An afternoon at the Art Institute

The last trip I made to the Art Institute here in Chicago (who can resist when it's free all month) was a strange sort of de-contextualized one. Maybe I've been spending too much time thinking about context lately, but nothing seemed like what it was. Or what it was intended to seem like.

The European Decorative Arts section looks like this at the moment:



It's a strange sight made even stranger by the bizarre Yayoi Kusama-esque display of paperweights attached in a smaller room.





Maybe this is a consequence of contemporary people with contemporary thoughts designing displays. There was something funny about looking at such objects on display as purely decorative. It's almost as though, in truth just balls of glass, they masqueraded for a while as paperweights, somehow a different thing entirely, and have now been rendered (by their new found uselessness) balls of glass once more. Purely decorative at last, as perhaps they always have been.

Also fascinating was the Maya pottery from the Late Classic period decorated by Ah Maxam. At least, so says the sign. There is a strange kind of hubris is claiming that knowledge. Apparently the 'artist's ' name comes from a glyph on the side, although various groups have attributed it to the owner of the vessel or a professional title or perhaps the name of the artist. But doesn't it sound important if we know the artist's name? Doesn't it seem as if the museum is doing an especially good job?

The graphic qualities of this work are astonishingly striking and startlingly beautiful. It requires a much better look than I can offer you.