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“In the Spirit of Walser” at Donald Young Gallery is a series of exhibitions by artists inspired by the poetic, rambling stories of Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956). The second exhibition in this series features new works by Moyra Davey, including “Subway Writers II,” a grid of twenty-five photographs, and “Les Goddesses,” a sixty-one minute film reflecting on the life of writer and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Davey’s artwork, similar to Walser’s writing, balances melancholic introspection against a fascination with daily life. Read the rest of this entry »

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When Peter J. Cohen went through his vast collection of old anonymous snapshots gleaned from flea markets and garage sales, he was struck by how many of them depicted female threesomes, gathered those together, tacked them on the gallery wall, and titled the exhibition “The Three Graces”—beauty, charm and grace. Billed as a history of women’s presentation of themselves to the camera over most of the twentieth century, the show is nothing of the sort—all of the images are black and white, and most of them seem to come from the mid-century decades, although one cannot be sure, since they are not dated or seemingly chronologically ordered. What we get are informal group portraits and girls just wanting to have fun and more-or-less succeeding, whether by vamping or horsing around. Read the rest of this entry »

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In a happy conceit, photographer Lee Bey has paired his sensitive contemporary color shots of landmarks in Chicago’s neighborhoods with images of the same sites taken long ago, to show how much the scenes have changed, and in some cases have remained the same, at least in their meanings, if not their overt appearance. Nothing depicts how continuity and contrast intertwine with more telling effect than a vintage take of the original memorial to the police who fell in the 1886 Haymarket Riot at Desplaines and Randolph, where the anarchists and the forces of order faced off and a bomb exploded; paired with Bey’s shot of the monument that stands there today. Read the rest of this entry »

Those who saw his 2009 retrospective at the Renaissance Society might well be surprised that Jim Lutes is painting moody landscapes. Until now, his career has moved back and forth between abstract expression and spectral, sketchy, flabby figuration. But the four wall-size landscapes now showing in Valerie Carberry are far too picturesque to be considered contemporary, which is not to say he hasn’t tried to bring them up to date. His paintings are still recognizably twenty-first century, with space that feels flat, objects that are pixelated, erratically nervous mark-making, and little concern for Baroque luminosity or realistic textures. But still, each huge image has given this viewer the overwhelming and uncomfortable feeling of standing smack in the middle of Kelly Creek, Idaho, confronted by impenetrable walls of boulders, encompassed by dark, dangling foliage, with no apparent pathway to escape this dark, remote valley in the Bitterroot Mountains. The Impressionists shared their pleasure with the great outdoors, the Romantics shared their wonder at its mystery and Lutes shares his anxiety with what he calls the “Dumb Country.” Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Ferrara, "Stacked Pyramid," 1972

After a year that’s been rich in lively shows and discussion about the relevance and legacy of Minimalism—the Gerard Byrne show and accompanying panels at the Renaissance Society, for one—this fall’s big Minimalism-then-and-now show at the MCA is a bit of a theoretical letdown. The first major show by chief curator Michael Darling, who joined the MCA last summer, “The Language of Less (Then and Now)” betrays a serious anxiety about the inaccessibility of Minimalism that seems out of place in a museum city like Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

Philip Pearlstein, "Two Nudes and Four Duck Decoys," oil on canvas, 1994

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What do the objects in a painting mean? This is a very important question for historians who study art made for the sake of religious or political ideologies. But when art is done for the sake of art, success often depends on what they don’t mean, especially in the post-war American art world that reacted so strongly against the idealism that accompanied two world wars. Philip Pearlstein (born 1924) and Ellen Lanyon (born 1926) are two artists, and friends, whose careers emerged at the beginning of that era, and their contrasting strategies for an engaging meaninglessness are currently facing each other on opposite walls at Valerie Carberry Gallery. Read the rest of this entry »

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In 1999, Janet McKenzie’s “Jesus of the People” was selected by Sister Wendy Beckett, the BBC television art docent, from among the ten finalists in the National Catholic Reporter’s “Jesus 2000” project to discover “who Jesus might be for our time.” As Sister Wendy wrote: “This is a haunting image of a peasant Jesus—dark, thick-lipped, looking out on us with ineffable dignity, with sadness but with confidence.”

Using a young African-American woman as the model and symbols associated with American Indian and Taoist spirituality, the piece has generated more controversy than veneration, which was presumably that independent newspaper’s intention. Read the rest of this entry »

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During the 1980s, artists who produced anxious or enigmatic objects gave up the responsibility to be serious, or at least they shed some of the trappings of the high seriousness characterized by Minimalism. Dan Gunn’s “Patchwork Plateau,” on view at the MCA, is an object resembling a room-dividing screen and is placed on its side. It has many attributes whose ambiguity could be unsettling, except that it is painted a cheerful shade of green. Many of the parts of “Patchwork Plateau”—the name must refer to its table-like orientation, although the geographical connotations linger—seem to be found and not found at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, "Ambrose Bierce," 1964

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A transplant from Normal, Illinois to Lexington, Kentucky, Ralph Eugene Meatyard took up photography, got into the circle of intellectuals presided over by Wendell Berry, and indulged his proclivities for the surreal suffused with Southern gothic. An early practitioner of the contemporary scenario shot whose trajectory peaked in the 1960s, Meatyard deployed his wife and children in still dramas, in which they appeared in masks and uncovered, often with some dolls thrown in or standing alone. Curator Elizabeth Siegel is correct to dub Meatyard as “enigmatic,” judging by the fifty-one black-and-white images here. At first look, the viewer is drawn to shots like that of a little boy holding a doll and wearing an old man’s wizened face mask, sitting on cracking concrete strewn with dead leaves against the wall of a derelict building. Then one notices that most of the images are much tamer, leaving a sense of peace with what is just a form of low-key voguing—the banality of the surreal. (Michael Weinstein)

Through September 25 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan.

Gustav Klutsis, "Worker Men and Women: Everyone Vote in the Soviet Elections," 1930

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The separation between everyday life and the visionary designers of the avant-garde is one of the ongoing ironies or misrepresentations of the twentieth century. An exhibition at the Art Institute retrieves the connections among graphic design, designed objects, art and “everyday life,” displaying book covers, teapots, postcards and the dynamic graphic work of six visual artists. What we now take for granted as industrial design was just beginning in the early years of the century when Ladislav Sutnar was designing dinnerware and posters celebrating commerce and industry. His sculptural china embodies the restrained play of spherical volumes, while Piet Zwart’s apple-green pressed glassware is more compact as tubular tea cups sit in hexagonal saucers. The emphasis on form rather than decoration not only severs ties with the clutter of the Victorian past but identifies everyday items with the values—efficiency, durability, mass distribution—of emerging industrial and communications technologies. Read the rest of this entry »