My sister-in-law, Jody Joseph, is a fabulous artist and gifted art teacher who has taught me a lot over the years about appreciating great art. And what better place to experience great art than at the Art Institute of Chicago, which just so happens also to be in Jody’s hometown?
On a recent visit, I decided to do an experiment: I would snap a photo of every painting that grabbed me and reflect later on what it was about it that had that effect. My hope was that I would learn something about my artistic sensibilities.
Well, I have now reflected and it is time to report. To cut to the chase: I think I learned something not only about my taste in art, but about my orientation to life.
I had an additional hope, too: namely, that Jody would be willing to comment on my comments. I felt sure that that would help me learn even more not only about myself, but also about art. That invitation is officially open.
Okay, here goes. I will present the paintings in chronological order and include the accompanying display text.
According to Roman history, the rape of the virtuous matron Lucretia by Tarquin, son of the king of Rome, incited the people to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic around 510 BCE. Lucretia was hailed as a hero for subsequently committing suicide in an attempt to avoid any perceived dishonor to her family. With his characteristic expressive distortions of anatomy and space and vibrant treatment of light, Tintoretto depicted one of the most violent moments of the story. As Tarquin and Lucretia struggle, a pillow flies through the air, her pearl necklace breaks apart, and the fabric and carved post of the bed’s canopy collapses around them.
What immediately jumped out at me about this painting was its dynamism. Everything is in motion, or was in motion just moments before. It took me a few seconds to realize that what was being depicted was a horrific, ghastly crime. The exaggerated contrast between light and dark tones added to the dynamism and the use of colour enhanced awareness of the unfolding struggle between good and evil (Lucretia’s fair skin and Tarquin’s sickly pallid yellow skin).
Lucretia’s right hand seems to be in a downward motion, toward the dagger on the floor. I wanted to know if she would be able to grab it and thrust it upward and backward. The action felt unfinished, even if the painting wasn’t. So hard to look at; so hard not to.
This Flemish market stall overflowing with dead game is enlivened by fighting roosters, an aggressive cat, and a pickpocket. An early example of Frans Snyders’s animated combination of highly ornamental still-life elements with secondary figures and a low viewpoint, this scene might have adorned the dining room of an aristocratic collector. Snyders was the leading Flemish painter of monumental still lifes. He regularly collaborated with his fellow Antwerp artist Peter Paul Rubens, contributing fruits and animals to Rubens’s compositions.
This painting was huge, which amplified the sense of slaughter. But I soon realized that not all of the birds and animals were dead, so it quickly became a game of “Where’s Waldo” to find the living things. It took me a second to notice the pickpocketing kid, which seemed oddly comic given the cornucopia of death. Then I read the side panel. Still life? I don’t think so. Market? Maybe, but this vendor had no idea how to mount an appealing display. The main things that attracted my interest and intention, though, were the birds (not surprisingly). The enormous Whooper Swan and the Common Pheasant barely visible behind the hare certainly would have been fair game, but the Indian Peafowl was a domesticated, ornamental bird. Naughty, naughty!
This evocative character study is an early example of a type of subject that preoccupied the great Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn throughout his long career. Although his large output included landscapes, genre paintings, and the occasional still life, he focused on biblical and historical paintings and on portraits. As an extension of these interests, the artist studied the effect of a single figure, made dramatic through the use of costume and rich, subtle lighting. Rembrandt collected costumes to transform his models into characters. Here, the gold chain and steel gorget suggest an honored military career, while the plumed beret evokes an earlier time. The broad black mass of the old man’s torso against a neutral background is a powerful foil for these trappings. The face is that of a real person, weathered and watchful, glowing with pride and humanity. The unidentified sitter, once thought to be the artist’s father, was a favorite model, appearing in many of the artist’s early works. The confident execution suggests that the young Rembrandt completed this picture about 1631, when he had left his native Leiden to pursue a career in the metropolis of Amsterdam; perhaps he wished to use this work to demonstrate his skill in a genre that combined history painting and portraiture.
I have always been a sucker for Rembrandt. I was pleased that I thought this painting was a Rembrandt even before I even looked at the display text. There is always something about the eyes: I don’t know if anyone ever painted more lifelike eyes, always expressive and always slightly rheumy — which was probably accurate, given the cool, damp conditions even rich people lived in at the time. The subject also seemed a bit drawn and gaunt, which struck me as an interesting contrast with his obvious wealth and stature. Finally, there were the dark tones: I don’t know how Rembrandt managed to convey so much detail in so many of his paintings with such subtle low-light variations. I could look at any random Rembrandt for hours.
With its low horizon line, monochrome palette, and efficient paint handling, this panel is characteristic of early river landscapes by Jan van Goyen. In a society that provided a broad market for art, Van Goyen executed both small- and large-scale paintings of waterways, with varying levels of detail, to appeal to buyers at the lower and higher ends of the market. Such views of Dutch canals, moody skies, and seafaring activities appealed to collectors in the young republic, which prided itself on its maritime prowess.
Aelbert Cuyp never traveled to Italy, yet he employed the golden light typical of southern Europe to dramatize his distinctly Dutch pastoral subjects. He enhanced views of the meandering rivers and flat terrain with cows and sheep, animals that abounded in the local countryside. In this relatively early painting, his use of a warm, monochrome color palette reflects the influence of his older contemporary, Jan van Goyen.
These two paintings were hung as a pair, which struck me as entirely appropriate. I have no formal art history training, but my first thought on seeing both was that they were in the wrong gallery. They seemed so modern — not in subject, but in style. Neither has a focal point or obvious subject other than, perhaps, a cloud. And everything is backlit. The point seems to be strictly atmospheric. I love that.
Long assumed to be by Francisco de Zurbarán, the leading painter in Seville, Spain, this work is now considered to be by his son, Juan de Zurbarán, who specialized in exquisitely painted still lifes during his short career. The precise, sensuous application of paint and dramatic lighting are typical of Juan, whose style can be identified through only a few signed paintings. The expensive imported Chinese porcelain bowl would have appealed to the wealthy clientele who purchased his refined yet exuberant compositions.
To me this painting is all about the bowl. I am sure the flowers and fruit are very well done, but the bowl is stunning. I really admire an artist’s ability to paint by hand so precisely and so symmetrically. It speaks of fine motor skills that I could only dream of. I was a bit surprised to see that it was a Chinese bowl; I was not sure how much trade in fragile fine craftwork Europe had with China at that time. I googled and discovered that the Portuguese had by this point been trading with China through Macau for nearly a century. This provenance made sense. I realized that another thing I really liked about this painting was that it made me want to google.
This still life may look like a snapshot of an abandoned meal, but the scene is carefully arranged, revealing the artist’s ability to create complex but harmonious compositions with a limited palette of neutral colors. William Claesz. Heda balanced the horizontal pewter chargers in the foreground with the vertical glass vessels and salt-cellar in the background and positioned the overturned ewer diagonally to connect the two planes. Faint creases in the tablecloth, plates hanging precariously off the table’s edge, and the window reflected on the pitcher’s surface demonstrate the artist’s observant eye as well as his virtuosity in handling paint.
What a stunningly beautiful mess! I am notorious for hating disorder, and yet I immediately thought that I would love to hang this painting in my house. The light and the technique took my breath away.
I was especially drawn to the glassware. I have always been somewhat amazed by painters who can paint glass. After all, it’s transparent, right? I looked particularly closely at the tall beer glass at the back. It’s hardly painted at all: just light edge strokes, some reflective highlights, and so on. Most of it matches the wall. And yet it has such substance.
This man’s suntanned skin, worn clothing, and rustic surroundings are rendered in shades of brown that mirror the contents of his pipe. The Spanish introduced tobacco into Northern Europe in the 16th century, and smoking quickly became a beloved pastime that was widely considered healthful and nourishing. By the early 17th century, single-figure images of smokers emerged as a subgenre of Dutch and Flemish painting. The theme posed an enticing challenge for artists, with its burning leaves, billowing plumes of smoke, and active facial expressions—here, the figure purses his lips and wrinkles his brow as he concentrates on lighting the pipe. German painter Johann Carl Loth blended the Northern emphasis on capturing textures with the dramatic illumination reminiscent of so-called Caravaggesque painters like Hendrick Terbrugghen.
This painting made me curious. My first thought was that the man must have accomplished something and a pipe was his reward. I wondered what he had done. He must have been out in the sun; his cheeks and nose are burned, and his hands and wrists (but not forearms) are tanned. But maybe all he had really accomplished was dinner, for there is food on the table. If so, he didn’t eat very much. Why not?
The old fellow had such an interesting face, too, and such a look of satisfaction. He seemed happy. It was hard not to smile. But I also wanted to know more.
Edwaert Collier was well known in his own time for his still lifes, which replicated in intricate detail actual maps and globes. Here, he reproduced a portion of Frederik de Wit’s 1660 map of the Americas and Jodocus Hondius’s terrestrial globe with a view of Mexico, both of which allude to the Dutch Republic’s international trade networks and the ambition to possess the world through cartographic knowledge. The extinguished candle and hourglass, in contrast, reference the fleeting nature of time. Through such highly illusionistic renderings of the symbols of worldly pursuits, Collier evoked the tension between humanity’s lasting contributions to the fields of art and science and the brevity of an individual life.
As a kid, I loved maps. I still do. But this house belonged to someone who loved them even more than I. It also belonged to a total scatterbrain who obviously couldn’t finish one thing before starting another and who had no sense of order. Those qualities are foreign to me. So, maps and mindsets — those are what grabbed me here (in addition to exquisite brushwork and light play).
Nicolas de Largillière was among the most highly esteemed and prolific portrait painters working in the time of Louis XIV of France, and his popularity continued through the period of the regency that followed Louis’s death in 1715. His portraits were admired for their deftly rendered textures and for the confident poses that lent a sense of grandeur and ease to the sitters. They were sought after by a diverse clientele, ranging from royalty and courtiers to the upper middle class. In this work, one of his many self-portraits, Largillière presented himself as fashionably dressed and self-assured, the master of his art. He depicted himself as ready to lay out a painting, working with a porte-crayon (a piece of chalk in a holder) on the blank canvas behind him.
I could not decide on first glance whether the subject of this painting was a good-natured soul or a pompous ass. I gradually inclined toward the latter, though I have no independent information for that judgment. But there were subtle clues: obviously an artist, he evidently thought it more important to paint himself than get going on the painting he is set up to do; and although he is in his studio (no doubt alone), rather than at court or in society, he is wearing a wig. Who does that? There are other unrealistic affectations, too. While he would obviously be using a mirror to paint himself, his gaze is slightly above it. And although he is holding his port-crayon in his left hand, suggesting that he was left-handed, he had to have been painting with his right.
The most eminent member of the family of Venetian artists, Francesco Guardi is renowned for his lively city views and fanciful depictions of architecture. Here, Guardi represented Venice’s spiritual and social epicenter, the Piazza San Marco, animated by the capricious interactions of humans and animals alike. Using a sweeping perspectival view, Guardi emphasized the vastness of the piazza, which is to this day the largest piece of open land on the crowded lagoon. Wealthy travelers making the Grand Tour of Europe — considered an essential part of an education for upper class men — constituted an important market for such paintings.
This painting grabbed me because I had been there — several times. Seeing something familiar from about 200 years before my first visit was quite captivating. I admired the artistry, too, of course, and, as I have learned in the course of this exercise, I have a thing for clouds. But something seemed off. Later, I realized what it was: Where were all the pigeons?
There was no commentary next to this portrait, only “Oil on mahogany panel” and “Gift of Catherine Colvin, 1921.88.” I did a little research and discovered that Savage painted at least seven portraits of Washington. I don’t know which this one was in the series, but it seems Washington sat for the first one during the first winter of his presidency (1789–1790), so this is likely the second or third. No matter; what first struck me about this one was Washington’s enormous nose and his oddly dropped chin. I wasn’t even sure it was Washington when I first saw it. I have always been struck that no two portraits of Washington make him look quite the same. Was he a shape-shifter? Were his portraitists incompetents? Did they paint doppelgangers and then claim they were Washington?
The second thing that struck me about this portrait was its dishonesty. Here, Washington has the soft, almost feminine hands of a 20-year old. By this point, he was 61 and had spent years outdoors surveying or conducting military operations. His real hands must have looked gnarly (in the literal sense of that word). And there is no sign of the smallpox scars on his face. We were being lied to.
This depiction of an enslaved man constituted a timely abolitionist appeal in the years leading up to the British Emancipation Act of 1833. The subject raises his head and eyes toward the heavens, echoing the conventional poses for Christian saints and martyrs. John Philip Simpson thus used familiar iconography to appeal to the sentimentality and supposed moral superiority of wealthy white viewers with the requisite power to sway public policy. But the deeply moving pose also reflects the artistic contribution of the man who modeled for the figure, now identified as Ira Aldridge, a free-born American actor famous for playing the title role in Shakespeare’s Othello. His performance in Thomas Morton’s musical drama The Slave may have been the immediate inspiration for Simpson’s painting. Aldridge was also renowned for his persuasive speeches for the abolitionist cause.
In a gallery full of portraits of wealthy, influential people, this one stood out for obvious reasons. It alone was morally disturbing. When I read the side panel and discovered that the subject was a freeman and an actor, I felt briefly hoodwinked, but reading all the way down I was reassured that it was all for a good cause. As far as technique was concerned, the side panel said everything better than could I. The pose and light play were symbolically obvious, but no less compelling.
There was no commentary on this piece on the side panel, either, which seemed oddly appropriate, given how spare the scene is. This painting prompted many questions. Why was the subject leaning awkwardly against an obviously comfortable bed rather than sitting or lying on it? Why was he wearing a hat and coat indoors? Why didn’t the shadow on the bed line up with the shadow on the floor? Why was neither shadow aligned with the light source? Why, if the book was as thick as it obviously was, did it appear to have no spine? What were the odds that he would be exactly halfway through it?
David Garrick, one of the most influential actors of 18th century Britain, appears here in the guise of the titular character from William Shakespeare’s King Lear, a role he played numerous times on the stage. The play follows Lear’s mental breakdown after he relinquishes his power and divides his kingdom between two of his daughters. In this portrait, made after Garrick’s passing and based on prints created from his death mask, the actor wears a crown of wheat and wildflowers in reference to a famous scene in the play during which the king rages at a storm, daring it to harm him.
King Lear is my favourite Shakespeare play, but I did not know that this was King Lear until I read the side panel. My first reaction was simply that this was a beautifully executed portrait. But then I began to notice odd things. Who puts wheat in their hair, even if they are mad — and with a rose, no less? Who bundles it so nicely if they do? And why clutch even more wheat? What happened to this guy’s nose? It looks like it has been displaced by an earthquake and is missing half a nostril. Did he break it playing Rugby? And would Lear have worn an ermine-collared robe out into the famous storm? So many questions; so few answers.
Finely dressed and carrying an elegant walking stick, influential French artist Édouard Manet appears before a stark background evocative of his own paintings as well as photographic portraits of the time. Created by his friend Henri Fantin-Latour, this depiction confronted the public perception of Manet as a radical bohemian painter of coarse and confrontational compositions (for an example of this, see his Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers). Fantin-Latour instead portrayed him as the genteel man-about-town he actually was.
I don’t know if this painting would have jumped out at me if I had not seen that it was a portrait of Manet. It just seemed so antithetical to Manet’s own work. But the side panel insisted that he was a “genteel man-about-town,” and who am I to doubt that? Just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover art.
Moonlight floods through tangles of dark, crooked branches, casting deep shadows on the ground that crisscross tracks imprinted in the damp earth by wagon wheels. The moon is just out of view but fills the scene with a strikingly eerie, bright-green hue. In the middle distance, a single cart makes its way down the muddy road, evoking the Romantic trope of lone travelers. John Atkinson Grimshaw has been hailed as “the painter of moonlight” precisely for moody, atmospheric works like this one. Self-taught, he began to paint in the 1850s while working as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway company in Leeds, England.
I found the combination of the moonlight and the misty background utterly captivating. This painting evoked emotion immediately — a combination of sadness, resignation, and awe. It also struck me as photorealistic, including a compelling degree of noise, as though it were shot at very high ISO. But, of course, it is not photorealistic at all. It would be impossible to capture the tonal variations in this scene with a camera without saturating either highlights or darks.
Mary Cassatt chose a quintessentially Spanish subject, executing this composition of a bullfighter, or torero, in full regalia during an extended stay in Seville. Having trained in Philadelphia and Paris, Cassatt ventured to Spain to study the country’s Renaissance and Baroque works and to follow the path of French avant-garde artists like Édouard Manet. Depicting the performer at a relaxed moment, far removed from the spectacle and violence of the ring, Cassatt omitted narrative detail. Instead, with a modernist sensibility, she focused on the male figure in a casual pose, employing vigorous brushwork and rich pigment to describe the bullfighter’s costume and suggest his characteristic bravado.
This was one of the very few paintings that I encountered done by a woman, though of course I did not know that until I read the side panel. It immediately brought to mind Old Man Lighting a Pipe, which I had seen perhaps an hour earlier. More than two centuries separated these paintings, and yet they looked to me as though they could have been done at the same time. In terms of colour, light, mood, and technique, they were almost exactly the same. I loved them both. But there was no mystery about this one: one knows exactly what is going on here.
This subject, unusual for Pierre-Auguste Renoir, was painted during his stay at the home of Paul Berard in Wargemont, on the Normandy coast. Here, Renoir depicted a site untouched by urbanization or modernization. Rather than paint nature as an untamable elemental force, the artist deliberately brushed his wave in blue-violets that transform the work into a mood picture, whose effect is more decorative and melancholy than foreboding and stormy. It is nature tamed and poeticized by Renoir’s temperament and characteristic lightness of touch.
Nothing in this painting is realistic, especially the colours. But it may be the most beautiful seascape I have ever seen. Contrary to the text on the side panel, I thought it foreboding and stormy; I saw nothing decorative and melancholy about it. And was the touch light? I don’t know. It didn’t matter. I stared at this for a full five minutes before I could move on.
“He loves everything that is joyous, brilliant, and consoling in life,” an anonymous interviewer once wrote about Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This may explain why Two Sisters (On the Terrace) is one of the most popular paintings in the Art Institute. Here Renoir depicted the radiance of lovely young women on a warm and beautiful day. The older girl, wearing the female boater’s blue flannel, is posed in the center of the evocative landscape backdrop of Chatou, a suburban town where the artist spent much of the spring of 1881. She gazes absently beyond her younger companion, who seems, in a charming visual conceit, to have just dashed into the picture. Technically, the painting is a tour de force: Renoir juxtaposed solid, almost life-size figures against a landscape that—like a stage set—seems a realm of pure vision and fantasy. The sewing basket in the left foreground evokes a palette, holding the bright, pure pigments that the artist mixed, diluted, and altered to create the rest of the painting. Although the girls were not actually sisters, Renoir’s dealer showed the work with this title, along with Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando and others, at the seventh Impressionist exhibition, in 1882.
The impressionists were masters of colour, and this is no exception. The brush technique is engrossing, too — not quite pointillist, but jabbed in a similar way, though very heavy. There is nothing photorealistic here. But the authenticity of the subjects’ facial expressions is compelling. It is almost as though you can read their minds.
A lone peasant girl pauses her work to listen to a lark singing in the distance. Her emotional response to this moment of natural beauty is accentuated by the glow of the sun rising behind her, suffusing the landscape with golden light. Jules Breton specialized in scenes of rustic life in the countryside. Having been raised in the rural village of Courrières in northern France, he admired the people living there for their resourcefulness and connection to nature and gained immense popularity by painting them in his idealized style.
Another backlit scene. I find these captivating. They really create a mood. I had no idea that the girl had stopped to listen to a Lark (though I could not blame her). Most likely it was a Crested Lark, whose song you can listen to here.
Frederic Remington crafted this scene of bloody confrontation for white audiences east of the Mississippi River, who imagined the West as a place of both danger and opportunity. An unseen Sioux warrior has shot a cavalry scout, who slumps over his horse while the troops behind him flee the ambush. A sculptor and illustrator as well as a painter, Remington was famous for his dynamic compositions of frontier life, which presented mythologized views of encounters between Native and settler-colonial communities in tantalizing color and detail. Although he traveled to western locations to sketch or gather material on assignment, he executed most of his work in his New York studio, including The Advance-Guard, which was later reproduced in Harper’s Weekly alongside an article by the artist.
I loved the colours in this painting, as well as the overexposure effect. But the things I loved most about it were its dynamism and its compositional imbalance, which gave the impression of an image hastily taken, almost in surprise. In form, the painting brilliantly echoes the panic of the ambush, and the emotion it conveys is palpable. Even the horses contribute to the effect. The horse in the foreground is shot in the rump and is in obvious pain. The next horse is galloping away furiously. The third horse in the background is rearing. In the distance, you can just make out a wagon train. You can bet what lays in store for that. But I confess I found the title of the painting confusing. It looks to me as though the wagon train is moving in the other direction. Shouldn’t this be a rear-guard?
In American Gothic, Grant Wood directly evoked images of an earlier generation by featuring a farmer and his daughter posed stiffly and dressed as if they were, as the artist put it, “tintypes from my old family album.” They stand outside of their home, built in an 1880s style known as Carpenter Gothic. Wood had seen a similar farmhouse during a visit to Eldon, Iowa. When it was exhibited at the Art Institute in 1930, the painting became an instant sensation, its ambiguity prompting viewers to speculate about the figures and their story. Many understood the work to be a satirical comment on midwesterners out of step with a modernizing world. Yet Wood intended it to convey a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression.
This is one of the most famous paintings at the Art Institute, and of course I was drawn to it in part because of its fame. But I can’t decide whether it is a good painting. The fact that there is no perspective on the house in the background is jarring. The pitchfork dominates in an odd way. The farmer looks stunned and uncomfortable. His daughter’s face looks squished side to side. The net effect was to make me squirm a little. And then I read the side panel, which I found disappointing. This was “intended to convey a positive image of rural American values”? To me, the daughter is gazing at her dad with intense hatred, as though he had done something horrible to her in the barn that we can barely see on the right. A friend of mine insists that good art is unsettling, though. If that’s the criterion, this is definitely good art.
About Nighthawks Edward Hopper recollected, “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.” In an all-night diner, three customers sit at the counter opposite a server, each appear to be lost in thought and disengaged from one another. The composition is tightly organized and spare in details: there is no entrance to the establishment, no debris on the streets. Through harmonious geometric forms and the glow of the diner’s electric lighting, Hopper created a serene, beautiful, yet enigmatic scene. Although inspired by a restaurant Hopper had seen on Greenwich Avenue in New York, the painting is not a realistic transcription of an actual place. As viewers, we are left to wonder about the figures, their relationships, and this imagined world.
I love modernism, and this painting oozed it. But I found the side panel unsatisfying. Isn’t it obvious that the man and the woman sitting next to each other are there together? Isn’t it obvious that the waiter is either about to speak to them, or has just finished speaking to them? Where is the loneliness in that? And what did the artist mean by “unconsciously, probably”? How do you put a probability on something of which you claim not even to be aware? Perhaps this was another case, as Northrup Frye once put it, where “Ibsen is an indifferent critic of Ibsen.” Also: it was considered impolite for men to wear hats indoors in the 1940s.
Chicago artist Ivan Albright executed this grisly work for the 1945 movie adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s tale, a portrait of the young and attractive Gray decays as the protagonist leads an increasingly wayward life, recording the extent of his moral corruption in paint. Having established a reputation for capturing the macabre, Albright was the ideal choice to create such a horrific image that both attracts and repulses its viewers. The portrait appeared in vivid Technicolor, within the otherwise black-and-white film, causing a sensation. When Albright’s canvas was exhibited at the Art Institute later that year, the Chicago Tribune reported that the museum “is having a heck of a time handling the crowds flocking to see his painting.”
“Attracts and repulses” is right. That is exactly what this painting did to me. It was stunning — beautifully executed and faithfully evocative of Wilde’s creepy novel. But you couldn’t pay me enough money to hang it in my house.
So, what did I learn about myself? I would say three things about my taste in paintings specifically:
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- I am fascinated by light.
- Dynamism blows me away.
- I am drawn to a painting that makes me want to google way more than to one that does not.
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I would add four things about me in general that also just so happen to apply to paintings:
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- I admire skill.
- I like to be challenged.
- I love puzzles.
- I am bored not learning.
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None of these things in a painting alone is enough to move me, though. That’s probably why I don’t particularly care for The Mona Lisa. I can see the skill in it, but it ticks none of my other boxes. I have no idea why so many people think it the best painting of all time. But maybe that’s just me. To each their own, as they say.