Color Me Happy

Last week my mom and I took a trip to the Kimball Art Museum. They were having an Impressionists exhibition with works of art on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. The line was huge to get in. I was very excited about this exhibit because my favorite painting by Van Gogh was there. It's called The Bedroom (2nd version). This has been my favorite since I saw it in a book in college. Art History was one of the hardest courses I took, but I took so much away from it. It is a dream of mine to some day have a home with an extra room in it so I can re-create this painting with real live furniture, painted wood floors, etc and then hang a print of this painting in the room...

Back to the museum...the minute we walked into the exhibit I told my mom all I wanted to see was this painting...as luck would have it, it was all the way toward the end of the exhibit, so we were the first ones there to see it that day...I actually got to stand there, uninterrupted, for at least 5 minutes. Painting took my breath away and I was so estatic I almost started crying. Went back to the picture at least 3 times after looking at the others. I really enjoyed the other paintings, too. Unbelievable to see the real mccoys. Next to each painting they had information about the history of each piece. For The Bedroom, they talked more about his first painting of this room and a letter he wrote to Gauguin about the painting. Here is what he wrote:

"It's just simply my bedroom" he wrote his frined (Gauguin) "only here color is to do everything, and by giving its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination...The shadows and the cast shadows are suppressed; it is painted in...flat tints like Japanese prints".

Thinking this explains why I'm so drawn to this painting. I've always loved very simple furniture with lots of wall color.

It was a wonderful afternoon. When picked up Peanut from school after that and the rest is for another blog...