try zooming into the top right.
Something about the Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance series by Ellsworth Kelly feels so soothing and peaceful to me. It tickles the right part of my brain.
Untitled #12 by Agnes Martin is another piece that is not captured well through photo. I really liked the subtle gradient of color and the way the light falls on the canvas, illuminating certain parts and giving it a silky texture when viewed from an angle.
Jackson Pollock's Great Rainbow is incredibly arresting. It makes me feel chaotic but also gives a sense of technicolor turmoil, and a celebration of color in a world where it's often placed at the bottom or suppressed. There's just something about the colors and paint. It's incredibly striking. Again, the photo doesn't do it justice.
Nicholas Krushenick Elephant Spoons reminded me of underwater fiber optic cables; it reminded Mulan of spaghetti.
I like the social commentary contained within The White Race by René Magritte.
I really liked The Rapidity of Sleep by Yves Tanguy. The low-poly shapes and images give me the vibe of a world that doesn't make sense, but while you're in that (dream) world, it seems totally normal.
The imagery of Victor Brauner's Acolo is very striking. It has a vaguely Egyptian and Asian mix of cultures, feels modern in its boldness and nonsensical nature, yet also evokes an old art style reminiscent of Eastern European traditions.
I'm very intrigued by the imagery of René Magritte's The Banquet. It is striking and evocative, and the title is intriguing and confusing if you don't know what it means or how it relates to the painting.
I really like the texture of Little Harbour in Normandy by Georges Braque. I also like the shading, the dynamics of the colors, the gradient from dark to light to dark to light, and the kind of cutesy vibe to it.
I really like the dynamism, the geometry, the interplay of shapes and colors, and the vibrance of Rhythm of Bird's Flight by Erika Klein.
I really like Pizarro's Woman Bathing Her Feet in a Brook. The way that he treated light in this painting is stunning. The photo does not do it justice.
I really like paintings that are simplified, restrained, and sparse but feel sweeping, relaxing, and contemplative. Most of James McNeill Whistler's work hits the spot for me, but especially his seascapes.
How are Monet's Water Lilies so immediately distinctive? How is his art style so distinctive? I think it's a mixture of color, composition, texture, subject, lighting, mood, and laziness. Like a sense of subtlety, a sense of focusing on a small part of life and being satisfied and content with it.
I think A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat is a little overrated, but it was pretty cool getting to see the pointillism in the painting up close. Also, seeing the sheer scale and scope of it was awesome. I also didn't spot the painting's references to Egyptian hieroglyphs until I saw it in person.
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper is iconic. It feels a little overrated, but extremely uniquely American — I think that's why I think it resonates so much with so many people. It symbolizes American loneliness to me.
The landscape (or "dreamscape") of In the Third Sleep by Kay Sage feels like something that could exist in Inception, only painted almost 70 years prior.
Ivan Albright's Picture of Dorian Gray is visually stunning and uniquely grotesque in a striking way even today. It must've been a cool moment when it was included as the only piece of color in an otherwise black-and-white film (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945).
I really like the flattening of perspective and the triptych nature of Train Station by Walter Ellison.
I enjoy looking at art pieces that depict landscapes or places I've visited. It feels cool to think about what the artist envisioned or remembered when they painted the landscape and compare it to my own memory of the area. I don't think I've saw the formation that Georgia O'Keeffe painted in The White Place in Sun when I spent 1.5 months in New Mexico a few years ago, but the starkness and loneliness of the landscape is still clear in my mind.
