Invite Possibility

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy (1877)
Art Institute of Chicago

Duane Michals, Chance Encounter (1970)
artnet The Daily Pic February 2, 2015

Alison Cuddy takes a tour of the Art Institute
with art scholar David Getsy.
Courtesy Sara Condo, WBEZ

David Getsy, in a 2011 discussion on WBEZ, "Exploring gay art and artists at the Art Institute of Chicago", suggests that we see Paris as encompassing a variety of relationships and allowing for various degrees of intimacy as people walk together and singly under umbrellas in the rain.

Duane Michals Reveals Gay Hiddenness

THE DAILY PIC, February 2, 2015

"several people who saw the series when it first came out–including Linda Benedict-Jones, the survey’s curator–have told me that they didn’t immediately get the homosexual subtext, although they could tell there was something promisingly queer, in the older sense, about the work. That means that the series itself, as a work of art, played the same game of partial signs and obfuscations that its subjects are engaging in."

 Blake Gopnik