Still Life with Piano and Cello

When I went to Chicago, we spent almost the entire day browsing the Chicago Museum of Art. I really enjoyed this because looking at art is not a luxury I get to do anymore. Taking the kids with me would mean I need to watch them and make sure they're behaving around valuable artwork. If I don't take the kids, it means I need to make separate plans so they're under someone's supervision. 

When I was at the museum, I saw authentic works by Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Claude Monet, and the famous Seurat pointillism. It was great, and I loved seeing these paintings in person because I had studied many of them in high school during my humanities class and AP art history. However, as famous as these paintings are, they're actually not the ones which stuck with me.

I surprised myself by the one which actually stuck. I had seen multiple pianos on display throughout the museum, but then I saw this artwork.

"This painting is part of a series by Vilhelm Hammershoi capturing his sparsely decorated apartment at Strandgade 30 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hammershoi often moved furniture and objects around his home like studio props: here, he placed a chair, piano, cello, and violin in a corner of the drawing room. Despite the inclusion of musical instruments, the scene evokes only eerie silence, with no sense of a human presence to play them."

This painting hit a little too close to home. There's definitely an emptiness depicted in this scene. The arrangement of the chair pulled back with an empty space, the violin placed atop the chair. The cello leaning against the piano. The almost empty wall behind the piano. 

 

This is my real life experience with this painting. I purposely edited the photograph so the colors are more muted, hazy. The cello is leaning against the chair, bow placed behind on the seat of the chair. The piano, although with the key cover open, has the bench pushed in, not being used. It, too, is empty. 

This painting and this photo are lonely, sad, and burdened. The piano and cello from the painting are probably no longer arranged in that way. Perhaps they were moved shortly after the posing for this painting. The piano in the photo has been sold. The cello has been packed up and moved out of this room. The furniture is gone. The frames hanging on the wall are gone. The walls have been repainted a different color and the floors have been redone. Piece by piece of this room were removed one by one. 

I'm glad my friend had this photo. It made me sad, but it is the perfect real life experience we shared represented in the painting above from 1907.