11.15.2016

Literary Chicago - Joan Didion "The White Album"

I wrote this post a few months ago. Not sure why I never uploaded it. I was planning on originally trying to find somewhere else to publish this, but I never really expanded on it in any meaningful way. I still think it's worth posting based upon the connection between the writer, the artist, this city, and my experience.

(via the Art Institute)
I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgie O'Keefe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O'Keefe "Sky Above Clouds" canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally.
Joan Didion wrote this in 1976 in an essay titled "Georgie O'Keefe". It was released in her collection called The White Album, chronicling the death of the sixties and the uncertainties of the seventies, covering everything from the Doors to dams to horticulture to Hawaii, Bogota to bureaucrats, to the women's movement and how an artist creates.

I've gotten into the habit of marking whenever Chicago is mentioned in fiction. This year however, I've been a bit out of character. I've read less fiction, and more non-fiction and, especially recently, poetry. I've read Didion in the past, and as I began reading this collection, I'd wondered if she would mention Chicago.

This essay was a pleasant surprise. It got me to rethink my previous notions of O'Keefe. Personally, I've never been a huge fan of her work (nothing against her personally, the works of European artists and authors have always appealed to me more). I've probably walked by these clouds dozens of times.

But last Thursday was different. I wanted to see what Didion saw and what her daughter saw in these clouds.

First, I needed to challenge how I normally act in a museum. I probably don't spend more than a minute (sixty full seconds) in front of any given work. To be fair, this is probably fifty-five more seconds than most people give. I will maybe spend up to five minutes for a work I particularly am enthralled with.

I spent twenty minutes staring at the clouds and the sky above the clouds. The clouds still stand above the staircase as Didion describes. Some people stare as they descend the staircase, and some people quickly glance as they walk toward the restroom nearby. The Institute has placed a bench against the wall opposite. I sat down, a quick stare or glance surely not enough for me today.

Before arriving at the clouds, I'd wandered through the American wing a bit. I happened to glance at the skylight above, a grid that was reminiscent of the painting I was about to see. It was a purposeful foreshadow.

I spent twenty minutes starting at the clouds and the sky above the clouds. Some people took pictures. Some people stood directly in front of me. Some people apologized but I waved them off. No reason to apologize. Three people sat next to me the entirety that I was there. One woman who sat to my right snapped a picture and I offered her the center of the bench. She declined but we started talking. She wore a blue sweater and blue glasses that matched the painting; I'd wondered if she had planned this knowing she would go to the Institute and see this painting that day.

We started to talk and I regaled the anecdote of Joan Didion from above. We talked about the abstract nature of the painting. We talked about how O'Keefe attended the Institute. We talked about what it means to be in a specific space. We talked about Damien Hirst's polka dots and about scale. This woman confided in me that she looked at this painting to help her relax during her pregnancy. I later found out she shares the same first name as my mother; I did not share this information with her.

I'm not sure what I learned from this. I didn't have any grand revelation as Didion's seven year old daughter; my perception has been too, let's say clouded, by the filters of experience. I talked with a stranger yet I'm not sure this woman and I shared any grand connection that day. At the least, we were two strangers, of different ages, backgrounds, and perceptions, imbibing the same work of art, of being able to relax, and to enjoy the sky above the clouds.

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