painting of the month

The Reverend Robert Walker
Skating on Duddingston Loch
a/k/a The Skating Minister --
Sir Henry Raeburn, circa 1790
(National Gallery of Scotland)

festive fezziwigs

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.

In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.

When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, 'Well done,' and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a brand-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish....

(A Christmas Carol, Mr. Dickens)

great blake things

Great things are done when Men & Mountains meet
This is not Done by Jostling in the Street.

William Blake

once upon a kandinsky birthday

The artist must train not only his eye, but his soul.

(Wassily Kandinsky, December 4, 1863* -- December 13, 1944)

*December 16 is also noted as Kandinsky's birthday, apparently depending on whether you use the Julian or Gregorian calendar.

Pictured: Yellow-Red-Blue -- W. Kandinsky, 1925 (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou)

the peaceable trio

I've never willingly made it through a whole rerun of Three's Company but while flipping past the zany swinging 70s hangover with the remote, I did notice that it looks like a print of Edward Hicks' 1826 The Peaceable Kingdom might be on the wall of Janet, Jack and Chrissie's apartment? Since Hicks was a Quaker he'd have surely been troubled by the whole threesome and smarmy joke set-up, but beyond that they were all trying to live peaceably, I guess.

painting of the month

Vegetable Dinner -- Peter Blume, 1927 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

poetry and parking

The jewel-like words of poets and city parking garages generally don't have much in common, unless you're leaving your car at 201 West Madison in Chicago, also known as the Poetry Garage. Here while you're off on an urban adventure, your vehicle waits on garage levels dedicated specifically to poets like Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson and Carl Sandburg, the man who conjured up visions of Chicago fog and little cat feet. You still have to pay for the parking, of course, but it's a much more aesthetic experience and probably easier to remember that you parked your PT Cruiser up with W.H. Auden -- instead of just somewhere on Level 3.

(Pictured: Calliope, muse of poetry and The Poetry Garage; painting by Cesare Dandini, 1595-1658)

vincent, again

This past week a new theory and book about the death of Van Gogh made the media scene, with the alternate ending that Vincent did not commit suicide but was the victim of two teenaged boys who shot him by accident. The boys had been teasing Van Gogh all summer like teenagers can do if they encounter someone perceptive and unique, and the shooting was just the culmination of their young men behaving badly dynamic. Compassionate to the end, Van Gogh apparently covered for these youths and claimed to have shot himself, and with his troubled mental history the suicide wasn't challenged.

So if you also factor in the other alternate theory that Van Gogh didn't cut off his own earlobe and was covering up for Gaugin's lopping it off with a sword, the life of Vincent seems even more victimized. Not only did his wonderful talents go unrecognized throughout his 37 years, but he was physically abused by others. I'd prefer that he'd had the warped self-determination and righteous rage to have at least either mutilated his own ear or shot himself, but when you read his letters to his brother Theo and consider his deep longing to connect with others, it's not too far-fetched that he would protect those who had wronged him. Whatever the case, Van Gogh and his artwork continue to fascinate the world more than a century after his death -- no matter how that final moment happened to come about.

painting of the month

The Red Maple -- A.Y. Jackson (1914), National Gallery of Canada

sharp-dressed koloman

Koloman Moser (March 30, 1868 – October 18, 1918): artist, designer, craftsman -- and looking good here in his elegantly casual coat and hat







(1904 photo of Kolo by Friedrich Victor Spitzer, from Wikimedia Commons)

the artful theatre

Chicago's Goodman Theatre is presently showcasing John Logan's Red, with its reincarnation of artist Mark Rothko holding court on stage (I'm not calling him an Abstract Expressionist because he apparently didn't want to be minimized by a label). Last week would have been Rothko's birthday on September 25th, and then Mayor Rahm (I'm calling him by his first name because he just seems to be a first-name mayor) declared "Paint the Town Red Day" in honor of the play, and it was all a dramatically fun, art-centered crimson tide.

However, though I haven't seen Red Rothko yet, three diverse Chicago theater-goers I've spoken to have noted that the play that recently and quietly won their hearts is The Pitman Painters at the Timeline Theatre. Lee Hall of Billy Elliot fame is the author, and the story involves a group of British miners from Ashington who took a sponsored art appreciation class during the 1930s. Their instructor found the miners to be less than interested in the appreciation aspects of the lessons, so he urged them to approach the subject directly and create their own works. The men became the Ashington Group and ultimately found critical success and a patron, along with broadening their own horizons and sense of collective and personal identity. Yet they still stayed in the mines and true to their "pit" roots, and if this doesn't sound like the next The King's Speech-type movie adaptation that will net plenty of Academy Award nominations I don't know what does.

Here's a link to the Ashington Group's website, and the tiny pictured work is by Pitman Painter Harry Wilson (Ashington Colliery)

painting of the month

Autumn -- Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1573)

painting of the month

The Passage -- Kay Sage, 1956

urban gardening

Here are some excerpts from an interesting piece in the July 1925 issue of The Century, a magazine which seems to have been read by many intelligentsia of the day. "The Wildness of New York" is by Lewis S. Gannett, who seems to have been one of those same intelligentsia of his day and who lived from 1891-1966. And along the way he had a backyard garden, "literally within a stone's-throw of Brooklyn Bridge."

In his Wildness essay, Gannett was noting how despite all the brick and concrete, he could still spot plenty of birds, butterflies, grasshoppers and even bats around his 15 foot "square of grass," with a paper mulberry tree that "seems to enjoy the daily deposit of soot from the neighboring chocolate-factory." His house and yard too were formerly a "medicine factory" back around 1900, leaving his soil full of heaps of broken tonic and iodine bottles and brick shards. (Not much environmental concern during the Robber Baron era.) Vegetables were hard to keep going in the sooty earth, and only after a couple years of failure did petunias begin to thrive.

Weeds did well as they always do, and so did "asters and goldenrod, both indifferent to clouds of dust and soot," like they once bloomed in a "whole hillside...behind the old Tiffany Building to greet the New York Central tracks." Exceptionally pretty or unique plants tended to be stolen by the Gannett's neighbors. Some things never change.

Pictured: Meadow Flowers (Goldenrod and Wild Aster) -- John Henry Twachtman, 1893 @ The Brooklyn Museum

painting of the month

The Balloon -- Maurice Prendergast, 1898

days at the beach

Artists Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923) and Illinois-born Jane Peterson (1876-1965) did not share the same style of painting, but the Spanish Sorolla was one of Peterson's instructors and they both seemed to love their beach scenes. Sorolla offers a beautiful use of white here and a fine sense of rippling breezes and rushing tides in his work, but Peterson's beach bunch looks more relaxed and sun-splashed -- and much less encumbered by unnecessary clothing.

Pictured: Walk on the Beach -- Joaquin Sorolla, 1909 and Beach Scene -- Jane Peterson, 1935

painting of the month

Vegetable Garden and Donkey -- Joan Miró, 1918

art and the house of mirth

More Suite101 blog reposting....

I’ve always loved the chapter from Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth, where ladies of New York society take part in an evening of "living pictures" or tableaux vivants. For the entertainment of their guests, and for the presumed showcasing of themselves, the costumed women pose within sets designed to resemble classic paintings. These illusions depend "not only on the happy disposal of lights and the delusive-interposition of layers of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision. To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between fact and imagination."

By this point in the novel, we’ve become familiar with the female characters and to link some of them with art is aesthetically fun — and a nice fictional device by Edith Wharton. We know about the translucent-skinned "frailer Dutch type" of old New York money, perfect for bringing a van Dyck to life. We also know about the resourceful and resilient Carry Fisher, who despite being a divorcee when divorce was still questioned has managed to keep herself within society circles. With her earthy dark looks she becomes one of Goya’s women for the night, from the "exaggerated glow of her eyes" to the "provocation of her frankly-painted smile."

Then there’s Lily Bart, The House of Mirth’s heroine — beautiful, capricious, determined to find a rich husband yet not quite calculating and manipulative enough to pull that feat off. Lily chooses Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Mrs. Lloyd as her tableau, knowing that its simpler lines and similarity to her own loveliness will be a show-stopper. Which it is, and Lily is a true vision — with some of the men of course wondering privately about whether she’s got any underwear on beneath those "pale draperies" that outline "dryad-like curves."

The tableaux evening is a high point in Lily’s otherwise troubled quest to become one of New York's truly powerful society women — and to no doubt eventually have her own beautiful, slightly haughty portrait painted by John Singer Sargent.

Pictured: La Maja Vestida (Francisco de Goya, ca. 1800) & Mrs. Richard Bennett Lloyd (Sir Joshua Reynolds, ca. 1775) -- click on each painting to get a closer look

unconsciously brilliant

"The unconscious should not be thought of as a limbo where vague, cloudy, and amorphous notions swim hastily about. There is every reason to believe, on the contrary, that it is the great home of form; that it is quicker to see types, patterns, purposes, than our intellect can ever be...[I]f you are to write well, you must come to terms with the enormous and powerful part of your nature which lies behind the threshold of immediate knowledge."

Words: Becoming a Writer -- Dorothea Brande, 1934
Image: Dream Vision -- Albrecht Dürer, 1525 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

that lunatic impressionist gang

(More Suite101 blog reposts....)

The French Impressionists initially had to organize their own exhibits because the official Paris Salon wouldn’t consistently accept their works. When those indie shows were reviewed by certain art critics of the day, the feedback could be downright nasty. While some admired their new perspective, others sniped how:

“Here five or six lunatics deranged by ambition -- one of them a woman -- have put together an exhibition…They take canvas, paint and brushes, splash on a few daubs of color here and there at random, then sign the result. The inmates of the Ville-Evrard Asylum behave in much the same way…Try telling M Pissarro that trees are not purple, or the sky the colour of butter…Try to explain to M Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a rotting mass of flesh, with violet-toned green spots all over it...There is also, as in all famous gangs, a woman. Her name is Berthe Morisot, and she is a curiosity. She manages to convey a certain degree of feminine grace in spite of her outbursts of delirium.”

That was critic Albert Wolff behind that 1876 rampage, and as a result of it, Berthe Morisot‘s husband Eugene (also painter Edouard Manet‘s brother) challenged Wolff to a duel, though I don’t think any swords were ever drawn or pistols fired. Clearly, Mr. Wolff would be horrified by the crowds who still flock to museums to view French Impressionist paintings, and by all the Monet tote bags and Degas and Renoir calendars for sale in the gift shops.

Wolff’s tirade is included in Sue Roe’s very interesting and smoothly flowing The Private Lives of The Impressionists (HarperCollins). The book gives factual and biographical information, but it also heightens the personalities and friendships of the artists so that it reads more like a novel. Definitely worth checking out.

(Pictured: Buttery sky by Camille Pissarro -- Apple Pickers at Eragny, 1888 -- Dallas Museum of Art)

painting of the month

White Shoes -- Eva Gonzales, ca. 1879

the mystery guest

Born May 11, 1904 (d. 1989), Surrealist Salvador Dalí knew how to market himself and his work and was never too reticent or aloof to miss a worthwhile opportunity to get his wild eyes and curious mustache out there. He seemed to really love the spectacle and drama part of being an artist, and if he were still with us he’d no doubt be delighted to learn that you can find his 1950s What's My Line? appearance on YouTube, along with a few other interesting Dalí TV moments. You can see in the What’s My Line? clip how Dalí easily maintains his somewhat perplexed poise throughout the questioning, then how he’s sure to suavely kiss the hands of all the women on the panel as he goes over to introduce himself.

pigeons, pollock and other talented creatures

Again, our Suite101 Feature Writer blogs are due to be shut down soon so I'm reposting some of the entries here....

There are new and unusual schools of art -- and then there are the spoofs that follow. Click here to see if you can recognize the works of either some spirited and colorful chimps or bonafide human painters. Back in 1964, the canvases of an emerging French talent named Pierre Brassau came upon the art scene in Sweden, with one critic praising Brassau's style as having the “delicacy of a ballet dancer.” Pierre eventually turned out to be a chimp named Peter from the zoo, who probably didn’t even get any of the money earned from the sale of his stuff before the big revelation. This same website also gives you the chance to guess whether you’re looking at a Pollock or some abstractly messy pigeon crap -- or if you want to get literary, whether text is oddly computer-generated German translation or actual William Faulkner prose.

(Pictured: Study of Birds and Monkey, J. van Kessel, circa 1660)

dolling it up

It wouldn’t seem likely that the names Gustav Klimt and Barbie would ever be used in the same sentence – but then again, why not? In the Barbie® Museum Collection due out this summer, distinctly designed Barbies wear outfits fashioned after such classic paintings as Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Da Vinci’s La Gioconda and Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Starry Night Barbie is strapless and swinging, Mona Lisa Barbie is more demure and subtly elegant, and the Klimt Barbie is quite the stunner in her resplendently detailed and shimmering wrap, choker and long gown.

I hope they continue the series and personally would very much like to see a Dalí Barbie, with maybe a melting clock necklace or some busy little ants crawling up and down her legs? The Gauguin Tahiti Barbie, or the Jackson Pollock-style hipster, with a multicolored splattered minidress and black Abstract Expressionist sunglasses. It also might be nice to see Barbie as the artist herself with an easel and smock, rather than the exclusive object of beauty.

national poetry month!

To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too....

You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there-
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom....

(From "To Be in Love" -- Gwendolyn Brooks)(Pictured: Cardinalis cardinalis, Wikimedia Commons)

Russian Empire Easter postcard, circa 1900 (from Wikimedia Commons)

whistler's special sauce

Our Suite101 Feature Writer blogs are being removed from the site as of May 1, so I'll repost some of the entries that got the most traffic here....

For many artists, the creation of a unique persona and lifestyle is often as interesting as creating the art itself. Never one to quietly accept what he’d been handed, the great James McNeill Whistler rejected the notion of being born in sensible Lowell, Massachusetts and instead invented alternate backdrops for his coming into being. ("I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born in Lowell….") While Whistler's actual and not fabricated childhood was in Europe, he found himself putting in an incongruous stint at West Point Academy following the death of his father. He then headed to Paris to pursue the whole bohemian artist experience before eventually making London his home base.

Robert M. Crunden’s book American Salons features fascinating characters like Whistler who reinvented themselves between the 19th and 20th centuries, and in the process changed the course of art, fiction, poetry, music and life in general. Here's an excerpt regarding Whistler’s painting method:

Nature gave him its inspiration, while the Japanese gave him intuitions about what to do with it…He had a large palette, a board two feet by three with a butterfly inlaid at one corner, on which he laid out his colors, the pure at the top. He then mixed large quantities of the prevailing color in the intended picture, producing results so juicy that he called it “sauce”…[h]e had to lay his canvas on the ground because the sauce would run if the canvas were in any way tilted -- sometimes it did anyway, and he often accepted the accidental results….

"If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this." (James McNeill Whistler, 1834-1903)

Pictured: Whistler's 1900 Gray and Gold -- The Golden Bay (Hunter Museum of American Art)

painting of the month

Wild He-Goats Dance (Arthur Bowen Davies, ca. 1915 -- Maier Museum of Art)

national poetry month!

Some spiders spin webs as beautiful
As Japanese drawings, intricate as clocks, strong as rocks:
Others construct traps which consist only
Of two sticky and tricky threads. Yet this ambush is enough
To bind and chain a crawling ant for long
enough:
The famished spider feels the vibration
Which transforms patience into sensation and satiation.


from Spiders -- Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) (Pictured: The Smiling Spider -- Odilon Redon)

a visit to the hot l baltimore

Steppenwolf Theatre's revival of the late Lanford Wilson's 1970s hit The Hot L Baltimore is currently happening through the end of May, with direction by Tina Landau and a cast of many fine actors. The set is also impressively rundown and offers a two-story action view, featuring stairs leading to rooms without doors to allow for a kind of voyeuristic, back of a dollhouse effect. If you can sit close to the stage and you're fascinated by authentic props, you'll enjoy noting how magazines leafed through are truly from the 1970s, and that the TV set shows Pringles commercials of the era -- and that some super-groovy ribbed blue bellbottoms are worn by Bill, the desk clerk. And if you lived through the seventies or have a more youthful retro interest in them, the timeline boards of the decade's major events and hit songs set up in the theater lobby will likely round out your nostalgic experience.

Back in the real day, The Hot L Baltimore debuted in March of 1973 and ran through 1976 at New York's Circle in the Square. It showcased the then-new talents of forever tough cookie Conchata Ferrell (who so refreshingly dominates Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men), and Judd Hirsch as Paul, a young man in search of his elusive grandfather. At that time, the play surely had a very different vibe, because it was an immediate representation of 1970s upheaval and change, and America wasn't so familiar with the lives of sassy hookers and/or needed to come to terms with the fact that many of its former glories were crumbling and in the line of the wrecking ball.

So essentially, The Hot L's revival now is pretty much evocative and not a social slice of life, with a note of melancholy added due to the recent death of playwright Lanford Wilson. The play is further deepened by many primary roles being filled by African American actors in this production, including standout performances by de'Adre Aziza, Alana Arenas, Namir Smallwood, Jon Michael Hill, James Vincent Meredith, TaRon Patton and Jacqueline Williams.

Still, if the play is truly supposed to take place in the early 1970s, changing the racial makeup of the cast would have--at the time--caused all sorts of alternate issues and dynamics. Yes, Baltimore has a larger black population than other cities, but perhaps the elderly Mr. Morse might harbor some old school inherent prejudices, or perhaps the fact that Bill the desk clerk is attracted to The Girl might create a greater interracial frisson of conflict -- and the idea of a brash young black woman and her timid brother planning to farm acres in predominately white 1970s Utah seems even more worrisome. Mrs. Oxenham is into making a traditional African fashion statement -- what consciousness-raising led her to that? And why does Mr. Katz dislike Jackie so much? Is it hard knocks disapproval or just, as she complains, because of the way she dresses?

I have to wonder whether being in the front row made me connect more with some of the characters and have more questions about them. Probably too many questions, because in the long run it seems best to just take The Hot L Baltimore as a retro piece -- to enjoy the team effort, the set, the props and the onstage radio crackling out soul tunes, and don't really think that much about the rest.

Pictured: Bill (Jon Michael Hill) and The Girl (Alison Torem) in The Hot L Baltimore

national poetry month!

The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time...
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

vincent and gregor

Today was once the birthday of Vincent van Gogh, an artist of great emotion and intense colors -- and an unfortunately tragic ending. And an unfortunately never-ending association with the loss of an earlobe, but that's just how the world turns. Van Gogh has been played by various actors, most famously by Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life, but which actor has taken on the role of both Vincent and Gregor Samsa, Kafka's hapless man-turned-beetle in The Metamorphosis? Whoever sends in the first correct e-mail answer (see profile link for address) will win a free GPSmyCity iPhone app for walking tours of either Chicago, London or Paris (be sure to specify which city you'd like when you send your reply).

Pictured: The Bedroom -- Vincent van Gogh, 1889 (Art Institute of Chicago) and Self-Portrait -- Vincent van Gogh, 1887

born today

...on March 24th, 1834 was William Morris, long-reigning Knight of the Arts & Crafts Round Table -- a table which he most surely would have designed. Known as Topsy to his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood friends, Morris was a writer, poet, Socialist and genius of organic form and function whose beautiful textiles, tapestries, wallpapers, furniture, stained glass and printworks attest to his claim that the “true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” He also produced literary translations, including major sagas in Icelandic, though I doubt that the word "idle" (in any language) was ever part of the personal vocabulary of this remarkable creative dynamo.

Pictured: William Morris (1834-1896)

musings on camille

Mary Mathews Gedo's Monet and His Muse (University of Chicago Press) examines the pivotal relationship between French Impressionist master Claude Monet and his first wife Camille. Before Monet's ascent to fame and eternal association with water lilies, haystacks and Giverny, the artist was just another aspiring young painter full of ambition and conflict. He was rebellious and enjoyed la vie bohème, but he also needed his father's financial support. "I wish you see you in an atelier, under the discipline of a well-known master," Adolphe Monet cautioned his son. "If you resume your independence, I will stop your allowance without more ado."

Though Monet obeyed and worked with mentors for a while, fortunately he and his fellow Impressionists kept enough of their independent spirit and vision to change the world of art. Monet also became involved with a dark-haired, quietly beautiful young woman named Camille Doncieux, a liaison which would have highs and lows for both parties. Camille proved to be an excellent muse; she was perceptive and receptive, able to tolerate Monet's mood swings and to pose for long stretches of time. She bolstered his confidence and satisfied his romantic desires, and she was devoted to helping him succeed. Camille's distinctive stance in the 1866 Woman in a Green Dress brought Monet quite a bit of favorable attention at the annual Paris Salon, and she would later grace the canvases of other memorable Monet paintings like The Red Kerchief, Springtime and La Japonaise.

And then Camille became pregnant. Monet was thrown into turmoil, faced with the possibility of being cut off financially by his family and having to support a wife and baby. He fought the obligation for as long as he could yet apparently upon first seeing his newborn "big beautiful boy" Jean, Monet relented and gave his son his legitimate name. In Camille's case, despite her eventual marriage to the father of her child, her role as Madame Monet would not always be an easy one.

Monet and His Muse is a fine read for Monet lovers, especially those prepared to accept a somewhat flawed reflection of the genius. (But what genius is not flawed?) A fascinating chapter in collaboration with artist William Conger analyzes Monet's 1868 On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt (currently at the Art Institute of Chicago), reexamining the painting in terms of its various incarnations and underlying layers, and in context of Monet's feelings toward his wife and son at the time—and possible need for creative catharsis.

Camille Monet died in 1879, about a year after the birth of her second son, Michel. The cause was presumed to be complications from cervical cancer, and at Camille's deathbed was Alice Hoschedé, the then-wife of Monet's patron Ernest Hoschedé. Alice later became Monet's wife and evidently felt compelled to destroy nearly every photograph or document connected to her no longer-living rival. Alice wasn't able to destroy the paintings, however, and so Camille's artistic legacy continues. The grieving Monet even painted Camille in repose following her death, perhaps again looking for creative catharsis and closure.

The woman who truly wore the green gown has always cast such an intriguing backward glance towards us all, and Ms. Gedo's book offers a rich companion narrative and adds new dimensions to the mystery of Camille and her many portraits.

painting of the month

Japanese Children -- Lilla Cabot Perry (ca. 1900)

forget the map and try an app

Spring is just a few hours away and with it comes the need to venture out and explore -- and if that involves spring travel, perhaps to take a walking tour of a new or even familiar city. These GPSmyCity.com iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch apps are a great way to tour an area at your own pace, with an impressive variety of walks and cities available. GPSmyCity.com is sponsoring the following quiz about Chicago here; e-mail your answers to quiz@gpsmycity.com and you could win three city walk apps to use this spring, summer, fall...or whenever you choose.

1) Chicago is known by several names. What isn't it called?

a) the Windy City
b) the City of Big Shoulders
c) the City of Lights

2) Chicago’s downtown area is known as ________. The nickname refers to the area encircled by the elevated train tracks.

a) the Loop
b) the Hook
c) the Ellipse

3) Chicago is the birthplace among others of McDonalds, the chewing gum giant Wrigley’s and the cell phone giant Motorola. What sport has been invented here:

a) 16-inch softball
b) baseball
c) squash

4) At the time of its completion in 1974 the Willis Tower was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years. How many states are visible from its roof?

a) 3
b) 4
c) 5

5) Chicago is the third largest city in United States, its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland," being the 27th most populous metropolitan area in the world. What American cities are more populous than Chicago?

a) New York and Houston
b) Los Angeles and New York
c) Philadelphia and New York

6) Chicago is home to the largest population of _______ in the world, except Warsaw:

a) Poles
b) Czechs
c) Serbs

7) In 1900, Chicago successfully completed a massive and highly innovative engineering project. Since then the Chicago River is the only river in the world that:

a) flows North in the Northern Hemisphere
b) flows backward
c) the only river in the world that flows both northwards and southwards across the line of the Equator

8) Each year, the Chicago River is dyed green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick is the patron saint of what country?

a) Ireland
b) Scotland
c) Poland

9) The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the largest and most extensive collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world. Which of these painters was not an Impressionist:

a) Monet
b) Cezanne
c) Dali

10) The University of Chicago is the site of the world's first:

a) atomic reaction
b) unmanned flight
c) extraterrestrial encounter

Good luck -- and I'll also be featuring an art-related question next week on this blog for another chance to win a GPSmyCity.com walking tour app for the city of your choice.

(Pictured: Chicago's Prudential Plaza at night)

olden days

Awaking from a dream
I grieve.
My sleep no more is so peaceful
As in the olden days.

Words: Ishikawa Takuboku (1885-1912)

Image: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, #45. The Yoroi Ferry (Hiroshige, ca. 1856)

[If you're able to donate, please help Japan through this horrible crisis and give whatever funds you can to the American Red Cross or other reputable charitable organizations.]

more tarbell

FYI: more Tarbell is supposed to sound like more cowbell for any Christopher Walken/Saturday Night Live fans.

Still and nonetheless, it always seems like American Impressionist Edmund Tarbell should be a better known name in the world of art, though he is well-respected and well-represented in museums. So many of his paintings have subtly unusual poses or compositions that make them memorable, and in that way he reminds me somewhat of French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. And here is a bit more Tarbell for us all, namely The Blue Veil (1898), Across the Room (1891), and In the Orchard (1891).

if a picture equals a thousand words

...this is a fine one for today.

Sunshine After a Snowstorm -- Walter Launt Palmer (1854-1932)