Unpretentious Fruits of the Midi: An Afternoon at the Chicago Institute of Art

Ode to a Lenten Blood Orange Eaten on the Train to Chicago

On the stillest days an ordinary orange excoriated;

a stigmatic.

Tennessee Entrance Hall, 1835

Electric sunlight waltzes shadow across an empty entryway;

calculated carelessness in miniature.

Picasso's Study for “La Coiffure”

Two sketches capture the intimacies of women strangers;

The universal truth not bound by temporal constraints.

Unpretentious Fruits of the Midi

One reads the caption to Renoir's “Fruits of the Midi” and wonders

What exactly would a pretentious bowl of fruit look like?

Picasso's Fingerprints

Each grape does contain the arches and ridges of the master;

ripened tips did grace blank pages intimately as the skin of mistresses