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BUS TRIP to the Art Institute of Chicago June 8, 2023
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Salvador Dalí: The Image Disappears
This exhibition—the first devoted to the Spanish Surrealist at the Art Institute—presents more than 30 paintings, drawings, photos, and surrealist objects to explore this critical period, considering Dalí’s work in light of two defining, if contradictory, impulses: an immense desire for visibility and the urge to disappear. The artist cultivated these notions in path-breaking experiments with materials and palette, in depictions of exotic and mundane edible items, in surrealist fashions and sculptures with spaces for hiding, and in optically dynamic visual illusions or “double images.” Examining this series of “disappearing acts” created by the artist at the height of his fame, the exhibition show icons of the Institute’s Surrealism collection alongside celebrated loans from around the world. New technical analysis illuminates hidden and disappearing imagery within his works that offer veiled personal meditations on his wry, and ultimately paranoid approach to art making. banner image Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières), 1887 [detail]; oil on canvas Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Charles Deering McCormick, Brooks McCormick, and the Estate of Roger McCormick |
Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape
Between 1882 and 1890, Vincent van Gogh, along with Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand flocked to villages around Asnières, outside Paris. This area along the Seine River had long been a popular spot for recreation and relaxation but was becoming increasingly populated with coal, gas, and manufacturing facilities in the last decades of the 19th century. And while its industrial development was an unappealing aspect to many, these artists found in the changing physical and social landscape a fresh and rich source of creativity. The area’s visual vocabulary—its bridges, embankments, factories, parks, and villages—along with its sunlight, water, and brilliant natural color prompted intense experimentation. More than 75 paintings and drawings from this intensely creative period—many from private collections and rarely publicly displayed—come together for this insightful presentation. Among them are 25 works by Van Gogh, including two triptychs that will be shown together for the first time. Uniting these outstanding works in this exhibition not only sheds new light on the boundary-pushing techniques Van Gogh and his fellow painters developed during this time, but it also illuminates the power of place to inspire—to encourage pioneering work, launch career-changing ideas, and shape artistic identities. image upper left Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989)
Inventions of the Monsters, 1937; oil on canvas Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2018 |
