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AIC: Modern Art (Bot)

@aicmodernart.bsky.social

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Sharing artworks from the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Art department. Automated thanks to @andreitr.bsky.social and @botfrens.bsky.social

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AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 3h

Leda https://www.artic.edu/artworks/79382/

Sculptor Constantin Brancusi believed the material with which he worked had its own life, a uniqueness and essence that he had to seek out in order to reveal the form contained within. In Leda, sculptural metamorphosis became the very subject of the work. According to classical mythology, the god Zeus changed into a swan in order to seduce the beautiful Leda. Brancusi explained to visitors to his studio that he chose to transform the transformation—changing Leda, rather than Zeus, into a swan. He explained, "I never could imagine a male being turned into a swan, impossible, but a woman, yes, quite easily." Brancusi envisioned the form "ceaselessly creating a new life, a new rhythm," which he enhanced by its circular concrete base, a type that he designed by 1916 and used in various sizes for many different sculptures.

Bequest of Katherine S. Dreier

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4h

Self-Portrait https://www.artic.edu/artworks/8000/

Wentworth Greene Field Fund

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 7h

Landscape https://www.artic.edu/artworks/94144/

Gift of Mrs. Sigmund W. Kunstadter in memory of Sigmund W. Kunstadter

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 21h

The Old Cabman https://www.artic.edu/artworks/4105/

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 1d

Landscape at Cagnes https://www.artic.edu/artworks/59967/

Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 1d

The Lamps https://www.artic.edu/artworks/118671/

Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 1d

Two Personages in Love with a Woman https://www.artic.edu/artworks/129854/

Gift of Mary and Leigh Block

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 1d

Homage to the Romantic Ballet https://www.artic.edu/artworks/99775/

Lindy and Edwin Bergman Joseph Cornell Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 1d

Wings https://www.artic.edu/artworks/62326/

Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 2d

Woman on Rose Divan https://www.artic.edu/artworks/27980/

Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 2d

The Leap of the Rabbit https://www.artic.edu/artworks/8999/

Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 2d

Small Crouching Nude without an Arm https://www.artic.edu/artworks/13107/

Gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 2d

The Circus Rider https://www.artic.edu/artworks/118614/

Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 2d

Composition https://www.artic.edu/artworks/52998/

Bequest of Maxine Kunstadter

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 3d

Baudelaire https://www.artic.edu/artworks/90865/

Through prior gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 3d

Untitled https://www.artic.edu/artworks/250767/

Gift of Maya Moran Manny in memory of Carter H. Manny, Jr.

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 3d

Still Life (Centrifugal Expansion of Colors) https://www.artic.edu/artworks/66031/

Alfred Stieglitz Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 3d

Sunset https://www.artic.edu/artworks/61608/

Paul Klee was an artist and teacher at the Bauhaus for most of that famed school’s existence. Initially head of the bookbinding department, Klee made his greatest contribution as a lecturer on the theory of form in art for the basic design course. There, he developed his ideas about the “polyphony” of painting—the simultaneous effect of formal elements that produces “a transformed beholder of art.”
Klee was also a trained musician and shared with many artists of the early twentieth century the idea that music was the key to producing a new, abstract art. He was interested in the temporal character of music and its possible translation into forms of art. Works like Sunset reflect the principles of rhythm: linear structures, forms, and tonal values are orchestrated into a measured, vibrating image. To produce such a harmonious effect, Klee layered an intricate pattern of dots over a neutral background. Abstract, geometric, and overlapping shapes balance with recognizable forms, such as the schematic face in the upper left and the red sun and arrow in the lower right. The resulting composition—balancing stillness and movement, shallowness and depth—relates to Klee’s larger project of looking to music to produce an art that “does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible.”

Gift of Mary and Leigh Block

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 3d

Femme au fond blanc https://www.artic.edu/artworks/54751/

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4d

Portrait of Dr. Gosset https://www.artic.edu/artworks/158999/

Gift of Mary and Leigh Block

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4d

Standing Woman https://www.artic.edu/artworks/28421/

Grant J. Pick Purchase Fund

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4d

Man of the Night https://www.artic.edu/artworks/118734/

This work is often referred to as large Man of the Night, probably to distinguish it from a closely related, but smaller version (see Chicago, Allan Frumkin Gallery, The Sculpture of Germaine Richier: First American Exhibition, 1954, exh. cat., no. 19 (ill.), as Man of the Night). The sculpture seems originally to have been simply called Man of the Night; the qualification “large” first appeared in parentheses, following the title, in the 1959 exhibition at the Musée Grimaldi, Chateau d’Antibes, the first major retrospective of Richier’s work to follow her death earlier that year. It would seem, therefore, that this qualification should not be considered an integral element of the title. Three other, smaller sculptures, bearing the same title and date as the Bergman cast are recorded in the catalogue of a recent retrospective (see Paris 1996, p. 207, nos. 65–68). The ones reproduced (nos. 65 and 67) are of a distinctly different design.During the 1950s, Richier created various hybrids by “crossing human species with other organisms, animal and vegetable” (David Sylvester, “On Germaine Richier,” in London, Hanover Gallery, Germaine Richier, 1955, exh. cat., n. pag.). Sylvester perceived these sculptures as an assault on the human body, a test of what it can endure and still remain human. As Sylvester noted, “for Richier the assertion of the human image does not depend on creating…fine, noble effigies of unadulterated man. For her, the assertion of the human image is achieved through its denial. Hers is a human image challenged, battered, ruined, and still obstinately human” (ibid.). Paul Guth’s description of Man of the Night in his studio interview with Richier, draws attention, moreover, to another kind of tension in this work, between the figure’s winged and earthbound qualities: “We come to The Man of the Night. He has a bat’s head, triangle-shape. Stumps of wings rise from his back. He grips the earth with leaden paws. He has to! If he hadn’t such heavy paws his wings would bear him aloft” (Guth 1957–58, p. 82).Here the most human aspects of the figure are the lower part of the body and its heavy, lumpen limbs. The tension between the figure’s lower half and the raised wings may refer to the struggle to remain “human,” to which Sylvester alluded, and which characterized an anxious postwar Europe. The wings, which we might at first associate with the elevated and aspiring in man, are upon further observation clearly those of a bat and, like the head, the least rather than the most human aspect of the figure. Furthermore, the outspread wings here recall the image that, in Western tradition, symbolizes human sacrifice and divine redemption most vividly: the Crucifixion. Finally, the entire surface of the sculpture is scarred by a web of interlocking, incised lines, an effect Richier possibly derived from her drawing technique of this period (see Paris 1996, pp. 198–99, nos. 118–19, ills.). In Man of the Night, Richier suggested that there is no simple opposition between the base and the elevated, the earthbound and the heavenly, the human and the animal.— Entry, Dawn Ades, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art
Institute of Chicago, 1997, p. 220–21.

Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4d

Untitled (Birds) https://www.artic.edu/artworks/118687/

This work belongs to a group of paintings of birds, most of which were made between 1924 and 1920, according to Spies (Ernst Katalog/, vol. 2, 1975 pp. 381-91, nos. 728-50, ills.; vol. 3, 1976, p. 131, nos. 1044-45. ills.). Dated by Spies to 1924 (ibid., vol. 2, 1975. p. 381, no. 730, ill.), this work is especially close to Ernst's Birds, also of 1924, and Two Birds of around 1925 (ibid., vol. 2, 1975, pp. 385-86 nos. 738, 740, ills.), all three of which were given very similar cork frames by the artist. Although these works are generally thought to be executed on sandpaper, in this case at least, as Cynthia Kuniej Berry has observed, "close examination of the unframed painting reveals otherwise" (see Cynthia Kuniej Berry, Examination Report, August 27, 1993, in curatorial files). In her report, the painting is described as "executed on a fine lightweight, plain weave linen," on which the paint was "generously applied with active brushwork in textured, opaque masses with thick impasto," while 'the remainder of the surface is covered with a thin, even layer of sand" (ibid.). Ernst indeed applied paint thickly to create the forms of the birds and then scraped through to reveal colored layers below, employing what he called his grattage technique. The ribbed flecks of brown and black paint skillfully connote feathers. The circular heads of the birds appear in many of Ernst's works from the period, such as 100,000 Doves (1926, Paris, private collection; Ernst Katalog, vol. 3, 1976, p. 121, no. 1025, ill.), in which the circular form also is transformed into an eye or a breast. The undulation of the picture's surface seems intrinsic to the work and gives the effect of a relief, although it may have also resulted from environmental changes (see Kuniej Berry 1993 above). Ernst used similar carved cork frame, often with varying designs, in other works of the same subject (Ernst Katalog, vol. 2, 1975, pp. 385-91 nos. 738-40, 744-46, 749, 751, ills.; vol. 3, 1976, pp. 131, 136, nos. 1045, 1055, ills.).
— Entry, Dawn Ades, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997, p. 126.

Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4d

Still Life with Fragments https://www.artic.edu/artworks/185763/

Bequest of Richard S. Zeisler

AIC: Modern Art (Bot) @aicmodernart.bsky.social · 4d

Fragment of "Mother and Child" https://www.artic.edu/artworks/28884/

Gift of Pablo Picasso