Sky Above the Clouds IV

Sky Over the Clouds IV is not where I expect it to be. I am at the wrong stairwell. The guard kindly tells me, “Even if you went to the correct stairwell, you would not have found it there. It has been moved during “the construction”. It hangs above the Gunsaulus Elevator.” Its move is something I did not anticipate.

The painting came to Chicago as part of a three-city tour. Difficulties arose during its hanging. The painting was supposed to travel with its exhibit to San Francisco. Lessons learned during its hanging inferred the doors in that San Francisco venue could not accommodate the 8-foot high painting and its 24-foot length so The Art Institute of Chicago kept it on display.

When I saw it my first time, the painting’s horizon was only slightly above my eye-level. Only the width of the stairwell separated me from Georgia O’Keefe’s view. I recognized what she saw seventy years ago. I’m above the clouds in the foreground and moving rapidly toward the horizon.

The time for my husband to see Sky Above the Clouds IV is limited by our late arrival time and the remaining hour of today’s museum operating hours. This is second on my list of “art he must see” while we are here. We retrace quickly past the Rothkos, make a beeline through the Modern and Contemporary Galleries towards gallery 249, and go down the stairwell where I last saw it. We orient with gallery 150’s inner wall of windows that hold McKinlock Court in view. We turn to the west, locate Gunsaulus Elevator and look above it. “We found it,” as I exhale.

The painting covers less than a third of the width of this wall. We approach it. Stand too close and we look up the wall to see the clouds in tight formation above our heads. We cannot rise to the horizon’s level. We can only step back to view the entire painting. The horizon becomes point A of a right-sided triangle and we are part of the most rigid structure known.

This move changed my point of view and I no longer resonate with the exhilaration of freedom and the anticipation of exploration. Her depiction of her 1936 flight is above my head this time. My husband reassures me that he can imagine viewing it the way I once did and still believes the story I told him about how this painting made me feel. I believe him for he looked out the same airplane windows I did on our vacation flights, and he used his own art of photography to express himself.

http://www.artst.org/okeefe/1965+-+Sky+Above+Clouds+IV.jpg