Ferris Bueller and the Island of La Grande Jatte

I don’t know if it’s Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or synchronicity, but it has to be more than mere coincidence.

I caught Ferris Bueller on cable last week, and like most of my generation, I watched it.

The scene in the Art Institute where they zero-in on the Seurat pixel painting tugged at me in the usual way.

This week, I found myself in the Chicago-area with an afternoon to kill. Rebecca, my client and escort for the day, invited me to an afternoon downtown, since I never seem to make it to the Magnificant Mile with her.

The first place she took me to was the Art Institute. I was unaware of the looming casualty of events until she brought me right up to the Seurat masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

The Bueller thing kicked in, and I was Cameron for a good solid 45 minutes.

The painting is massive and enchanting, a gorgeous wonder of the vital interaction between human eye and human emotion. I guess others call it perception. This painting is perception drawn out--tantric-esque--wrought longingly from the heart, an epiphany for every touch of color.

Then, the weird part hits.

I start reading Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came To The End, and, not only is the book a mirror-reflection of the advertising industry, not only is the author’s last name Ferris (as in Bueller), but a key scene of the book occurs in the Art Institute while looking at Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

That's fucked up.