At 78, Clint Eastwood still likes to play the tough guy but he is also a doting father and a champion of great female roles.
March 02, 2009
When one of my meetings in Chicago last week was abruptly cancelled, I escaped to the Art Institute of Chicago. To my delight, admission was free for the entire month of February.
I knew the Art Institute housed significant works, but I had forgotten the scope and richness of its collections.
In the Impressionist wing, I stood transfixed before Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. I could feel myself stepping into the massive 7’x10’ canvas to join the fashionable, umbrella-covered couple walking down the wide boulevard near St. Lazare train station. I wonder if I’m pleased to be walking the city’s wide, transformative avenues or do they make me regret the loss of the personal feel of the old Paris neighborhoods?
One room over, Seurat’s equally grand A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86) dominates the space. Although the painting is set in a park on an island in the Seine, it raises many of the same questions asked by Caillebotte’s street scene. How well do the different social classes mix in the same public space?
Finally, I make my way to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942), whose image of late-night customers in a diner so beautifully captures the loneliness and isolation one sometimes feels in the big city.
There is something timeless about the time travel I have just experienced.
Outside in the whipping rain, black umbrellas bob along Michigan Avenue while high above unfinished towers, a dozen cranes stand idle. A few lone skaters in Millennium Park brave the elements.
Whoever said art imitates life knew a lot about both.
still thinking about today...
The Art Institute of Chicago is one of my favourite places on earth. The three afternoons I have spent there thus far in my life have been among the happiest anywhere. I was enchanted by the medieval collection above all, but the impressive Impressionist showing was and is certainly captivating. That was, in fact, the main reason for my application to the University of Chicago. I had marvelous dreams of spending every Saturday at the Institute, spinning endless fancies about the paintings and their subjects. The stars were not, however, aligned to this fortunate outcome. Manhattan, here I come. Ah well, it really is a terrible tragedy. New York and all. Note the sarcasm. At least I'll have the Cloisters for consolation.
BOBBY'S on Rush Avenue, the NAVY Pier, the ART Institute ... three places I never miss when going thru or to Chicago ....... It has always amazed me how many people I see, that show up in the same three places, despite the diversity of the cultural mores of the denizens in each place, individually .......
Honestly, I jumped a little bit when the page loaded and I saw the lion. I always wonder whether these posts are real time. Whether Mr. Peterman is really in that place, or just recalling. I imagine it's both. At any rate, if this one IS real time, I hope he stopped to see The Song of the Lark. It's pretty stunning.
Though emotionally draining when you've built the event up, as I had.
I was sitting on a bench, halfway up the main interior staircase, and we'd just 'wrapped' shooting. I was pulling bobby pins out of my hair and slipping out of my heels. The other girls and the director were excited to explore, and on any other given day, I would have been, too. But all I wanted was a nap. The experience drained me. I also think I didn't want to see anything else after seeing something that affected me so deeply. I wanted that feeling to linger.
The security guard that had been assisting us since we arrived, had even cleared the entire exterior staircase, from lion to lion for our shooting, came up to me.
Her: Can I bring you anything?
Me: A cot? A Scotch?
Her: (grinning) I have just the thing. She literally took me by the arm and led me to the rear elevator. A few of the girls followed. I think they were worn out, too. (Miss Ive has this effect on people, she's been told)
I seriously couldn't even speak. I think we were in the freight elevator. It took forever.
When it opened, we were in the basement, in miniature world.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/thorne
A winding path of glass case after glass case, of meticulously-crafted, model rooms, that:
"enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s."
It's comfort food for little girls the world over. It was perfect. We all walked, without talking and pressed our worn-out noses against the glass.
At one point, I turned around to see the other girls, all of us in our Peterman dresses, high heels, tiny purses, an assortment of our mothers' and grandmothers' jewelry that made it out of dusty velvet boxes for this adventure.
Huge smile. Little girls playing dress up, amidst the best dollhouses in the world.
A perfect end to a perfect day.
On Topic, if aslant: I? I wonder if ever I shall know the makings of MissIve's 'Lark' trip, of which everyone else knows all; of the how and the why of her presence this day in a museum and city that enchant me as do they her; of the condition, the notion, the characters in the book I infer she's writing; of -- picture it! -- how she et al. came to be arrayed in Mr. Peterman's dresses today in that magical museum in that siren city on its other-worldly lake; of who photographs them and why; of the eventual destination of those photogrpahs; of her position in The Peterman World, clearly apart from the rest of us who reside there; of how she came to know the Messrs. Peterman in the first place. Of how she wisely, craftily keeps to herself her self, all her selves.
On: Mr. Peterman, you bring out my greenest envy: Seurat, Hopper, CAillebot, the building itself, the city. My visits found Chicago enwrapped in soft-lovely fog, grayly misty. Wind sliced through my coat while skaters flew frigid air balletically, unfazed, apple-cheeked.
Your painters are among my favorites (xcepting Caiilebot, whose work I don't know). Not only does Edward Hopper's painterly method fascinate me, so alive are his characters, I can never resist wwriting their stories in my head, a habit proved useful in painting classes where I modeled. Once you mount the 'set'; once lights are perfectly arranged; once you find a position you can maintain without a muscle-twitch, flinch, flutter; once each painter finds his perspective on you in that large room, you set to work giving what's needed, a path each treads her own way. I used that silent, almost-not-breathing time to write (in my head): The prospect of wasting three potentially-productive hours each day isn't in me. My response to (an interview-question), "What do you most like to write about?" was "Whatever comes into my head." But not entirely: Always I've work in progress, but if that fails I become a character in a painting, most often Hopper's. Becoming a character helps me give painters my best: It eliminates self-consciousness; I'm not myself. And Hopper's work, his people, have always drawn me. Something there is in his people that says, "This is how life really is."
Georgia!
I can assure you that the only Peterman World in which I travel is here at the Eye. But I love the way you say it, anyway!
And though it's true that I'm here less these days, I never attempt to keep to myself. Anytime you'd like to hear the story of the Lark adventure (redundant?) and film, drop me a line. I'm posting a 'that's a wrap' summary piece at my site soon. I'll post the link here. Promise. It's all been said here already, just in bits. And truthfully, to this day, when people ask me 'what the trip was,' I struggle to answer. Just one of those things, I guess.
I appreciate your curiosity and your thoughtful posts.
Best,
M.I.