ML - Michigan Avenue

2014 - Issue 3 - May/June

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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continued on page 86 W it h it s pocket watches melt ing in a ba r ren la ndscape, Sa lvador Da lí's The Persistence of Memory may be t he poster image of Sur rea lism. But for ma ny it's a disconcer t ing work, bra zenly da r ing t he viewer to decipher what it's all about. The art of René Magritte can be equally cryptic, yet his use of ever yday element s a nd t he simple way he rendered his subjects encourage our curios- it y. "Mag r it te: T he Myster y of t he Ordina r y, 1926 – 1938," coming in June to the Art Institute of Chicago, examines the pivotal years when the sober -m inded Belg ia n-bor n g raph ic desig ner metamorphosed into a singular artist. "This exhi- bition is focused on that moment when Magritte decides that he is going to make a different kind of art," explains Art Institute curator Stephanie D'Alessandro, "an art that will make, as he said, the real world 'shriek.'" The Art Institute—which organized the show in pa r t nership w it h New York Cit y's Museum of Moder n A r t a nd T he Menil Collect ion in Houston—has long had a penchant for paintings t hat g ive pause. In 1947, it devoted its annual exhibition of American work to abstract artists and Surrealists. The press condemned the show, with the Chicago Daily News decrying the "feeble imitations of a score of foreign isms." Two years later, t he museum presented t he superlat ive Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, which included works by Magritte, Marcel Duchamp, a nd Yves Ta ng uy. Before long, a ha ndf ul of Chicago collectors—including Joseph Randall Pipe Dreams THE ART INSTITUTE CELEBRATES A MASTER SURREALIST WITH "MAGRITTE: THE MYSTERY OF THE ORDINARY." BY THOMAS CONNORS HOTTEST TICKET The Menaced Assassin by René Magritte, 1927. 84 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM Culture 084-086_MA_SC_HT_May/June_14.indd 84 4/14/14 9:43 AM

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