• Tag Archives Baroque

  • Feeling Rushed

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                              Waxing Harvest Moon

    With Latin on Friday and my tour day on Thursday things can get a bit rushed.  I’m feeling a bit behind right now since my sententiae antiquae are not done and my translation of the reading remains.  The Baroque tour is done, however and I look forward to giving it twice tomorrow.  Tomorrow, too, is the Thaw exhibition lecture.

    Not sure when I’m going to get my sententiae done, especially the vexed English to Latin, maybe late tomorrow night, just like real school.  Over the weekend it’ll be bulbs, bulbs and the first draft of the Future of Liberal Thought.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden Humanities 📎and tagged

  • A Baroque Morning

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                 Waning Back to School Moon

    Down to Ada’s Deli this am for fried matzo and egg with onions and lox.  My mystery guest (Kate’s retirement gift) told me her kids loved fried matzo with syrup.  Hmm…not with lox and onions for this gentile.

    We had a spirited hour long discussion.  Very high energy, Deb is.  Her fiance deals in the secondary metals market, aluminum.  She’s in favor of retirement, wants to travel with her new love.  She used to live in Hyde Park and brightened when I said we could have met at Jimmie’s.  Gonna be good, I know for sure.

    When we finished, I walked out on Wabash to Washington.  Orthodox Jewish men here with black satchels.  Jeweler’s Row.  Up Washington to Michigan Avenue, south a block of Michigan and over to the Art Institute.  Great weather and I considered just heading into Grant Park, but the Institute was right there.

    Wandered in the European Art before 1900, finding many Baroque paintings, some wonderful Renaissance works, too.  Overall, our collection compares well, not in quantity but in quality.  Baroque is a propaganda art form like Socialist Realism; the Roman Catholic church wanted to counter the rising tide of the Protestant Reformation.  One branch of that counter reformation effort emphasized images that spoke of particularly Catholic themes, at least as the Catholic church saw it:  forgiveness, assumption of Mary, saints, crucifixion scenes.

    They were lucky that some of the very best painters in the Western tradition came to the task with energy and invention.  Many well known names were Baroque painters:  Vermeer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Poussin, Rubens and Vermeer.

    The Baroque painters select the climactic moment to depict. They use rich, deep colors, often lots of shadow. wanting to arouse emotion, a commitment of faith in the religious insistence.

    Religious painting does not exhaust Baroque themes, however.  Our own Lucretia by Rembrandt is a Baroque work that features a historical them from Roman history.

    These are wonderful paintings, romantic in a sense, calling the viewer to participate, to feel, to decide.  Glad I had the chance to see more examples here in Chicago.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture 📎and tagged

  • High School Reunion: The Experience

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall                                                   Waning Back to School Moon

    Ancientrails hits the road again tomorrow morning at 7:30 am via Amtrak to Chicago and points south.  I spend two days in Chicago at the Silversmith Hotel near the Chicago Art Institute.  A few hours wandering the halls of the Art Institute will help me with my Baroque knowledge so I can do two Friends of the MIA tours of our Baroque collection.

     

    On Wednesday morning I plan to head out to Hyde Park and the Oriental Museum at the University of Chicago.  Not on many lists to visit in Chicago this museum showcases the phenomenal involvement of the Oriental Institute in near eastern archaeology. “The Oriental Institute Museum is a world-renowned showcase for the history, art, and archaeology of the ancient Near East. The museum displays objects recovered by Oriental Institute excavations in permanent galleries devoted to ancient Egypt, Nubia, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Anatolia, and the ancient site of Megiddo.”  Docents will recognize the winged genius on the right hand wall here.

    Hyde Park has attracted me for a long time. My first wife’s brother Bob was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, a rare creature at this primarily graduate university.  When I saw Hyde Park with Bob I did it under the influence, spending a memorable night holed up in the aluminum statue celebrating the splitting of the atom under Alonzo Stagg stadium.  That was back when the University of Chicago still played football.  Enrico Fermi was the scientist.

    Later on I visited Hyde Park for several ministry related events and then earned my Doctor of Ministry through McCormick Seminary located in Hyde Park on the periphery of the University of Chicago.  Following that I commuted to Chicago once a month for two years as a student representative on the Seminary’s D.Min. committee.  While there I found and frequented the legendary Jimmy’s, a dark wood, three roomed bar noted for its highbrow clientele.  It’s a great place for a hot dog.

    Some jazz, a nice evening meal and I’ll catch the Cardinal to Lafayette.  I’m skipping Indy this time around and renting a car in Lafayette.  This will let me drive through the Indiana countryside in the fall, something I’ve always enjoyed.  While in Alexandria seeing old friends from the class of 1965, I’ll be staying in an unusual location, Camp Chesterfield.  Camp Chesterfield, founded in 1886 as a Spiritualist Church, and now center for Indiana Spiritualists, has an international reputation in the Spiritualist community.

    I find it a fascinating sub-culture, an almost straight dose of late 19th century Spiritualism.  They have a hotel on the grounds and I’m booked there for three nights.  I want to take in the flavor of the place from a residential perspective.  I may get a reading or two.

    Ancientrails will get updated on the road, but I’m not sure about internet connections, especially at Camp Chesterfield.  They specialize in ethereal connections, ectoplasm.  So, it will be episodic, but look for new entries.  I’ll be back home on October 5th.


    📂This entry was posted in Travel 📎and tagged