tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6436982786777942337.post315594730294372382..comments2023-07-06T07:25:12.570-05:00Comments on Corresponding Fractions: St. Louis, Via Chicagoframikohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10274581567045478300noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6436982786777942337.post-20560620682352830802009-03-26T23:02:00.000-05:002009-03-26T23:02:00.000-05:00Good point, Kate. I think part of the problem is t...Good point, Kate. I think part of the problem is that people compare St. Louis not only to Chicago, but also to what St. Louis used to be. It seems to me that St. Louis has to accept that, for whatever historical reasons (the common one seems to be that Chicago staked itself to the railroads while St. Louis went with the river), St. Louis lost the prominence it once had, and it won't get it back. We're not going to become Chicago; we shouldn't try. Instead, we should be St. Louis, friendly and welcoming but not abject in our desire for visitors and recognition or desperate in our attempts to make ourselves over.<BR/><BR/>Anonymous, feel free to blog all you want here. Your bloggings ennoble Corresponding Fractions.framikohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10274581567045478300noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6436982786777942337.post-70870492382989636482009-03-26T17:09:00.000-05:002009-03-26T17:09:00.000-05:00It's funny. I had a similar thought yesterday when...It's funny. I had a similar thought yesterday when I met a friend for lunch at a coffee shop near SLU and then walked to three small-but-free art museums: SLU's Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, the Pulitzer Museum, and the Contemporary. Only the third of these disappointed with a so-so exhibition. The Pulitzer has once again found a creative way to show off how well the museum's serene architecture shows off its exhibits--this time by combining old masters' works from the collections of the St. Louis Art Museum and Harvard's Fogg Museum and setting their baroque ambitions against the simplicity of Ando's high, smooth concrete walls. Best of all, though, was the MOCRA's small but moving exhibit of contemporary works inspired by the Passion narratives: crosses, cages, pietas, and Veronican veils that remind viewers that this much of the Christian story--the urgent awareness of suffering and injustice, the desire to find meaning in our inevitable wounds--has not lost any of its relevance in the last two thousand years. I could easily have spent the afternoon in the smaller museums of New York or Paris and not seen art that was any more arresting. Of course, in New York or Paris, I could spend every afternoon for a month this way and never go to the same museum twice--assuming I could afford to. But what I loved most about my St. Louis afternoon wasn't just how cheap it was but how intimate. In the Pulitzer there were almost as many docents as visitors--a circumstance that led to our receiving an extensive explanation of the pornographic implications of an otherwise lovely painting of a washerwoman. In a small room displaying three or four icons, we were the only patrons for the fifteen minutes or so that we took them in. The only thing that would have made our visit seem more like a private tour would have been an invitation to take the icons from the wall and hold them in our hands--which is more or less what happened at the MOCRA, where my friend happened to know the curator, who happened to be talking to one of the artists whose work is included in the exhibition. I enjoyed listening to the curator ask the artist questions about his work (apparently a fish in one of his stations of the cross represents the women of Jerusalem because all life comes from the sea just as all human life comes from the woman--go figure). But after a while I wandered off to sit with Steven Heilmer's Pieta Stone--a rough hunk of Carrara marble wrapped in white cloth--which is surrounded by a half dozen or so cushions that patrons are invited to sit on for a better look--the effect of which is the feeling of being gathered about a Japanese table preparing to feast on a great marble egg that is the unformed (or deformed?) body of the crucified Christ wrapped in his mother's arms of cloth. I must have spent ten or fifteen minutes with it, drawn by its elusive allusiveness, when the curator came by and asked me what sort of fabric I thought the marble was wrapped in. Having no knowledge whatsoever of textiles, I demurred--at which point he invited me to touch it, which I did (despite my unexpressed conviction that I could no more easily identify the cloth by palpating it than by eyeballing it) only to find that it wasn't cloth at all but carved marble. Damn! That's never happened to me at the MOMA.<BR/><BR/>(PS: Sorry I blogged all over your blog. Next time I'll get my own.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6436982786777942337.post-901662285555926712009-03-26T16:52:00.000-05:002009-03-26T16:52:00.000-05:00If you read The Devil in the White City, you'd und...If you read The Devil in the White City, you'd understand the lengths Burnham went through to make Chicago the way it is today. It started when Chicago hosted the World's Fair in the late 1800s, but I agree. Upon entering St. Louis only knowing Chicago or any other big city, the hot spots aren't obvious, but they're there. And they're a good deal and easily accessible with a car. I wonder if St. Louis wasn't up against Chicago so much, it would be better appreciated. What if St. Louis was where Kansas City is?New Pornographer in STLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16898899640301528792noreply@blogger.com