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Chicago, Illinois
It's just a brief interruption of the swirling dust sparkle jet stream
A small detail of my favorite painting, the apex of pointillism, the high point of Georges Seurat's career and reason alone to brave the miserable traffic (damn Minnesota drivers!) for the seventy miles south to Chicago.
The full sized painting is roughly eight feet high by twelve feet across, it hangs on the back wall of a gallery on the second floor with only one door opening that leads to an adjacent hallway and multiple exits, all staffed with semi-professional guards and well appointed video cameras.
The reason I tell you this is that I want this painting. Not a print or reproduction but this actual painting. To obtain it I am in the process of assembling a taut, highly skilled team of evil geniuses, thieves and shallow stereotypes (in no particular order). I'll be the obsessed ring leader with some type of dark secret in his past that he is attempting to atone for. I'm still searching for a highly skilled computer hacker, recently released from jail for a crime he did not commit; a wise old genius who misses the action and longs for one more chance at a big job; and of course a comic relief explosives expert with a bad British accent. Just be careful if you apply for the wise old genius position, he (or she) is usually killed at some point for the greater good, although you will be afforded a heroic death scene with a painful speech explaining how you would rather die as a criminal as opposed to slowly dying every day by living a normal, healthy life without crime.
If you're in, just be glad that I've yet to be obsessed with my favorite sculpture, Richard Serra's "Tourquing Ellipses," several solid tons of steel walls. That would require much more heavy lifting.
Chicago is the only place on earth where Modernism has yet to become unfashionable. The most likely reason for this is that the city is populated with so many good Modern buildings that they have yet to lose its magic and heroic optimism. This is Mies van der Rohe's Federal Center, along with a somewhat familiar Alexander Calder sculpture that appears to be trying desperately to escape its own reflection in the Miesian curtain wall.
From the front door of the Art Institute, the reflection of the Sears Tower quietly sneaks a view from far down Adams Street, still self conscious that everyone likes that damn short John Hancock Tower with its showy cross bracing and all its obnoxious, big shot North Michigan Avenue friends much, much better.
Is Chicago, is not Chicago, well, actually it is Chicago, specifically the legendary towers surrounding the north side of the North Michigan Avenue Bridge, glowing under the stormy skies of Venetian Night 2002. Not far away a half million locals crowded by the lakefront, watched a parade of local boats adorned with festive, twinkling lights and prepared for a fireworks display, all the while waiting patiently for me to just stop taking pictures and join them.
Fifteen stories of parked cars enjoy the million dollar view across the river and straight down State Street.
Helmut Jahn's heroic and colorful public space becomes private every weekend as the building remains closed to all but its trusty cleaning staff.
At some point I fully expect to find myself facing some sort of restraining order from the Chihuly people. This is a small part of Dale Chihuly's "Garden of Glass" full scale installation, a wonderful exhibit in an oppressively hot and humid greenhouse in Chicago. It runs until early September and remains highly recommended for anyone within striking distance of Northern Illinois.
Far and away the most well known of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Houses, the Robie House remains under reconstruction forever, or at least to 2007, whichever comes first. Much smaller in reality than expected, its living room/dining room still has enough reasons to make you forget about the scaffolding and city as you immerse yourself in its (almost) hundred year old low ceilings and impossibly cantilevered self.
