Step out in front of art.

Let it hit you.
Smack you around.
Change you behind your back.
Swirl the same strand of barbed wire that stings and stabs every heart around your own, and draw it tight.

Sometimes I look at art to learn. Sometimes I just let it engulf me. The last couple of days have been engulfment days. The con is over, and just about everyone has left (and you no longer have to wait 10 minutes for an elevator). So yesterday was Art Institute of Chicago day, and today was Wander Around the Loop and See What I Find day.

One of the many works I was very excited to see in person at last.

Who doesn't love Ganesh, the remover of obstacles? Who couldn't benefit from the removal of a few obstacles here and there?

This Guardian Figure means business.

Sadly, I didn't get the details on this sculpture, but it's about three, maybe even four, meters tall, and would make an excellent Flanders giant, I think.

This is one of those pieces that I absolutely love without quite knowing why. It's called "The Eventuality of Destiny", by De Chirico.

It's odd. I like it.

It's also odd when you go into the center of it and look around.

Picasso made this specifically for the City of Chicago. No-one can seem to agree whether it's a horse, a dog, a woman, or something else.

There's this skyscraper, see, and on the top it has a church spire. This is because inside it there's a church. With a skyscraper on top. I love this.

One of the windows in the skyscraper church (which is, by the way, the First United Methodist Church.

It's actually about 90/32 degrees here today, but I guess it's uneconomical to have two sets of warning cones. And after all, ice is MUCH more likely to be a problem here over the course of the year as a whole than, say, heatstroke.

And, finally, a theatre in which I will doubtless go to see Margaret starring in something wonderful before too long.