The wings, or more formally known as Burke Brise Soleil, automatically close the wings if the wind speed reaches 23 mph with the use of two ultrasonic wind sensors. The wings open at 10 am Tuesday-Sunday, close and reopen at noon and close at 5 pm. It is such an amazing experience to witness its movement.

They always have very interesting featured exhibits, as well as its permanent collections. The featured exhibit on our trip was European Designs since 1985. It had many varieties of interesting furnishings. Some of my favorites was a “Mickey Mouse” style chair, with the back of the chair shaped into Mickey’s silhouette, and the chair legs wearing his shoes. There was also a stuffed animal couch that was a dog plush extended to look like a dog from the side but then it is stretched for you to sit on a “very fat dog.”

This museum is also just the right size. It has 4 floors of exhibitions but they are all in the same area and easy to navigate through. The Art Institute was very confusing to travel through and it was hard to see everything in a convenient fashion. The Milwaukee art museum “winds” around and guides you through the exhibits easily and efficiently. There are also various interactive exhibits for children and children-at-heart.

One of my favorite art periods or genres is Pop Art. Pop artist were holding up a mirror to society. Images of reality ranged from Warhol’s portraits of celebrities to Claes Oldenburg’s monumental sculptures of ordinary objects. In a desire to use images that were already familiar to the public, a number of artists capitalized on the power of mass media and borrowed pervasive images of American culture from magazine and newspaper ads, comics, movies, and television. In his first New York exhibition, Andy Warhol presented banal images of soup cans as he brought advertising and brand names into an art context.

There is a great Pop Art exhibit in the Milwaukee Art Museum. This exhibit featured two of my favorite artists: Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. It featured Warhol’s Cambell’s Soup Cans and the Brillo Box, as well as Lichtenstein’s Crying Girl. I love simple artworks such as these and other cartoon like works. All the bright and highly saturated colors really draw my attention.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Crying Girl reflects his interests in mass media and inexpensive high speed printing processes. The artist took the image of mechanically applied Ben-day dots and literally transposed it on the painting’s surface. Taken directly from a comic book image, this subject matter would normally be considered emotionally hot, but here it is presented in a cool calculated manner.

The Milwaukee Art Museum is definitely a place I plan to visit often in the future. With it’s beautiful facility and bright and inviting galleries, there is no other place I would rather enjoy and experience art.

Andy Warhol “Cambels Soup” 1965 acryllic on canvas. American artist born 1928, died 1987.

Milwaukee Museum, Wisconsin. Picture of a cambels can of soup in saturated and unrealistic, “psychedelic” colors. This was a realistic painting of the soup can but the colors are definitely not true to the original product.

Visual structures he used orange, green for one of the cans and the other was a blue and purple combination as opposed to the original red and white. He did stay true to only using 2 colors like the original.

Physically the cans are not distorted in anyway in fact the colors are changed but the cans still keep that iconic symbolism that many Americans can relate to today.

Socially as I stated before the cans of soup themselves, regardless of their change in color are still easily recognizable. This shows how you can do just about anything in terms of color, to an iconic symbol yet still be able to maintain its original meaning. It would be as though we took an American flag and changed the colors from red, white and blue and changed them to purple, green and yellow, it would be completely different from our own flag but the first thing you would think of would be “oh it’s an American flag”

I have seen this piece in the classroom before but never up close, so it was an exciting moment to see one of these pieces let alone 2 of them in the museum. One of the things I appreciated about this piece was the artists ability to capture the can identically down to the last line (besides the colors being off). Even though this is very close to being a symbol he has got it down perfectly. Having said this, I find it interesting how we can take something so simple as a can of soup, change the color completely and call it art. At the same time the original design was someone else’s art, so maybe there should be 2 names on the plaque instead of 1. One thing I would like to see with these 2 cans if it hasn’t been done already is a series of other cambells cans done in other colors to add to these too. This is one of many great things I saw during this class trip including the bean (I don’t know the real name).

I chose Jitish Kallat’s Public Notice 3 for this assignment because of the dual messages the text displays. His previous Public Notice pieces included text from a speech declaring India’s independence from the British Empire and Gandhi’s call for non-violent protest, but this is the first time that he’s combined two contrasting messages to emphasize his overall theme of standing against manufacturing fear as a means of control.
More information can be found on his website, http://jitishkallat.in/ and on the Chicago Art Institute’s site at http://www.artinstituteofchicago.org

2. Overview of what you saw. Where did you see it?

The installation is set into the Women’s Board Grand Staircase at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is made up of LED words in the colors of the Homeland Security Advisory system: red, orange, yellow, blue and green. They’re set into every single step on the staircase, making up 118 lines of text.

3. Opinion/analysis.

The color is what first caught my eye, and since the rainbow of colors and the general theme of the text contrast greatly each other.  Reading the artist’s statement  (above) drove the point home for me; after reading the text the way it was presented, learning the context it is put into make the piece stand out significantly in my eyes. Many of Kallat’s works focus on similar themes of the impact of historical speeches on the world as well as the impact manufactured fear such as religious fanaticism or coded warning systems can bring about. With this piece, he breaks up the message into smaller parts on each flight of the staircase, forcing the viewer to interact with it by reading each part individually and then put it back together as a whole, enhancing each viewer’s understanding by the order in which they read it, or perhaps intentionally muddling the message so that it may be rendered incoherent or send an entirely different message.

(Quick edit: Made the links clickable.)

His carvings consisted of an interesting variety of animals or creatures. Some real, some imaginary.  His carvings varried in size, some painted, some left bare. Many animals were combinations of different species. Every shadowbox told a story in some way with a real sense of adventure and emotion.

His attention to detail is fantastic. Even the smallest of sculptures were so intricate and life like. What i really found fascinating is the condition of some of these pieces that he had taken on the road with them. They look like they are ready to snap with any harsh movements.

Heather Marshall – “Legal Son” from Here And There

Heather Marshall is a realist painter based out of Chicago, Illinois. She has been exhibiting in Chicago since 2000. Her first solo show was in 2007 and she is currently included in multiple private collections. Heather also has a permanently exhibited commission for Kirkland & Ellis Law Firm in Chicago. Ms. Marshall is currently exhibiting a solo show at the Linda Warren Gallery, which is where I saw her paintings. The Linda Warren Gallery is located in the West Loop of Chicago. Heather has been a working artist being represented by the Linda Warren Gallery since 2007. She has taught college courses at the University of Notre Dame (including Painting, Drawing and Watercolor) which is where she also received her MFA in painting. She attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for her bachelor’s degree in Painting, where graduated in 2001.

Heather Marshall’s current show is titled “Here And There” and contains 15 pieces. All of her pieces are oil paintings on canvas with wooden frames. Of all 15 pieces Heather had showing at the time, “Legal Son” was the one that caught my eye. The painting is 7.25 by 8.5 inches. I am not normally drawn towards paintings, but because they were so realistic/photographic-like I found myself more attracted to them. The young boys facial features and expression dead on, making you feel almost like he’s looking directly at you trying to engage solely with you. The way she layers her paint gives off this emotion that wouldn’t be conveyed normally by hue alone. The way she seems to capture the entire sense of the environment is amazing to me. All of the information you need about the moment she is creating is right in front of you. Once you take in that information you can relate to or create the rest of the story for the image.

Also included in this collection are pieces named “24/7” which depicts a 24 hour gas station. “Fourth of July” which depicts a young girl standing on a roof in a neighborhood with a lit sparkler. Another of my favorite images was “Post Katrina” this image is the front of an apartment building with mailboxes. The buildings as well as the top of the mailboxes have been tagged with graffiti. These images she has produced have such a vivid light to them. All of her pieces in the “Here and There” collection are social commentaries on how Americans live and what we consider “normal” in our everyday lives. Imagery that we have either started to take for granite or have learned to accept as apart of social normalcy. As I am not a painter or illustrator in least, I am always amazed at the talent of people who can do so. Her work is inspiring for me; I want to be able to portray in my photography what she creates with paint.

2.       “Crying Girl” was located in the Modern art section of the Millwaukee Art Museum with a wide variety of artists and techniques that were brought mostly out of the 20^th Century. The piece was not accompanied with much information other than the artist, title, and the date it was created (1964). It is a fairly large canvas approximately five feet square and probably composed of oil paints on white stretched canvas. The woman shown in the painting is composed of flat black lines filled in with flat primary and basic colors. The detail of the character is very low and resembles that of an ink stamp or screen print. Although the colors are flat, Lichtenstein created dimension and texture on her face with his signature comic book pointillism. This gave it much of a news print comic feel. It is a very highly contrasted image with a low diversity of value and colors. At glance it is a very large and simple image.

3.       Many critics would describe the Pop Art movement to be an “American” movement but Roy Lichtenstein would disagree as he claimed his work and others to be “industrial art”. He explained that he would never attempt to reproduce his subjects but to tackle the way that the mass media sees them. This is easily understandable, not at first with “Crying Girl”, but after looking at many similar works by Lichtenstein. His characters look like they were ripped right out of news paper and magnified for a closer look at it’s social obscenities. His message in my eyes was a mockery of how these men and women, such as in “crying girl”, are portrayed to be. The mass media has this simple idea of how a person should look and act and Lichtenstein takes a highlighter to point these out in his art. The red lipstick and wavy blonde hair. The romantic ideal of these comic strips is the fantasy that the media has created for most Americans who see them. This is a common trend of “Pop” art, to take figures and images from the media and distorting them and exposing them for what they may be underneath the glamour. Another one of Lichtensteins more famous paintings “Whaaam!” is an image of a fighter jet destroying another. At first glance one would see it as a war comic strip, but under Roy’s looking glass you see the blood red fire of the explosion that is protruding from the dying pilot’s plane. This is just another example that Roy highlights from the mass media where the idea of killing and war is glorified into this heroic thing to take part in. Much of this can be derived from his experiences in World War II. Over all the painting is simple and almost unoriginal, but as an idea and as a concept it is an individual commentary on how the mass media distorts what we see as iconic.

Jill Greenberg was born in Montreal, Canada in 1967.  When her family moved to Bloomfield Hills, MI she began studying art at Cranbrook elementary school.  Before her senior year in high school she applied to Rhode Island’s School of Design for illustration.  She won the Traub Scholarship in 1984 for her art.  By winning this she was able to attend Parsons in Paris for photography the summer before she went to Rhode Island.  She graduated Rhode Island’s school of design in 1989.  Since then she has moved to New York and taken classes to further her understanding of the arts.  In 2001 she began work on the Monkey Portrait series.  She has also done portraits of politicians, celebrities and athletes.  Some of her work has been featured in the Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

When we arrived at the Kohler Center the large prints of monkey faces immediately drew me in.  There were giant portraits on each side of the hallway creating a tunnel of hilarious monkey expressions.  The giant monkey faces and the vivid colors used made for a very engaging series.

I feel this series has much more to it than just monkeys sitting in a frame.  Each primate has a human like quality to them in the photographs.  Many of them have facial expressions that could just as easily be seen on a human.  In another portrait a monkey is seductively laying across the print.  Jill did all these things deliberately.  She is trying to point out how similar monkeys and humans really are.  The message is not clear at first but upon further inspection, it becomes much more apparent.  Jill has taking a life long debate and illustrated it in a creative and entertaining manner.  Her photographs playfully prove how many similarities there are between monkeys and humans.  Her work is undoubtedly a form of photographic proof for supporting Darwin’s theory of evolution.   She shows that we have much in common with our furry brethren.  Her Monkey Portrait series was by far my favorite photographic series I saw on the trip.

This exhibit caught my attention because I’ve always been interested in children’s book illustration and I had seen some of the artists books in libraries and bookstores. The exhibit also focused on other children’s book illustrators including Nancy Carlson and Peter McCarty. What stood out to me in the midst of these other illustrators was Ering’s loose style of painting in acrylic that combined inking and hand written words. The way he paints takes advantage of things that look accidental or simple such as dripping paint or splattering it across the image or by drawing messy lines. These traits of the painting seem at first childish (which is fitting because of the nature of the book). However, the closer I got to the paintings and the longer I looked at them I realized that these traits gave each image some sense of action and ultimately contributed to the storyline and the stylistic concept of the book. Another aspect of his series of images that caught my attention was the size of them (no less than 16X16 inches) and how they were lined up sequentially along the wall. This gave me the opportunity to stand close and examine the build up of thin paint and question how he did certain things; what actions he took to create a unique effect. If I had seen them in their picture book state I might not have paid such close attention to these details.

I decided to show some of the images from the book (not from the paintings in the museum) that I really enjoyed.

The story Ering tells is about a boy who lives in a place called Cementland. He searches for treasure in this bland environment but cannot find any until he discovers a box full of seeds. He buries the seeds and wait to see what will happen but thieves keep coming to steal them. In order to prevent the theft, the boy creates a monster called Frog Belly Rat Bone to guard the seeds. The story ends in an explosion of color as the seeds turn to flowers and vegetables, brightening Cementland into a beautiful landscape. The message of the story advises patience while also bringing the reader into an idealized view of childhood and imagination.

Ering hopes that his book will inspire young readers. He says “Visually, I hope that children will get the creative urge simply by looking at the art. And then there’s the story, about a boy who constructs a new world to live in. He goes to the junkyard and fashions Frog Belly, a sort of monster-protector or guardian angel who guides him through a scary time. And in doing so, he transforms Cementland into a blooming place. That’s the thing about creativity: It allows you to look at the most mundane and boring objects and see beauty in them. That’s what I hope to get across.”

With my focus in studying design I didn’t find much that I enjoyed seeing or talking about in a lot of the galleries we visited. On our first stop to the Kohler Art Center I did catch a glimpse of something I found to be a very interesting piece of work. The creator of the images is named George Boorujy of New York. The three images I saw seemed to be part of some sort of series of pen and ink drawings. The names of the images were “Horse, Pronghorn, and Bluebird” and naturally they were hand drawn images of the animals. The artist had a unique understanding of his subjects, as he was studying to become a biologist but one day decided he would start painting and drawing these beautiful creatures instead.

The images drew me in immediately. At first I thought they might have been some sorts of studio photography, which really stood out from most of what I was seeing in the art center. After close examination of the images I realized they were not photographs at all, but very hyper detailed pen and ink studies drawn on massive sheets of paper. The images gave a sense of human expression, almost like a portrait of a person. After examining the images more I noticed that from far away the animals looked perfect and staged, but up close you could see such things as bugs in their fur and feathers, and also some traces of some rock and debris. After seeing these images I learned the importance of taking a quick second and actually looking at a piece for more than a second. What I thought were just a bunch of photos turned out to be something completely different than what I saw at first glance. I ended up liking these images even more that I learned a bit about them.

Overall Chicago was a wonderful experience. The art, food, culture, etc were all amazing. I also gained a new appreciation for rooftops after the stay at our hotel. Thanks to everyone who made my trip such a pleasure!