Stendhal Syndrome

I went to the Art Institute of Chicago this Sunday and spent around six hours looking at all the paintings and sculptures. And no I didn't suffer from Stendhal Syndrome at all. There was just muscular fatigue. I am reasonably familiar with the impressionist, post-impressionist and surrealist paintings but overall the paintings failed to invoke a sense of awe in me as it would have done to Stendhal a century earlier. But then, he went to Florence and not to Chicago.

At the museum, all the usual suspects were there--Renoir, Monet, Manet, Pisarro--among the impressionist. There were some paintings that I had seen pictures of and which I saw for the first time, first hand. Water-lilies by Monet and two sisters in the park by Renoir were two such paintings. I was a little disappointed to see the total absence of any Renoir nudes! What I found really interesting was the paintings by Paul Gauguin, specially the later ones when he left France and the bourgeois society and went to Tahiti in search of inspiration. He managed to find and paint lots of naked, tropical nymphets there. The surrealist collection was good too but as usual most of it went way above my head. There were some sensationalist pieces from the classical period which intrigued me. The Rape of Lucretia was good and so were the paintings which depicted the love story of Armida and Rinaldo . There is even a famous opera based on their story. Now, I need to find out what are the different opera currently being performed here. May be I can find Rinaldo and Armida somewhere.