Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago

After visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art last week and the statue of Rocky Balboa, I stopped in Illinois on my way back to Los Angeles and visited the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute remains my favorite museum in the country with its mind-boggling collection of unbelievable artwork from all around the world.

Although it would be nice if the institute could add some more paintings by older Europeans such as Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and da Vinci, certainly the small number of pieces by these artists is understandable considering the relatively low number of remaining works in the world, along with their high demand everywhere. Nevertheless, the stimulation from every room in the museum is both inspirational and exhausting.

When I first visited the museum years ago, I was struck, like a lightning bolt, seeing the above Picasso painting in person. Having only previously seen it in art books, I had never really thought it special until we met face to face. And then I examined it for two straight hours.

Certainly the reproduction on this little blog of some of the works I found to be most profound during my most recent visit does not do the paintings justice, but the following are images of some of them anyway...

A painting by Toulouse-Lautrec with sketchy lines and dripping paint depicting a moment in time, as though he passionately needed to get his vision onto the canvas before the moment passed:


Another painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, a scene of interesting characters (which includes himself in the background) in a harmonious balance of color:


A painting by Degas (being viewed by my friend), capturing a woman performing the insignificant, dull act of trying on hats, yet a work of art which stands out across the room:


The museum also had an entire room filled with works by Gerhard Richter, probably the best painter alive today. The guard scolded me for getting too close to one of his paintings in an attempt to investigate the texture and dissect the process of creation. The following painting by Richter is bigger than life-size, and the way he was able to create a beautiful portrait, with completely blurred lines and blended paint, brilliant light and dark contrast, and rather uniform texture, is perplexing and intriguing:


And a painting by Mondrian, very different from his flat grids and squares paintings for which he is most well-known:


The visit to the museum was an all day affair, yet it felt as though I had only scratched the surface of what was to be discovered there. After a few hours, my mind was overwhelmed and my body was exhausted. There reached the point where I could no longer analyze the process of creation, nor comprehend what I was looking at. Quite an experience.

Thank you for following the studies and creations, the paintings, sculpture, drawings, works in progress, Doodle of the Day, and other art by Los Angeles artist Lucas Aardvark :) To see older blog posts click HERE.

Visiting Rembrandt at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

In the past week I visited both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Each is world renowned for its gigantic collection of some of the greatest works of art ever created. Although I did not have enough time to give the Philadelphia museum an investigation in its entirety, I was lucky enough to visit when the museum was featuring the works of Rembrandt with Jesus as his subject.


The show was smaller than a typical exhibition at a major museum, since many of the works included his drawings and works by his students, instead of the iconic paintings by the master himself. However, in the art displayed that was painted by Rembrandt, the show was a powerful declaration of faith — not just the faith in Jesus portrayed by Rembrandt, but our faith in the authority of Rembrandt’s painting hand. Rembrandt redefined the grand religious narrative scene as a subtle but powerful human moment.

The tablecloth alone in the following painting, The Supper at Emmaus (on loan from the Louvre), struck me as though Jesus himself touched the painting with his hand:

Even the life story of Rembrandt seems somewhat biblical. He accumulated wealth from his art, and in his later years he lost everything and declared bankruptcy. When Rembrandt died in Amsterdam in 1669, he was buried in an unmarked grave and disappeared as if his body never existed. But throughout his lifetime he provided the world with hundreds of revered paintings, drawings, etchings, and prints, artwork that continues to be revered today, like gifts from the Heavens. While the body of Rembrandt was just another person, buried and forgotten, the portal of Rembrandt led to sanctity.

Glazing an Oil Painting

A favorite oil painting technique that I use is known as glazing. It has been a technique used since oil painting was first invented, yet it seems many contemporary artists have abandoned it. The glazing effect can be likened to placing thin pieces of colored glass on top of each other. So in painting terms, it is the process of stacking up thin layers of translucent color.

The glazing technique has several advantages, one my favorites being that it creates a glass-like plane while creating the illusion that the surface is further away. This works well, for example, when I want the color brown to have a luster rather than the simple flat brown created by mixing opaque colors from the tube. While glazing can be accomplished with any pigment, I prefer some more than others -- colors that are inherently translucent as opposed to those which are opaque. For example, translucent colors include burnt sienna, veridian, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, and payne's gray; opaque colors include titanium white, cadmium red, and yellow ochre.

Once the pigment is selected, it is important to then dilute it with a medium. Typically, I use one of two different methods: 1) my "trade-secret" mix of galkyd, linseed oil, and [secret]; or 2) straight liquin. Once the correct viscosity is mixed, the pigment can be applied to the canvas in various ways using different types of brushes, such as those for scumbling, wiping, or detail. And, once the layer dries, it may be ready for another "pane of glass"!

Examples of glazing can be seen in my pictures below where paint is applied over text -- this allows the text to be readable underneath different colors. However, more complex examples can be seen in the work of Jan Vermeer here.