The Picture of Dorian Gray Art at Chicago Institute

August ten, 2011 — Information technology's a door-sized oil painting that depicts ultimate depravity, and I would love to hang information technology prominently on my living room wall. Does that make me a bad person? Does information technology help if that ultimate depravity is merely ultimate depravity every bit deemed appropriate for a 1940s movie audience?

The portrait is called The Motion-picture show of Dorian Grey, and it hangs, more like looms, in the Fine art Institute of Chicago at 111 Due south Michigan Avenue. Nonetheless, its story begins in Hollywood, nearly 65 years ago. I feel like I should have Robert Osborne guest-write the side by side few paragraphs, simply hither goes.

MGM was producing a pic version of Oscar Wilde'south book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story of a man consumed by debauchery, all the same who never shows whatever physical result of his sin or historic period considering information technology'south all been transferred to a portrait of himself that he keeps hidden. The studio had in place all of what are usually the most of import elements of a film. They had a managing director, Albert Lewin. They had a screenplay, written by the director. They had a cast, including George Sanders, Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury, and Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Grayness himself. But in the unique example of this particular story, the most important piece of the production was the titular painting.

The painting had to be an extraordinary one. Afterwards all, the entire pic hangs on the notion that the corruptions that this painting undergoes will shock the audience…a feat that had to be achieved in a pre-Night of the Living Dead world. In other words, in an era where you couldn't just be literal with the depravity.

They deputed a Chicago-based artist by the name of Ivan Albright (1897-1983), who was known for his macabre style. Ivan Albright was everything I desire everyone to be…talented and kooky. His paintings were detailed to the signal of texture due to the fact that they frequently took him years to finish, as well every bit the fact that he regularly used a brush with only a single bristle, spending hours and hours on just postage stamp-sized areas of his paintings. He also carved his own frames, mixed his own paints, built his own reference models, and he was obsessed by the confront in the Shroud of Turin. It is said (by Wikipedia) that he painted his studio black and wore black while he painted to reduce glare.

Albright'due south main themes were the synonyms death and time and, had he not been paid to paint The Flick of Dorian Gray, his muse would probably have forced him to do so at some other bespeak in his career. He once said that everything had one thing in common: decay, and his works show that. Some attribute his obsession with the grim to his time in WWI when he was charged with sketching war wounds for purposes of documentation, only I recollect at that place are more compelling, less hands summarized avenues to darkness. Besides, his subjects are rarely maimed. More like moldering.

Regardless of how it happened, information technology's at least certain that his manner is so unique that to run across just one of his works is to be able to recognize his style anywhere else from 20 paces and facing the wrong direction.

Back to The Motion-picture show of Dorian Gray: The Movie, the 1945 flick is an able enough effort for its time, if a chip too boring and reserved. Of course, any movie that includes fifty-fifty one line of Oscar Wilde's exquisite dialogue will be worth its celluloid. However, at the aforementioned time, hearing Wilde'southward dialogue spoken is most ever an inferior experience to reading it, like watching somebody else drink a glass of wine instead of drinking it yourself, at your ain pace of enjoyment. But too many nuances to butterfly net in situ, besides many points where you lot need to crack up laughing before you can permit it to resume.

Notwithstanding, the star of the movie is without a doubt Albright'south massive piece. In the movie, which is filmed in black and white, the painting is shown rarely and nigh always in livid, pulp color, from when it's the mere image of a handsome young homo with his pet Egyptian cat god (actually painted by Henrique Medina) to the concluding decrepit piece, the transmographied subject matter of which oozes more than the wet paint of its limerick. Incidentally, Albright might take had some help from his twin brother, who was also a painter, if the LIFE photo here is any indication, which is too a great moving-picture show for showing the model that helped him paint the astonishing prototype.

Of course, once the movie was done filming, the painting was no mere prop to get trashed in a dumpster or warehoused like some mere costume or piece of article of furniture. Eventually, the Albright painting became a part of the collection of the Art Found of Chicago, near Albright's home turf, where information technology glowers downward at visitors to this day with the immortality of Dorian Greyness himself, facing Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (1942) and just a room over from Grant Woods'south American Gothic (1930).

And information technology's been on my list to see for 10 years, since the first time I saw the film and jumped on the Internet for the instant gratification of learning that it was a real work on public display in a real museum. Finally, a few weeks ago I was able to gratify the instant gratification itself.

And, man, it's worth it. I hateful, the Cyberspace's great for seeing things, but it's horrible at scale, equally well as for physically wrapping your arms effectually something while the security guard tries to pry yous off with a velvet rope stanchion. Dorian Grayness is glorious in its grisliness and hung so that about of it towers over your elementary, cowardly morality.

Most fascinating, not an bodily fleck of depravity tin exist institute upon its considerable 85x42-inch surface, yet it suggests so much more than if the artist had incarnated every horrible thing imaginable onto the sail. I mean, if you asked me why I thought it was disturbing, in that location's not a single square inch that I tin can point to. No severed body parts. No children in peril. No slathering monster multi-headed with the visages of all the Cusack siblings. Simply a twisted old man with a haemorrhage manus, clothed in, and backdropped by, tatters and rags, standing beside a true cat statue.

In the film, the painting is stabbed at the end in the heart, but I didn't see whatsoever rents or repairs. Afterward rewatching the moving-picture show, it'south probably just a trick of editing. Which is too bad. A pocketknife wound would have made it so much more an artifact of the film and contributed to the overall miasma of the slice.

If there's an ocular state more narrow than tunnel vision, I had information technology equally I rushed through the museum to its American Art wing, past works of fine fine art and civilisation thousands of year onetime, to experience the culmination of ten years of, well, random and casual thought over whether I'd ever get to see information technology. Withal, once my paintlust was satiated, I settled down, shook hands and apologized to the aforementioned security guard, and took in more of Albright's work. Manifestly, the museum has quite a big collection of it, only only two other paintings too Dorian Gray were on view when I visited.

The 2d piece was called That Which I Should Take Done I Did Not Practice (The Door), which was painted over the entire grade of the 1930s. It was slightly taller and thinner than Dorian Gray and, according to the placard beside information technology, was considered by Albright to be his paramount work. The big painting depicts a door, a wreath, and a female person hand.

Over again, recounting the subject matter does exactly zippo to convey the decrepit experience and subtle terror of the feel of this painting, which has and then much of the unknown virtually it. If Dorian Grayness made me want to stand up nether a waterfall of razorblades, The Door made me want to stick my eyeballs in one of those golf ball washer contraptions (I loved it that much).

The other painting, the fantasticInto the Globe In that location Came a Soul Chosen Ida, predated Dorian Greyness past more than than a decade, is large and square, and depicts a seated woman with a hand mirror, time-ravaged, haggard, sad and more than frightening than whatever nightmare I've had in recent memory. I finally understand the Zeppelin lyric nearly big-legged women non having souls.

And, now that I've seen The Flick of Dorian Gray, I can also finally lay that long-held fascination to residue. Now, if the Regal London Hospital will but let me into its inner recesses to see the Elephant Man'southward bones.

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Source: http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2011/08/picture-of-dorian-gray.html

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