I spent Saturday in the Art Institute of Chicago and most of it in the new wing where they've moved contemporary and 20th century art. I couldn't photograph the Twombly exhibit (which is gorgeous - and I've not been warm to Cy in my life - but here: here are large panels of greens and reds and yellows, where the paint is allowed to course down the surface). Instead I was drawn to the Richard Gober - whose work I'd never seen as a total installation before. The Nasher here in Durham just displayed the litter bag - why show that at all if the rest of the installation is left out? The Guston - I fill more Guston as I grow older. I understand what he's doing. And the comparison with late Morandi - so apt: the hesitancy, the letting things be (a quality I discerned in the Twombly) and the confidence to just let them be. I found this in the Charles Ray who recapitulates Smithson's installation of a tree filling a gallery - although he carved the thing and hollowed it out. So you could say Ray did one more step in the repetition. And the Picasso head of 1927 - perhaps the most Klee like image Picasso did. I went back to this again and again. I couldn't leave it alone.
For me, the art institute is a spiritual experience - as are most great museums: the MFA in Boston, the Metropolitan and MoMA, LA's museum, and Atlanta's - though my home museum is a poor relation. The sad thing is is that the three here in the Raleigh Durham area don't amount to one gallery of either of the first three museums. And don't get me going on what London has to offer: the Courtauld, the National, both Tates.
I go to church for something. Oh yeah.
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