Alberto Aguilar: Proposal for “Working Class Uprise.”

By Jason Foumberg

On the heels of Marilyn Monroe’s burlesque appearance on Michigan Avenue, a citywide debate ignited over the value of our public art. Should public works send a meaningful message to the entire city and tourists alike, or should they be (merely) entertaining? Should public art challenge our taste levels—and whose taste levels, theirs or ours? That the Marilyn colossus opened up this discussion, once again, proved that our public art is an important slice of our city’s culture. And yet, many artists and art lovers felt defeated, even excluded, from the Marilyn worship. If public art is for all, why is it selected by a secret few?

In response to this increasingly polarizing situation, I asked Chicago-based artists to create an ideal public artwork.
These twenty-six responses are unpolluted by the committees, private interests and politicians that usher public sculptures to their often-neutered realization. Most of the artists featured here do not typically make traditional or monumental public artworks, so the submissions take the format of conceptual designs, sketches, and drawings posed as questions and critiques. Read the rest of this entry »

Andre Malraux

By Jason Foumberg

Three unique library collections and archives sparked my interest this week. Such collections grow slowly and quietly over the years. Here, two are at least seventy years old and one is a fledgling five. The collections described below are maintained by individuals who clearly gain pleasure from their hoarding, and welcome the public to do the same.

The Imaginary Museum

In a well-known photograph from 1950, the French writer Andre Malraux stands before a small sea of images spread before him on his office carpet. His “imaginary museum” remixed the history of art as a virtual collage, one that could be re-ordered at will. “An art book is a museum without walls,” said Malraux, and this statement is writ large, like a rule, on the entry wall of the eighth floor of the Harold Washington Library, in the visual and performing arts division. A visitor to the library’s Picture Collection, located on this floor, could easily recreate Malraux’s style of temporary exhibition. The Picture Collection contains an estimated million-and-a-half images clipped and filed by category. There are over 10,000 subject headings organized alphabetically, for searching or browsing, and the images can be checked out like a book, taken home and pored over. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Foumberg

Tony Tasset’s new sculpture, a thirty-foot eyeball installed in a downtown public plaza, is a masterwork in the surrealist tradition, a method of art-making now almost a century old. It is still effective. The giant eyeball disrupts—temporarily and safely—the usual workaday street life in this busy corner of the city. We could use more surprising interruptions like this colossal eyeball inserted into our well-worn footpaths. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jason Foumberg

On my daily walk I’ve noticed at least three varieties of kale growing in the city’s traffic islands and sidewalk planters, including the crinkle-textured dinosaur kale, which I know to be tasty when sautéed with lemon juice or cooked in an Italian soup. Chicago’s Department of Transportation tends these medians and planters, rotating the shrubs seasonally to upkeep our “city in a garden” motto. Kale can heartily withstand the colder climate, and so it is used decoratively this late autumn. I may have thought little more about the urban kale except I recently read Barbara Demick’s story in the November 2 issue of the New Yorker about a North Korean woman who survived the famine there in the early 1990s by foraging for weeds in her city’s streets and alleys. Communist leader Kim Jong-il could no longer distribute food to his citizens, so many had to get creative with their meals, such as Mrs. Song, who ate barely edible grass and dandelions every day. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker night

By Bert Stabler

Upon entering the opening reception for the collective InCUBATE’s new exhibition/event at ThreeWalls, “In Search of the Mundane,” the eponymous search proved neither long nor arduous. The first room in the gallery featured a table with chairs, a coffeemaker with mugs and a handwritten description of the evening’s main event, a trivia contest. Along the sides of the main gallery were two rows of chairs, and, at the end, a table for the trivia contest judges. Facing the judges’ table, on the near wall, hung a giant crossword puzzle that InCUBATE members had ordered rush delivery from Sky Mall magazine when they realized they needed to hang something there. The contest started fairly promptly, and I joined up with two strangers in order to display our lackluster knowledge of Cold War history, details in Moby Dick, British portraiture, sci-fi movies and romantic comedies. Oh, and the gallery’s smaller project room featured darts and a dartboard. To be sure, while they might not know the point of staging these events in a art gallery, this seemed to be an art show that average everyday Americans could hardly claim not to “get.”

And that word “everyday” is entirely the point. InCUBATE began in 2007 as a project of four graduate students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Ben Schaafsma, Abigail Satinsky, Roman Petruniak and Bryce Dwyer; their name is an acronym standing for Institute for Community Understanding Between Art and The Everyday. (Schaafsma passed away suddenly in 2008, but InCUBATE has continued, recently adding Matthew Joynt as a new fourth member.) Their mundane searching is informed by pragmatist philosophy. They draw inspiration from thinkers who combined theory with practice, such as Chicago’s own Jane Addams and John Dewey, as well as the eclectic Jesuit scholar Michel de Certeau and Allan Kaprow, the artist and writer best known for the so-called “Happenings” with which he was associated in the 1950s. InCUBATE’s place in contemporary art is among the ranks of “relational” artists, for whom the goal is not to generate artifacts or performances, but to facilitate interactive situations. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

It has been twenty-five years since Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant’s book “Subway Art” was first published. Widely regarded as the “graffiti bible,” “Subway Art” documented graffiti art during the 1980s in New York City, primarily in the borough of the Bronx. For its twenty-fifth anniversary, the book is being re-released this year in a special edition that includes more content and larger images. This coincides with the publishing of Cooper’s current book, “Going Postal,” which documents contemporary art disseminated through cities on postal stickers stuck to common urban surfaces. Cooper believes these stickers are an example of how graffiti has “progressed and endured.” “Going Postal” also includes the work of several Chicago-based artists. To celebrate, the Chicago clothing and design company Novem, in conjunction with Upset Magazine, is hosting a book signing by Cooper and a sticker sale. All stickers will be selling for $5 and Cooper will also be selling photographs of her work.

In contemporary art, graffiti still continues to pose a great deal of questions in terms of distinguishing art versus vandalism. Twenty-five years ago Cooper and Chalfant were unable to find a publisher for the book in the United States, but now graffiti is thoroughly assimilated in both fine art and advertising. Cooper and Chalfant’s book helped push the style into the mainstream by publishing a firestorm of written, photographic and video documentation of illegal and ephemeral street art. Martha Cooper is a pioneer and a legend in her field, and her presence in Chicago is not something to be missed. (Sara McCool)

Book launch and signing and sticker sale, May 1, 5pm-10pm, at Novem Life, 1114 N. Ashland

RECOMMENDED

In addition to being an acclaimed venue for public art, Millennium Park has a populist mandate, and the balance between popular appeal and artistic excellence is a difficult one. Chen Wenling’s “Valiant Struggle,” one of four new large-scale sculptures from China introduced into the park, is a critique of an increasingly capitalistic and consumerist Chinese society, but the funhouse aesthetic, especially in the park, reduces the sentiment.

More seriously, the work by Sui Jianguo and Shen Shaomin references international relations and tensions. Jianguo’s “Windy City Dinosaur” is a near-actual-size T-Rex with “Made In China” attached to its stomach that could allude to controversial Chinese toy exports or the many fossil excavations going on in China. Shaomin’s “Kowtow Pump” consists of several oil derricks covered in camouflage and are motorized at different speeds. Kowtow is the act of bowing in respect, and the piece references our continued oil dependence. Seeing it in action is integral but disappointingly it will only run once daily, during tours.

Zhan Wang’s “Jia Shan Shi No. 46” reaches back to tradition and connects to the contemporary without gimmicks. It is a stainless-steel copy of a Chinese scholar stone, which, in its original form, is used for meditation. Wang updates this tradition for twenty-first century China. However, most people seemed more inclined to give it a knock to see if it was hollow than to give it contemplation. Hopefully the artistic message of this and the other sculptures will not be lost on everyone. (Abraham Ritchie)

Through October 11 at Millennium Park, Monroe Street at Michigan Avenue.

“Is it supposed to be art?” a middle-aged man asks his wife. “Or is it just a ball?” The wife shrugs. They stand on the second floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, one of the city’s architectural beauties, yet their eyes fix solely on one damn enormous ball, its glorious shade of candy-apple red permeating from across the room. As if they were zombies, they move quietly and steadily towards the beast and begin to poke and prod, as others who have chosen to ignore the peculiar giant ball in the room roam past without batting an eye.

The RedBall project rolled into Chicago over the month of September, a fifteen-foot, 250-pound inflatable vinyl ball created by New York artist Kurt Perschke, in part to observe how the nearby population reacts to it. The Cultural Center served as the final stop to an itinerary that included Wicker Park, the Chess Pavilion and Federal Plaza; here, the artists have managed to cram the ball into the space in between the staircase and the window, meaning if those entering from the south entrance immediately look up, they are greeted by the sight of the ball, which for whatever reason feels like you’re looking up at a giant red ass. If the ball were any smaller, it could easily drop to the ground floor and forcefully bounce off the top of someone’s unsuspecting head.

While there is certainly some aesthetic value to simply dropping a giant red dot in the middle of unsuspecting landscapes, the RedBall project rules because the thing is so damn easy to whack. Participants have been known to throw their entire body into the ball’s center, only to be propelled backwards in ecstasy. Here, jumping onto it looks a little dangerous, but other activities arise. Hordes of tourists want pictures in front of the behemoth, most acting as if they’re lifting the ball on pure adrenaline; one acts like an imaginary rolling projectile is about to trample them, Indiana Jones-style. One man walks briskly up the stairs and nonchalantly gives the ball a whack. “Thud,” the ball responds. The man stops, then hits again. “Thud. Thud. Thud.” It appears to be relieving the man of some pent-up aggression—to him, the RedBall is one of those red stress balls you’re supposed to squeeze, except fifty times bigger to take on country-leading Chicago-sized stress.

Later on, a young couple approaches the ball and each take on different personas: the girl pets the ball, as if it was a cute little 250-pound puppy, while the guy plays the ball like a drum, his head bobbing to and fro to the song in his mind (judging by his drumming style, something by Metallica). Is it art? Maybe, maybe not, but if nothing else, it’s a stress ball, a killer drum kit and a fifteen-foot target for our flailing bodies. (Andy Seifert)

High Hopes
From shelter to shelter, hope poses as a novelty that always falls in high demand, but this week, after an effort fronted by local mural specialist Augustina Droze, a renewed sense of optimism will take root at the Great Hope Family Center—a homeless shelter located in Pilsen—and will make its way into the shelter from the outside-in. “I designed the mural to be garden-themed as a play on words with the shelter’s name,” the artist explains. On display on one of the shelter’s outside walls, Droze’s latest, completed with quite a bit of help and inspiration from Chicago Public School students, encapsulates the message of “Great Hope” and converts it into a slightly more sustainable “Hope Garden.” Incorporating student-designed flowers based off of their dreams of the future, the final result—to be revealed on location this Thursday—depicts the future as something capable of cultivation regardless of circumstance. “Whether they enjoy painting or painting on walls in general, the kids love it,” Droze says.

In June 1900, more than a century ago, the Armitage station on the Northwestern Elevated, currently known as the Brown Line, first opened its doors to commuters, and up until 2006, when construction began as part of the Brown Line Capacity Expansion Project, not much about the original station had changed. Now, after two years of undergoing a massive re-facing, the Armitage station is nearly complete, and boasting a sleek, modern look. The crowning jewel of this facelift is a photographic installation by Jonathan Gitelson titled “Chicago El Stories” displayed on the station’s back wall by Jonathan Gitelson. A sprawling mosaic comprised of photographic glass tiles that display forty-two footnoted pictures of places around Chicago was inspired by interviews Gitelson conducted atop the old Armitage platform. 

Gitelson, whose photography usually centers on “everyday phenomenon,” was commissioned by the CTA to create a work of public art after his pictures were spotted at a show at a Cultural Center exhibit. “I came up with this idea to do one portrait a day outside the station for a year.” This idea was turned down due to the number of liabilities of having peoples’ pictures displayed in public places, so he began thinking about how he could tell a person’s story without actually showing them. “The [second] proposal basically was: I want to interview people on the site that’s being torn down about their memories, or life, or whatever here in town. And then I’d go to the location where the story took place and take a picture of the setting, and then print part of the story…so you know it’s like part personal history, part city history.” The proposal was accepted, and he spent three months, from February to April 2007, on the platform asking commuters to spin a story about a place in Chicago that was important to them.

Sporting multiple layers, a hat and a beard to ward against the bitter cold, Gitelson—armed with a recorder, a sketch of the piece and an official letter from the city (to prove that he wasn’t thieving identities)—spent five or six days every week gathering interviews. Though Gitelson loves meeting and talking to new people, he explains, “It’s hard just going up to people and being like, ‘Hey my name is Jon. Tell me your story.’…At first I didn’t know how to ask the question right. I would say, ‘Tell me about a place you like in Chicago,’ and like the first fifty people I interviewed all said Millennium Park… So that was one thing, figuring out how to get people to open up.”

Another problem was timing interviews with only eight minutes between trains. “Basically after a train passed, the first person up would be the person I’d have to get. Otherwise, if I waited a few minutes, someone would start telling me a story and then their train would come, and I had to get them to sign a release so they’d be running for the train and I’d be running after with their release.” In the end, he conducted more than 400 interviews, which were whittled to 100 from which the final forty-two were chosen.

Each interview had to be cut due to the limitation of physical space beneath the pictures, but Gitelson decided that wasn’t enough. “I thought the people’s voices would be really important. Reading something and hearing something are very different. Sometimes you can just see someone from hearing their voice even if you’ve never met them.” So, he created a Web site (www.chicagoelstories.com) with the interviews in full. Clicking on a picture will play the story behind it. “The whole time there was this idea of having two components: public art in terms of physical public art, and public art in terms of online public art.” This innovative approach allows the work to reach a wider audience than just Brown Line commuters. “What I’m trying to do, in an ideal world, is have people either go through the station and then be interested in seeing the Web site, or have people see the Web site and be interested in going to the station,” but people can certainly take their time. Adrift in cyberspace or in person, “Chicago EL Stories” should remain a vibrant landmark for at least the next hundred years.

Check out Gitelson’s “Chicago El Stories” at the Brown Line Armitage station, 944 West Armitage.