Peak Culture and Then Some

On rainy days in Junior High, I often hung out in my social studies classroom. There was a variety of board games, but my favorite was Masterpiece. The box of the game was rather like the box of Clue with a collection of hoity-toity personalities, but here contemplating art rather than murder.

In the game, there was a stack of cards with amounts to attach to another stack of cards that had paintings. The highest amount a painting could be worth was One Million Dollars and the least was nothing if it was a forgery. (Imagine getting a Van Gogh for a million dollars.) Throughout the game, you would bid on paintings from the gallery (the board) and other players. At the end of the game whoever had the most money (totaling the worth of the paintings) would win.

One of the great appeals of the game was examining the paintings in the set. Some were pretty and some were bizarre (my preferred type) and some were ugly. I got to know the names of some of the painters.

Then a decade or so later, I went to school in Deerfield, Illinois, part of Chicagoland. And while there, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago. Walking through the place I thought, "Hey, that painting was in Masterpiece." "Hey, that painting was in Masterpiece, too!" And I found that all the paintings from Masterpiece were in this museum.

(Disclaimer - In doing my Wikipedia research I found that the original version of the game, the 1970 version, used paintings from the National Gallery in London. But the game's creator, James Burck, a Chicago native, designed the game with paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago in mind. The 1976 version of the game used paintings from that museum. And that's the edition I played as a kid.)

Recently I've been writing about my journey to become a Fully Cultured Person. I thought I had achieved Peak Culture by attending the San Francisco Opera. But just a little over a week after that experience, I had an opportunity to visit again the Art Institute of Chicago. I realized to my amazement I could be even Peaker Cultured. These are some of the paintings I was able to revisit from the Masterpiece Game at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Is there any painting that has been parodied and used in commercials more than Grant Wood's 1930 work, American Gothic? I think not.

Okay, maybe Edward Hopper's 1942 painting, Nighthawks, has been parodied more and used in more commercials than American Gothic, but it's one or the other. (Unless it's Michelangelo's God reaching out to Man, but that's not at the Art Institute of Chicago or in the game Masterpiece.)

As a kid, this was my favorite painting in the game, Ivan Albright's 1943 work, The Picture of Dorian Gray. I was a fan of horror films and this painting was made for a horror film, MGM's 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray. You may be surprised to hear my wife is not as big a fan of this work as I am.

As a kid, I also loved Peter Blume's 1948 work, The Rock, because it was so very strange. Again, my wife is not so much a fan.

Georges Seurat's 1884 work, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, was the basis of a musical, Sunday in the Park with George, so it's got that going for it. And it's gorgeous. (Fans of Ferris Bueller's Day Off may remember this as a painting Cameron studies. The museum is a part of "Ferris Bueller Tours" that are rather popular. As for me - don't care for the film.)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's 1881 work, Two Sisters (On the Terrace) is more in line with what my wife, Mindy, favors, but I like it too.

Paris Street: Rainy Day, an 1877 work by Gustave Caillebotte, didn't impress me in the game, but very much impressed me in person.

Rembrandt's 1631 painting, Old Man with a Gold Chain, was the central image on the gameboard, giving it great cultural worth.

And there is so much more. There are even some pretty great paintings and sculptures that weren't featured in the boardgame. Sadly, this all reminds me that I may never ever be truly fully cultured.