My introduction to Marc Chagall’s dreamlike figures, at least outside of an art history book, was in 1998, during a trip to France. But the first time I saw Marc Chagall’s America Windows was in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (it is, of course, the backdrop for Ferris and Sloane’s kiss at the Art Institute of Chicago). Beloved in both French museums and opera houses and to American moviegoers, Chagall is probably best known for reinventing the stained glass window.
When I moved to Chicago in 2005, America Windows was in the process of being deinstalled for the Art Institute’s expansion, so I didn’t get to see it in person until it was unveiled again last fall. I’ve since seen it many times in the Art Institute’s Modern Wing, where it’s exhibited near smaller versions of public art in Chicago, including Calder’s Flamingo and an unnamed Picasso sculpture. (Incidentally, the irony is palpable: an exhibit on public art in a space available to those who can pay nearly $20 for admission.)
Laura M. Browning on whether mass-produced art can still be considered art
Laura M. Browning considers her resistance to the art of Jeff Koons
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: “This was my first visit to the murals, but it was clear they had changed. I was walking along an abandoned viaduct in Pilsen, one of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. It was gray and cold, like so many glum Chicago afternoons, and the murals struck the same tenor as the late fall weather.”
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: What strange hold over us do murals possess?
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: A trip to the Print Room of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: British sculptor Rebecca Warren’s work straddles the line between abstract and figurative
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: What happens when you return to the art you love?
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: Investigating the impenetrable blackness of Miroslaw Balka’s “How It Is”
ART CAN’T HURT YOU BY LAURA M. BROWNING: A public work of art proves to be unexpectedly disconcerting
Paul M Davis