Trivia Factorial Field Trip: The Art Institute of Chicago
Observations and trivia for September 1, 2022
This post has no relationship to our regular programming or to the Question #6 leaderboard. Instead, it is intended to be a complement to Trivia Newsletter Variety Pack 3, released on September 1, 2022. I am famously awful at taking pictures, so be warned.
In late July, as part of the recap for Trivia Newsletter LXXVII, we quoted and then wrote the following about visual artist Cindy Sherman:
Shortly after moving to New York, she produced her Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), in which she put on guises and photographed herself in various settings with deliberately selected props to create scenes that resemble those from mid-20th-century B movies. Started when she was only 23, these images rely on female characters (and caricatures) such as the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, and the vulnerable naif. Sherman used cinematic conventions to structure these photographs: they recall the film stills used to promote movies, from which the series takes its title. The 70 Film Stills immediately became flashpoints for conversations about feminism, postmodernism, and representation, and they remain her best-known works.
Here’s an image of [Sherman’s] Untitled #96, a print of which sold in 2011 for $3.89 million, making it (at the time) the most expensive photograph ever sold:
You can go see different prints of Untitled #96 at MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
The inspiration for this post is that, four days ago, I did exactly that in Chicago:
There were six or so different prints of Sherman’s Untitled series on display. Here are a few of those:
Sherman isn’t the only artist we ran into, of course. Remember conceptual artist Barbara Kruger and our discussion of her last April in the recap of Trivia Newsletter XLVI? She’s the one who called the company Supreme a “clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” and since that newsletter, she’s been in the news with respect to her views on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs to restrict abortion access. Last year, the Art Institute ran an exhibit on her, and we missed that, but her mark can still be seen throughout the museum, including in the gift shop:
Back in Trivia Newsletter XL, we asked you what word was written on the top of the diner depicted in Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks. That’s another work that is at the Art Institute, so I was able to confirm in person:
And now I’ve got these cool socks so I don’t forget that answer:
Trivia is everywhere, including in an art museum—and not always just in the art. In the recap of Trivia Newsletter LIII, for example, we told you what the ancient city of Thebes is now known as, and that also would have been answered by this label:
I took a lot of pictures, and we could do more of these tie-ins, but since this is a trivia newsletter, let’s turn to three questions for you.
QUESTION #1
Below is an image of a painting by Roy Lichtenstein poorly taken by me—it’s called Artist’s Studio: “Foot Medication” and is one of a series of paintings known as the Artist’s Studio paintings:
This painting is inspired directly by a painting called The Red Studio, one of the most iconic pieces in all of modern art. WHO painted The Red Studio? The same artist is notable for his association with Fauvism, the brief art movement that emphasized bold colors, textured brushwork and non-naturalistic depictions. The answer is in a few lines, right after this image of some folks viewing The Red Studio (though it is not my image, because The Red Studio is in New York and not in Chicago).
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The Red Studio, also called L'Atelier Rouge, is by HENRI MATISSE. Just a few days ago, The New York Times ran a piece gushing about The Red Studio. As for Lichtenstein’s piece, here is the Art Institute’s take on Artist’s Studio: “Foot Medication”:
By the 1970s, Roy Lichtenstein’s comic-book style of painting had become his trademark. While he had adapted his early compositions from actual comic books, here Lichtenstein rather referred to an art historical rather than a pop culture source: Henri Matisse’s Red Studio (1911; Museum of Modern Art, New York), which features Matisse’s canvases casually set around a room. Into this flattened studio space Lichtenstein similarly inserted whole or partial versions of his own real and imagined artworks across a range of subject matter, including geometric abstraction. This painting’s title calls out the 1962 print Foot Medication, reimagined as a monumental painting at upper left. This kind of self-quotation, at once playful and thoughtful, would become another feature of Lichtenstein’s production.
Back to Matisse—he apparently really liked cats, both in his art:
And outside of his art:
QUESTION #2
In 2018, Tony Cokes, a visual artist, came up with the below installation, which is basically a light box showing the statements of a certain American personality, culled from Twitter and Instagram posts. WHO is being quoted by the installation? The answer is a few lines after the image.
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No, it’s not Donald Trump, though I understand the instinct…
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That’s right, these are quotes by KANYE WEST. The piece was on sale via Sotheby’s in late 2020, but no word on how much it sold for.
QUESTION #3
WHAT painting, depicting a father and daughter in Iowa, was in this author’s opinion the most popular piece in the Art Institute (sample size alert: walking around the museum for a couple hours), as measured by the number of people standing in front of it and taking pictures? The answer is a few lines down:
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No, it’s not A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat, though that would be a funny guess…
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It’s Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Whenever someone starts talking about important art associated with Iowa in a general-knowledge trivia setting, just immediately yell out Wood or American Gothic, as appropriate.
Hope you enjoyed reading along.