Matthew Yglesias (June 29, 2008) - Adventures in Bad Tourism (Domestic Policy)

Did they have a Portrait of Ross out in the contemporary wing? The pile of candy?

Posted by Freddie | June 29, 2008 10:54 AM

How could you forget Ferris Bueller's Day Off?

Posted by Aaron Bergman | June 29, 2008 10:56 AM

Second Aaron Bergman - you need to rewatch Ferris Bueller's Day Off a few more times.

Posted by MBG | June 29, 2008 11:00 AM

A similar thrill sometimes occurs the first time one encounters the original of a much-reproduced art work--looking at art in reproduction is often a pretty inadequate experience.

I remember the first time I saw Picasso's "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon" at MoMA in New York. After having been shown the thing innumerable times in textbooks and slides and just not "gotten it," when I was finally in a room with the original piece, I instantly understood why it's considered a great painting.

Posted by James Gary | June 29, 2008 11:03 AM

If you click here you'll see a picture of one of my favorite pieces in the AIC. It is called a portrait of Ross, by Felix Gonzalez Torres. As you can see it is a pile of brightly colored individually wrapped candies. Ross was the artist's lover. When he was diagnosed with AIDS, the doctor told him (Ross) that his ideal weight was 155 pounds. Every morning 155 pounds of this candy is measured out and placed on the floor. Visitors are encouraged to take a piece, gradually reducing the weight. So it is a giving, generous piece of art, but there is a dark side, represented by the loss of weight in the candy, and by extension the weight loss brought on by AIDS. But every morning it's brought back up to 155 pounds, so it's eternal.

One of the things I like about it is how to a lot of people who don't take the time to investigate, it's sort of a parody of contemporary art-- why, it's just a pile of candy! That's not art! But when people take the time to understand it, I haven't found many who aren't moved by it.

Posted by Freddie | June 29, 2008 11:12 AM

... who doesn't know that it's in Chicago?

Posted by Anthony Damiani | June 29, 2008 11:14 AM

MGB: Matt was about 4 when Ferris Bueller's Day Off came out.

Posted by Grogor | June 29, 2008 11:22 AM

My wife and I experienced almost the exact same thing with "Starry Night," which has always been one of my wife's favorite paintings. We went to the MoMa, but had no idea that "Starry Night" was there. Seeing it there immediately got us more excited about the visit (it was in the first gallery we entered).

Oddly enough, though, we didn't see "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon" when we were there- it must have been on loan at the time.

On a side note- I had always hated Jackson Pollack until I actually saw his work in person at the MoMa. Now he's one of my favorites.

Posted by Mark | June 29, 2008 11:27 AM

Matt, this will sound funny, but if you're really into the painting, you might get something extra out of the current production of Sunday in the Park with George. I thought it was worthwhile, and I don't even like Sondheim. The visual effects of the production, taking the painting apart and putting it back together, were very interesting. Something to note if you pass through NYC. I guess they won't do this one as a touring company, though, will they? Not a broad enough appeal.

Posted by PT&S | June 29, 2008 11:30 AM

Grogor, everybody born before 1998 has seen that movie. I'm younger than MY and I've seen it many times. Seriously, is it possible these days in the US to consider yourself well-educated and not know that that Seurat piece is at the museum at the AIC?

Posted by Reality Man | June 29, 2008 11:38 AM

PT&S, the revival of Sunday in the Park with George has just finished its Broadway run. Which sucks, really, because I live on the opposite side of the planet from NY (Singapore) and am visiting NYC next month, and I so badly wanted to catch this production.

On the brighter side, I do plan to visit Chicago also and will hopefully see this painting in person.

Posted by JH Kim | June 29, 2008 11:43 AM

> But wallpaper aside, the point is that not
> knowing what the collection's highlights are until
> you get a chance to look around

OK, for those who have never been to the Art Institute of Chicago: this painting has been the centerpiece of the entire museum since it was acquired (in 1910 IIRC but maybe earlier than that), it is about 12' x 20' in size, and it is on the wall directly as one enters the Impressionist gallery (itself the core of the 'Tute's collection and reputation). "Coming across" SAotIoLJ is like "coming across" a sledgehammer that a concrete worker is swinging in your vicinity.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 29, 2008 11:58 AM

Pretty funny how an entire generation (myself included) associates this painting first and foremost with Ferris Bueller. That's the only reason I would have to know that this painting is in Chicago.

Posted by Andrew | June 29, 2008 12:12 PM

MGB: Matt was about 4 when Ferris Bueller's Day Off came out.

Oh, please. Everyone in my and Matt's generation has seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's on TV all the time, among other things.

Posted by John | June 29, 2008 12:14 PM

Boy, "cranky" is right.

As someone who has been surrounded by images of art my whole life, yet never lived around a high quality museum, I couldn't tell you where most works of art live. Some are directly associated with place, of course, like the Sistine Chapel, and some are so often referenced with place that it's as if they were painted on ("Mona Lisa" and the Louvre.)

But for those of us casual appreciators of art, for whom going to a museum and seeing these works in person is an extremely rare treat (and who often only see them in person when they are on loan), this isn't obvious at all.

I grew up with Ferris Bueller and, when I pause to think about it, I remember that scene with this painting (and vaguely remember that the story was set in Chicago because the baseball game was a Cubs game), but this knowledge is passive.

Walking through the AIC, I was "surprised" to see A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, which isn't the same thing as not knowing the painting was once in Chicago. Of the people familiar with the painting (even if they don't know its name), I'd bet less than 2% know where it lives.

And Matt is right, this is the greatest surprise about visiting galleries. AIC was an incredible treasure to discover and perhaps the greatest experience of my visit to Chicago.

Posted by Paulk | June 29, 2008 12:18 PM

You're in Chicago?

Any book-discussion events or anything like that?

Posted by ly_yng | June 29, 2008 12:23 PM

Ferris Bueller is so old history. Find the paintings that are used for the opening credits for Desperate Housewives. And wasn't the group Chicago's Saturday in the Park inspired by the Seurat painting?

Posted by Dr. J | June 29, 2008 12:28 PM

I'm too old to have seen Ferris Bueller.

But the point of knowing what very famous works of art are in a particular museum is that you can see them (and typically, such as the Rembrandts in the Rijksmuseum, they will confound your expectations) and then be surprised by the things you've never heard of. One of my favorite examples of that was going to museums in Basel and Zuerich and seeing the really well known stuff and then discovering, totally without expecting it, that there were very remarkable painters in Switzerland in the 1880-1920 period.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | June 29, 2008 12:29 PM

Toolmaker. Stacker of wheat. Blogger of posts.

Posted by joejoejoe | June 29, 2008 12:30 PM

I appreciate that Matt posts things like this, where the snarky feedback comments are all but inevitable, and that he leaves the comments *on*, which is a lot more than you can say about most of the other blogs on The Atlantic.

Posted by dw | June 29, 2008 12:43 PM

Ditto to dw. When you're writing for a bunch of pretentious know-it-alls who love to lord their superior knowledge over you (thanks Wikipedia! shhh!) it takes some guts to post something like this which is certain to bring out the douchebags in full force.

Posted by Andrew | June 29, 2008 12:49 PM

"Seriously, is it possible these days in the US to consider yourself well-educated and not know that that Seurat piece is at the museum at the AIC?"

Is that a real question, or a parody of a pretentious know-it-all?

Posted by mad6798 | June 29, 2008 12:54 PM

Ditto to dw. When you're writing for a bunch of pretentious know-it-alls who love to lord their superior knowledge over you (thanks Wikipedia! shhh!) it takes some guts to post something like this which is certain to bring out the douchebags in full force.

Reverse snobbery like yours is worse.

Posted by Freddie | June 29, 2008 1:01 PM

It's a great painting, sure, but there are also many other treasures at the Chicago Art Institute ... el Greco, Dirk Bouts' Mater Dolorosa (IMO, the greatest painting in the museum), one of the world's largest collections of French Impressionists, a fantastic Turner, assorted hits from the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch masters, famous Picassos, Winslow Homer, etc. & etc.

Hope you enjoyed those as well.

Posted by amfzurich | June 29, 2008 1:01 PM

matthew! if i'd known you were in chicago i'd have offered to buy you a beer!

will you be marching with the "bears" in the pride parade today? i'm sure they'd welcome you with open arms.

i didn't learn about SOTIOLJ from Ferris Bueller...I learned about it from "Sunday in the Park with George" (PT&S!) when i listened to it in high school and then watched in on PBS. but then, my people learn everything from musical theatre.

oh, and when they show ferris bueller on television, they frequently edit out the whole art institute sequence for time. sad, 'cause it's an awesome montage.

Posted by btb | June 29, 2008 1:15 PM

Reverse snobbery like yours is worse.

SRSLY? This doesn't even make any sense. Calling out another's snobbery is inherently not snobbery.

Posted by Andrew | June 29, 2008 1:20 PM

Running into a classic is a great feeling.

Nighthawks is at the Art Institute of Chicago as well. That's one painting that I've always wanted to see and never thought I'd get the chance, and then in the middle of a Hopper exhibit I saw it at the Whitney. Made my day

Posted by Will | June 29, 2008 1:29 PM

Pace cranky, I'm in agreement with Matt here - even though I "knew" that SOTIOLGJ was at the Art Institute of Chicago, there's still nothing like one's first encounter with an actual famous work of art in reality - even repeated exposure to a reproduced image, even the most famous images, can't really prepare one for the experience of seeing an artwork "in person". Art per se, tends to be like that, and "famous" art even more so.

For myself, I was blown away by my first actual encounter with the Seurat, and had to sit down on one the little benches the AIC so thoughtfully provides, and just stare at the thing for about 20 minutes straight to milk the maximum out of what I knew would be an infrequent encounter (me not getting to Chicago all that often).

A lot of artworks can do that to you: one of my own favorites is the original of Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Metropolitan in New York: I hadn't known, when I saw it for the first time, that such a noted American icon was in the Met: nor, for that matter, that it had been painted by a German, in Germany, and was in fact, painted quite poorly (to say nothing of its astonishing ahistoricality).

Posted by Jay C | June 29, 2008 1:50 PM

Actually the painting that is normally in that spot is Caillebotte's Rainy Day. Grand Jatte normally resides two galleries to the south.

This is an interesting time to visit the Art Institute because they have loaned a huge number of their Impressionist paintings to the Kimbell in Fort Worth. As a result a lot of works have been pulled out of storage. In addition, they are shuffling works around in anticipation of opening the new wing so there are lots of works that have been unseen for years that have popped up. A Turner I have never seen, for example.

As for knowing what works reside where that's pretty arcane knowledge. Every art lover may know that Las Meninas is in the Prado, but name the museum where Guernica lives, or the home of Turner's Slave Ship.

This is not a form of ignorance to be ashamed of.

Posted by Mark | June 29, 2008 1:57 PM

not knowing what the collection's highlights are until you get a chance to look around preserves a certain element of the thrill of discovery even though obviously it's already a super-famous painting.

This is just goofy. It also preserves your chance to kick yourself when you come home from a trip and someone asks you what you thought of [Famous Painting] and you have to admit that you didn't see it--didn't even know it was there--because you were too wrapped up in maintaining the element of surprise.

Posted by Amber | June 29, 2008 2:09 PM

I haven't seen that particular painting, but my experience of Seurat's work seen in person (and I think I've only seen three) has always been disappointing. I like the idea of pointilism, but one of the great things about seeing a painting in person is that you can see the brush strokes and the mass of the paint. It might not matter that those things are missing in Seurat, except that his work (where I've seen it) tends to be grouped with painters who really knew how to slather paint on a canvas.

But I don't know. Maybe when it's a huge canvas the effect is different.

Posted by dr | June 29, 2008 2:32 PM

but name the museum where Guernica lives

the reina sofia... of course that's just because i was in madrid last week and got to see it with my own eyes.

having been to most major art museums I have to say that the art institute is one of the best. it has a different emphasis in that it doesn't have a strong renaissance presence but for anything after 1700 few have it beat.

Posted by Patrick | June 29, 2008 2:45 PM

...the original of Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Metropolitan in New York....was in fact, painted quite poorly...

I doubt many art historians would agree with you on this point. The 19th-century academic approach to painting had its problems, but poor technique was not among them.

Posted by James Gary | June 29, 2008 2:59 PM

"I'm a very "bad" tourist in terms of looking things up in advance and planning"

Planning is the worst thing you can do as a tourist. Buy your plane flights there and back, and maybe your first hotel stay. And then just do whatever feels right. You'll be surprised by where you go and what you see. But you won't be tied down by schedule you made up when you didn't know where you were going. The only additional planning you should do is to get any advanced visas you might need. But those are pretty rare these days. Usually, you can get one at the border.

Posted by fostert | June 29, 2008 3:06 PM

Two comments:

I was born in 83 and I never saw Ferris Bueller.

Also, I did this same thing when I visited the British Museum in London randomly. Totally had forgotten the Rosetta Stone was there. That's a pretty cool piece of history to just wander upon.

Posted by cd6 | June 29, 2008 3:15 PM

I'm with Matt - "bad" tourism is really the only way to go. And while it's true that you might miss something, that's far less tragic than the seeing-but-not-seeing thing that people do as they check things off their lists and decide what they'll say to the folks back home while still standing in front of the painting/object/building/etc.

The AIC (usually) has a lot of those "surprise, important painting!" kinds of moments. It's one of the reasons that I like taking people there for the first time. But a lot of stuff is down or in storage or on loan at the moment, because of the construction -come back after the new wing opens, the Chagall windows alone are worth the price of admision.

Posted by emily | June 29, 2008 4:13 PM

I'm going to second Matt (even though I'm about 7 years older) and say I didn't know it was at AIC. When my girlfriend and I walked into the room, I said (in my disbelief) "It's a fake!"

Posted by Klug | June 29, 2008 4:52 PM

I was wandering around the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, thoroughly enjoying myself. I turned a corner, and about 100 feet away is the Night Watch. My first two thoughts were "flip me, it's the Night Watch", and "flip me, it's huge". I'm so glad I wasn't expecting it.

Posted by Keith | June 29, 2008 5:32 PM

Nighthawks is at the Art Institute of Chicago as well. That's one painting that I've always wanted to see and never thought I'd get the chance, and then in the middle of a Hopper exhibit I saw it at the Whitney. Made my day.

To me, there's few things more wonderful than when they pull together a serious collection of an artist and take it on the road. I'd always known of Hopper's Nighthawks, so I made a special point to see the Hopper exhibit when it came to the National Gallery this past winter. Seeing Hopper entire was absolutely stunning. It was good to see Nighthawks, but it didn't dominate the experience the way I expected it to.

My all-time favorite of these (though I don't know if it went on the road) was the Picasso exhibit at MoMA ca. 1980. To see the development of Picasso from a kid who could do the Old Masters as if he was one of them, to the incredible abstract artist he'd become by about 1907, was just dazzling. It's still one of the great experiences of my life.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | June 29, 2008 7:02 PM

Of course, the most famous picture in the AIC is probably this:

http://www.artic.edu/artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_5_lg.shtml

Posted by rea | June 29, 2008 7:46 PM

To the visitors (or potential visitors) to Chicago, welcome. But neither Matt nor the others have mentioned the most striking thing about the Suerat....it is HUGE! (THe Metrpolitan in NY has a 8 x 10 or 12 x 20 --- those are inches - - - piece now labelled "A Study for . . . ." When I first saw it a few decades ago it was labelled simply "Sunday Afternoon . . .")

But the Art Institute is simply a glorious place to spend an afternoon, a lunch hour, or whatever. (If you prefer displays of defensive and offensive weapons more reminiscent of King Arthur's Court, a fantastic photograph collection, an early Chinese collection, and of course the Chagall windows, and the trading room from the Chicago Stock exchange --- we have all that too. )

Don't forget Chicago's very visible public sculpture....between clark and dearborn going from South to North...the Calder Flamingo at the federal building on Jackson...a wonderful huge Chagall mosaic at what used to be the First National Bank Building just north of Monroe...and, of course, the Chicago Picasso north of Washington at the Richard J. Daley Plaza (and Matt...if you've never seen Ferris, surely you've seen the Blues Brothers at least once.
(And if you really like outdoor public sculputre, drive about 8 miles south to the Midway Plaisance and enjoy Lordado Taft's Fountain of Time. It is worth the trip.)

And these are only a small fraction of Chicago's artistic treasures.

Posted by Barry | June 29, 2008 8:10 PM

This was a cool post to see, if only because it is the first (and to date, only) "famous" painting I've ever seen in person. I saw it in Houston when I was in 3rd or 4th grade on a field trip. Neat.

Posted by socctty | June 29, 2008 8:40 PM

Mark, 'Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying--typhoon coming on' (Turner's titles are brilliantly long-winded) is usually in the MFA in Boston, but it wasn't on display when I went looking for it last month. I suppose then that it's a part of the huge Turner exhibition that was at the National Galllery, then Dallas, and will pretty soon be in the Met. I had a similar unpleasant surprise when I went looking for 'Snow storm: Hannibal crossing the Alps' at the Tate Britian. I only know this because I'm an Art History student and aspiring aesthete.

On the general question of what constitutes a philistine, I suppose my standards are not as lax as the ages. That said, it would seem much more important that one understood how pointillism fits into the history of art than where a specific, if perhaps the most celebrated, pointillist work is located. I'd much rather Matt appreciate the formal rhymes and plastic design of Seurat's work than he know where his 'Baignards' lives. I should like people, and particularly people who suppose they're educated, to give art much more of their attention than they presently do. But this is quite different than merely memorizing an inventory of easily accessible information, such as where a work is. It entails understanding the continuing changes in styles of art over the course of human history, and also some imagination and research into how this reflects the needs, habits, and the very nature of the societies from which the artworks emerged.

Posted by Robert | June 29, 2008 8:51 PM

I was visiting Rome, and was on a square with a whole bunch of churches. So I chose one to walk into, and come in to find Caravaggio's Crucifixion of St. Peter and Conversion on the Way to Damascus. No idea they were in there (the church was Santa Maria del Popolo). That was a good day.

Posted by Dave | June 29, 2008 10:40 PM

Barry is right--there's a lot great art in Chicago. In that vein I recommend that people visit college art museums whereever they go. They are almost always small gems (and in some cases the Fogg at Harvard, for example) great museums.

Robert, I agree that exploring art is more valuable than memorizing names and places. One of the things I like about the Art Institute is that they rotate their Japanese woodblock print collection on a regular basis. That has given me the opportunity to see great art and to learn about Japanese life from about 1700 to just before WWII.

Posted by Mark | June 29, 2008 11:45 PM

rea, thanks for the link. I've seen that one there on many occasions, but it is still always great to be confronted with inexplicable greatness once again.

Posted by live | June 30, 2008 4:51 AM

Dieric Bout's Weeping Virgin Mary, as amfzurich notes, is indeed one of the finest and best pictures in the Institute's collection. My additional favorites there are:

Gerard David's The Lamentation over the Body of Christ

Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leyden's Reliquary Bust of St. Margaret of Antioch

Ivan Albright's Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida

Ivan Albright's The Picture of Dorian Gray

Posted by burritoboy | June 30, 2008 4:53 AM

The effect of seeing good art in the flesh is remarkable. For me it was Rothko and his work on display in the Tate Modern, London. I really had no idea how such abstract work could impact you.

In this youtube @ 58s you briefly see the Tate Modern instillation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xrHHn5TR4E

Posted by TDE | June 30, 2008 9:37 AM

Like all good GEN-Xers, I saw Ferris Bueller 20 times, and therefore fully expected to see the Seurat when I visited the Art Institute for the first time.

It's this one that blew me away when I caught it out of the corner of my eye.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 30, 2008 11:12 AM

I saw Picasso's Guernica for the first time in that manner, and I do think it had a larger impact on me as a result.

Posted by Will Allen | June 30, 2008 12:27 PM

To echo Emily, it is one of the places we always take visitors. Several years ago friends from Ireland were visiting, so we took them to the AIC and entered the Pritzker. Their gasps were audible as they were greated by the Caillebotte and Rodin sculpture and walls of Monet. After spending an hour touring that room they came over, almost in tears.

And they were astonished when I said there were several more rooms of the same!

They went back the next day and spent the whole day there.

And love getting the smallest thing from the museum shop.

So, if in Chicago, visit the AIC, and be surprised.

Posted by Fir Rua | June 30, 2008 12:59 PM

So what is the oddest place for a famous painting ?

I'd vote for a Forth Worth museum holding Caravaggio's Cardsharps.

Posted by David | June 30, 2008 3:13 PM

I had a cparable experience with the Seurat just over a year ago. My wife & I were visiting Chicacgo and went to the AIC, donning our little audio tour doohickeys and wandering our own ways.

It was the size of the Seurat that most took my breath away, as well as its famousness. And I might have just sort of checked it off my list of cultural experiences, but for the children's tour part of the audio. It invited you to take the whole thing in, then move closer to see the brushstokes, then back out to see the whole differently.

Elementary, I know, but it really stuck with me, allowing me to incorporate it into a talk I gave on ritual and music. So thank goodness for serendipity and more than a little naïveté.

Posted by Christopher P | June 30, 2008 4:33 PM

"So what is the oddest place for a famous painting ?"

Remember that, until quite recently (the early nineteenth century though there are a handful of prior exceptions) there were effectively no public museums at all - there were private collections of the monarchs or nobility in their residences that were sometimes open to the public, each church and monastery had its own collection available for viewing and the collections of art academies. But no real museums that were guided by professional curators who intended to give a wide perspective on the best art they could find. Most of the above grew their collections over vast periods of time basically upon the personal taste of the family members or individual clergy or parishioners of the church. Before the museum wave got going in the nineteenth century, many of the art objects we view in museums today were located in rural monasteries, isolated country houses, parish churches, hospitals, urban palaces and houses, schools and so on.

Posted by burritoboy | June 30, 2008 5:18 PM

If you want to find something that is totally unexpected, go to Navy Pier, enter the interior portion, and walk past all of the shops.

You'll enter the only (that I'm aware of) stained glass museum in the world. And more than a few of the pieces are extraordinary.

The AIC is awesome though. Don't miss the eastern art and sculpture.

Posted by jerry 101 | June 30, 2008 6:26 PM

"You'll enter the only (that I'm aware of) stained glass museum in the world. And more than a few of the pieces are extraordinary."

There's the stained glass museum in the cathedral at Ely (near Cambridge in England). There are also glass museums (not solely or even primarily focused on stained glass) in Tacoma and Corning.

Posted by burritoboy | June 30, 2008 8:49 PM

"You'll enter the only (that I'm aware of) stained glass museum in the world. And more than a few of the pieces are extraordinary."

There's the stained glass museum in the cathedral at Ely (near Cambridge in England). There are also glass museums (not solely or even primarily focused on stained glass) in Tacoma and Corning.

Posted by burritoboy | June 30, 2008 8:56 PM

"You'll enter the only (that I'm aware of) stained glass museum in the world. And more than a few of the pieces are extraordinary."

There's the stained glass museum in the cathedral at Ely (near Cambridge in England). There are also glass museums (not solely or even primarily focused on stained glass) in Tacoma and Corning.

Posted by burritoboy | June 30, 2008 9:00 PM

"Seriously, is it possible these days in the US to consider yourself well-educated and not know that that Seurat piece is at the museum at the AIC?"

I knew the painting was in the AIC and Matt didn't.

Matt went to Harvard and I didn't.

Pretentious elitist though I may be, Matt still holds the trump card if he wants to play it. It's that security that allows him the freedom to post about the lacunae in his cultural knowledge.

Harumph.

Posted by Jim | June 30, 2008 9:25 PM

The Art Institute may be eclipsed in viewing pleasure per inch only by the Tate and the Frick. The Tate has all those Turners, and the Frick seems to have a batting average around .750 or so.

As for coming upon the Seurat unexpectedly, we were walking around the Tate dazed by the Turners when we passed this

http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/T/T03/T03729_8.jpg

just set up in the hall, like a visual obiter dicta. You can't tell from a photograph because it's so stylized, but in person, at hip height, the piece looks like it's alive and you could pet it. (Actually pet it? Lose 10 years in prison, I bet.)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 1, 2008 9:06 AM

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