At the Art Institute, 'Paradise Lost' is a sprawling artwork defying description. You just have to see it.

“Interior, Woman Reading,” an 1880 painting by Gustave Caillebotte

     For a smart guy, I can be pretty thick.
     Let me explain.
     For decades, I've been admiring Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day" at the Art Institute. It's hard not to.
     A huge painting of pedestrians hurrying along Haussmann Boulevard, it's got the realism I like, softened by the stirrings of Impressionism, circa 1877. You can stand far away and absorb the whole scene, or swoop in to notice the woman's delicate black veil.

     Yet never, in all the years I gazed at it, did I ever pause to think, "Heyyyy ... this guy's pretty good. I wonder what ELSE he's painted?" Not once.
     That lapse was made painfully clear seeing the Caillebotte show — a sprawling, comprehensive exhibit, shifting Caillebotte from one-trick-pony to significant, complete artist, introducing a world that you — OK, me — never imaged.
     I won't review the whole show — my colleague Kyle MacMillan did that marvelously. Just go.
     Be sure to study the placards. Otherwise, you'll miss what's going on. Look at the picture above, "Interior, Woman Reading."
     What's striking is the woman is the dominant figure, in the foreground, studying a newspaper, then a typically masculine activity. While the man is sprawled on the sofa, holding a novel, considered at the time a feminine vice. Caillebotte is playing with us, toying with our expectations.
     The more things change ...
     The Caillebotte exhibit, "Painting His World," is reason aplenty to visit the Art Institute. But there's an additional surprise that hasn't gotten the publicity it deserves.
     I'm tempted to leave it at that. Stop reading now, go as a blank slate and then return after you've encountered it ...
     I'll play the "Jeopardy" music:
     Doo doo doo, doo-dah, doo doo doo...
     You're back? Already?

     On your way to the Caillebotte show, you usually pass through the Asian gallery. And there, along 100 feet of the south wall, is Raqib Shaw's "Paradise Lost." You stopped in your tracks and gaped. Don't feel bad. Everybody does.
     How to describe it for those who cheated and kept reading? The life's journey of the Calcutta-born, Kashmir-raised, London-based artist. Conveyed in a wild allegorical explosion that defies description. The museum tries: "An epic and tumultuous journey that represents the very nature and breadth of human existence ..."
     Raging seas, collapsing palaces, a horse wrestling a zebra, leopards, bears, placid baboons in a cherry tree — well, placid except the one strangling a fawn. Bejeweled, painted in automobile enamel using syringes and porcupine quills.
     Dozens of visitors crowd around, stepping back, drawing in close. I'm deliberately not publishing photos.

     "You have to see it," said Madhuvanti Ghose, associate curator of arts of Asia at the Art Institute. "Because no amount of photography actually captures the kind of details that your eye picks up."

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