Killing Time at The Art Institute
Nothing like it after a long day of work, or even when you're looking for it.
Mattise’s Interior at Nice
Killing Time
In his beautiful collection The Coast of Chicago, Stuart Dybeck includes a vignette where the protagonist, “between job interviews,” wanders around the Art Institute, “killing time.” He kills enough of it so several paintings " began to feel like old friends.” “The paintings themselves appeared to throw an internal light the way that oaks and maples seem aflame in fall, from the inside out.” Like me, the protagonist’s favorites are the Impressionists.
“On days when it seemed as if I’d never find a job, when I was feeling desperate, I’d stand before their paintings and stare at them until it seemed I could almost step into their world, that if I closed my eyes and then opened them I’d find myself waking under the red coverlet in Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles….Or I would awaken already strolling without a care in and out of patches of precise shade, one of the Sunday crowd along the river on the island of La Grande Jatte.”
Most days during my three years in Chicago I drove to work. I’d pick up my good friend Brandon at Inner Drive and Addison and take Lake Shore until it turned into Jeffery Boulevard just north of 67th Street where we’d continue to 76th to our school. But on some days, particularly when Cassie needed the car, I’d take public transit, which was quite the rigmarole. But in the afternoon, on the way home, the Jeffery Express would drop me right in front of the Art Institute. If this happened on a Friday, I would go to the museum.
The stairs alone, with their green-and-white-gingham-tile risers, would send my heart racing. But I also knew where they were leading: to Caillebotte’s massive Rainy Day front and center, the Renoirs and Monets on the surrounding walls, the aforementioned Seurat and Van Gogh, his Bedroom my favorite, Cezanne’s still lifes. I’d eventually make it to the Modern Wing to be greeted by Picasso and Matisse. I’d sit down on one of the benches, overwhelmed by my great good fortune. I never quit the amazement of being only a bus ride away from such masterworks.
Much like the protagonist in Dybeck’s story, I needed their light to counterbalance the rest of my life right then: a flailing new teacher, my first time living away from home, our first child born with global disabilities. I too would close my eyes and let Matisse’s vibrant colors wash over me, or imagine I was having lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise after a good rowing, or that I was standing out front of Monet’s house at Argenteuil.
The protagonist chooses the Art Institute over other options, one being “some greasy spoon,” drinking lukewarm coffee and studying the Want Ads. He grew tired of such scenes, of such heightened reality. And yet, even after gazing upon the light of the Impressionists, he would end his visits at Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. “Perhaps I needed its darkness to balance the radiance of the other paintings…and I knew how effortless it would be to open my eyes and find myself waiting there, too.”
Even in the impressionist galleries, you can get this: Toulouse-Lautrec’s night scenes in an adjacent room; or directly behind his Paris Street, Caillebotte’s Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue; and you don’t have to read far into Van Gogh’s biography to grasp the hardened life materials he was working with.
But some days we just need a bench in front of Monet’s water lilies or Cezanne’s view of Marseille. To be suffused with light. I still think of those visits to the Art Institute, of the bus ride there. All these years later, I’m still picked up at the corner of 75th and Jeffery and dropped in front of the lions. Within minutes, I’m walking up those green-and-white stairs, knowing well what lies ahead.
The front steps of the Art Institute, Summer 2022
Miscellany
I’ve been thinking of my good friend Matt Kelley of late. His father, John Patrick Kelley, passed away. Matt shared a beautiful obituary honoring his father’s life.
If you live in the Fort Wayne area, consider visiting our new independent bookstore, Sunbound Books, located on North Anthony. (You can also select them as your store to support when ordering from Bookshop.) After visiting, stop into Old Crown or Firefly a few doors down to enjoy a coffee with your new pick. Or you can get tacos at Sunrise Mart. There’s a window at the back of the store to place your order, and they are delicious.
I’d love to hear from you: where are the places you’ve found yourself “killing time”?
What a nice piece on one exceptional space, The Art Institute of Chicago. What fun to find the piece after our recent dinner where both art and travel were a healthy part of our conversation.
I have so fortunately enjoyed European travels that have taken me to some of the finest museums in the world. Among them, in Paris, the Louvre, L’Orangerie, and D’Orsay (the finest Impressionist collection in the world) ; the Reina Sofia (the staggering Guernica) and The Prada in Madrid; the Leopold and Belvedere (Klimt’s The Kiss) in Vienna; the
Uffizi Galleries and Galleria de’ Accademia (Michaelangelo's David) in Florence; The Peggy Guggenheim (its room of 6 Pollacks) in Venice, the Vatican Museum (the Sistine Chapel), and the National Museum of London. But the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, practically in our own backyard, reigns supreme. I envy you your bus trips to its door.
On my first visit, like so many, I was frozen by Seurat’s pointalist masterpice Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. I had seen it so many times in print but in it’s oversized glory it took my breath away. From there I wandered about amazed at the volume of works I had seen in print over my lifetime. I finally made it to the modern art wing where I was introduced to a massive, grey Pollack where I tripped an alarm because, like a magnet, it drew me within inches of the canvas.
As I descended the elevator to leave I noted in the guide that I had missed American Gothic, that pitchfork classic of an Iowa couple by Grant Wood. I made my way to the wing, and like so many others, soaked in an image that made one think that the pair was so familiar they had to have been a neighbor or distant relatives.
I walked through the last room of the wing and was stopped by an image of a Parisian street from the 1800s. I was drawn to a cushioned seat in front of the painting, and did not move for a good 20 minutes or more. It was rendered by Childe (child) Hassam, an American artist who moved to Paris to experience the growing Impressionist movement. It is a painting of a Parisian street under sprinkling, gray skies with standing horse-drawn cab drivers, pedestrians with umbrellas, and, in the foreground, an elderly man pulling a handcart with a young girl at his side. The old man has a familiarity I cannot shake.To this day, I believe I know the man, but likely, I am simply drawn to his condition, struggling, as those around him have relative comfort. And I swear, I was there, on the sidewalk, under the comfort of an umbrella, watching him pass…
A few years later I returned to the Art Institute. I was frozen once again by the Seurat, but then made my way immediately to Hassam’s Cab Station, Rue Bonaparte. It was not there. I discovered the painting is not owned by the museum. It had been on loan from a private Chicago collection and was then on display at a distant Asian museum.
I hope the day returns when I get to see the painting once again. Until then, I’ll enjoy the pull of so many other Impressionist works that, like you, I have found their power to suck you into their time, leaving one’s worries of the present so far behind…