Day 2 - The Story Behind the Artist

I decided to spend my coffee time today looking a bit into the Impressionists, at the recommendation of my friend and former professor, “Doc Rose.” Doc Rose was one of my favorite professors in undergrad- I took a linguistics class from her. Linguistics was known as a very difficult, scary class at my university, but it was a required class to graduate if you were an English major. Since I was only an English minor (my major was psychology), I wasn’t actually required to take Linguistics to graduate. Spurred on by a love of all things language (ok, and perhaps a little bit of pride that “just because I was only an English minor and not major, that did NOT mean I was incapable of handling the highly dreaded Linguistics), I took the class anyways. I’m glad I did – the class was challenging but not impossible, and I enjoyed the content. (Yes, even the diagramming sentences part. Grammar nerd alert.) Doc Rose and I still keep in touch via Facebook, and when she read my blog yesterday she told me she likes the Impressionists, particularly Gustave Caillebotte. Since Doc Rose has never steered me wrong on literature recommendations, I decided to take her art recommendation and check out the Impressionists.

So, this morning, I found myself drinking a hot cup of Joe while reading the Wikipedia page for Mr. Caillebotte. By the way, I have a love/hate relationship with Wikipedia. I still (rightly!) refuse to use it for formal research, but I must admit it’s often a good starting place for learning about a new topic about which you know nothing. After reading the Wikipedia page, I was intrigued. I found out that Caillebotte went to law school and was licensed to practice law. I’m always interested when I see someone who was a lawyer pursuing a different career path, since I’m a lawyer but sometimes many times wonder what else is out there for me. Reading Caillebotte’s story made me interested in seeing some of his work. Lucky for me, one of his most famous paintings, Paris Street; Rainy Day (pictured below), is owned by the Chicago Art Institute. I’m going to try to get by there this month and see it. The real take away from this morning, however, is that I enjoyed hearing the story of the artist himself, and this is what made me interested to learn more about and see some of his art. It’s too soon to say, but perhaps it will never be the beauty of a painting itself that moves me, but rather the story behind the artist. Does this count as “liking art,” even if I don’t necessarily have an interest in the mechanics and technique of certain styles of art?

Xoxo,

Diana