# 15 – Art in Chicago

We did not have a chance to see “American Windows” in Chicago, but I did get a chance to take a moment at the Art Institute in front of the famous Gaugin piece on urban isolation in early 20th century France. The painting had a long series of assorted figures in a park overlooking a river, all of the people shown as really nondescript and more as shapes. Many of them all had different variations of the same sort of dress, with the same sort of weak toned colors. All were facing the same direction as well, not necessarily one another. This demonstrated sort of the isolation that characterizes the modern world and the urban landscape in particular. As people encounter more and more other people in the streets, on the Internet, and on the phone, the response, as many urban theorists point out, is to be more reserved, more isolated, a bit more independent. This sometimes comes off as being smug or not caring about others, but really I feel like it’s just necessary and a means of comfort with the self, relieving yourself of the small town expectation of chit chatting with every passerby, often out of only that expectation and not actual caring about that person.
I also hopped downstairs to the photography exhibit and saw a few original documentary pieces from some of my heroes of early documentary work. Many of them visually described the urban landscape of the 1920s, picking up on some of these same themes of western isolation of one’s personal life. They also dealt with the estrangement one finds in the horrors of child labor and immigrant tenements. Altogether, there was this theme weaving about of the world began to change forever. Not necessarily for the worse or the better, but it had definitely changed. The building structures we see have become more important and more involved in our lives. And there are more of them. Media (books, television, etc.) we are interacting with nearly every conscious moment of the day. The human mind has expanded and changed for forever with these introductions, possibly in a sense of impending isolation. That seems to be the point of these artists.