Impersonal Intimacy: The Art Institute of Chicagos COVID-19 Evolution | Arts

There is a distinct physicality to engaging with art in a museum. Taking care not to get in too close and to sound the mortifying alarm, we gaze at the jagged strokes of acrylic or the luminous contours of an old pot. It is this physical proximity, this proximity to a seemingly accessible but elusive piece that lends wonder, passion and intellectual challenge to the experience of the vision of art.

So what are the implications for art in the COVID-19 era? How can museums preserve the revealing and deeply private experience of artistic engagement in an era of mass digitization?

The Art Institute of Chicago, generally recognized as downtown Chicagos and the worlds best museum, faced the same challenge as all of its counterparts after the pandemic: how to best maintain intimate access to artistic masterpieces in a cold, pixelated cyberspace. In response, they demonstrated a singular ability to capitalize on a bad situation.

Some setbacks are inevitable. Visitors can no longer see the oxidized skins of the two bronze lions guarding the entrance to the museum on Michigan Avenue. They can’t dine on lemon and herb tofu in the panoramic glass walls of Terzo Piano, nor buy a gift shop mug embossed with the bold geometry of a Mondrian.

Since the museum is only open during certain hours, new initiatives are promoting digital engagement based on home hours. Monet and Chicago, an exhibition that runs through Jan. 18, 2021, is complemented by videos detailing the artists’ demanding artistic techniques. One of these videos, titled Discovering Monet | Beyond the Surface, exposes its role in the formation of Impressionism. Dotted with rumors of personal letters from Monets, the video shows restorers’ use of infrared imagery to follow the timeline of paint strokes, giving viewers a privileged glimpse into the Parisian artistic process.

A subpage on the museum’s website titled Interactive Features allows digital visitors to learn the historical context behind the pieces. A virtual dialogue on the iconic El Grecos, The Assumption of the Virgin, describes his journey from a convent in Toledo, Spain, to Chicago. A series of paragraphs detail the nuanced iconography of a Chinese bell or nao from around 1046 BCE known as the sound of the sky. As you scroll down the page, the bell spins slowly, simulating a circular orbit of spectators around the ancient artifact.

Perhaps the most representative of the museums’ offer is The Collection, an archive rich in information of all the works owned. From Vincent van Goghs The Bedroom to George Seurats A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picassos The Old Guitarist at Katsushika Hokusais Beneath the waves off Kanagawa, The Collection boasts some of the world’s most coveted masterpieces.

A digital museum experience offers viewers the unique opportunity to completely control the pace of their artistic journeys. In museums in person, one can linger on paintings, especially the most famous ones, for only so long before receiving angry looks from fellow visitors or walking away from a claustrophobic crowd. Here, however, there is an audience of one: all materials revolve around the singular viewer who has entered the impersonal but deeply private space of digital exhibitions.

Digitized art illustrates a classic quarantine ambivalence. While increased online access has served as a broad equalizer, excessive online activity can be exhausting and reducing. The Art Institute of Chicagos’ digital offerings remove barriers like transportation and membership fees that could discourage in-person tours. At the same time, expanded availability lessens the appeal of the experience: there is no longer a Jackson Pollock Greyed Rainbow in the museum’s gallery 291, but rather countless pixelated facsimiles glistening on screens. of the whole world.

The physical experience of exploring an art museum sometimes induces a state of focused and rhapsodic buoyancy. Time as we know it assumes an element of surreality, humming with the wonder and emotional complexities evoked by art. Dealing with a room in person is like being in conversation with an entity who speaks an inaccessible language but still manages to elicit visceral admiration.

While digital offerings are incomparable to the traditional art museum experience, it is possible to alchemy time from the comfort or confines of home. Forties mixed the hours into a blind soup of exhaustion, responsibility and boredom. By opening our laptops not to respond to emails or to randomly finish an article before midnight, but rather to engage in the digital offerings of art museums, we can slow down and revel in a sense of intense research. . The non-linear and stimulating thinking that art demands can bring our newly flattened relationships to life.

French artist Paul Gauguin once said, I closed my eyes to see. Indeed, the pandemic has forced entire people and countries, perhaps even the global community as a whole, to close their eyes in countless ways. From this disorientation and blindness, however, new ways of seeing and using what remains emerge.

It is likely that when quarantine ends and people venture out into the world, they will encounter ordinary things like the first time: a coffee at the local cafe, a stroll along the shores of a beach, a hall. full of art appreciated in the animal warmth of other contemplative souls.

When the time comes, people will flock to museums. Until then, individuals will have to seek revelation in the strange and intriguing world of digital art. The Art Institute of Chicago has asserted that even in this time of necessary isolation, engaging in art can remain a singular and sacred experience.