Kara Walker, “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race!” (detail), 2013

If brand identity is crucial to the success of the contemporary artist, few have got one as strong as the MacArthur Fellowship recipient Kara Walker. But, nearly two decades on, Walker’s trademark silhouettes and antebellum grotesqueries are showing their age, and the artist, undoubtedly aware she has cut herself into a stylistic corner, has been making strides to broaden her approach to installation.

In her latest work “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race” commissioned specifically for the Art Institute, Walker anchors the show with several mural-scale drawings and a plethora of small, variously framed studies. The signature silhouettes are still present, though play less large a role in this homage to imaginary race war. Read the rest of this entry »

Walter Ellison, “Train Station,” 1935

RECOMMENDED

The flight from oppression makes such a compelling, if predictable, story; it has been made the primary theme of this exhibition about the art of Chicago’s immigrants in the first half of the twentieth century. Since Jews have been fleeing oppressors ever since the time of Pharaoh, Chicago Jewish artists dominate the exhibition. Thanks to loans by local collectors, especially Bernard Friedman, there are many fascinating works by Todros Geller, Morris Topchevsky, Misch Kohn, Max Kahn, Aaron Bohrod, David Bekker, Rifka Angel, Fritzi Brod, Emil Armin, Leon Garland and Moholy-Nagy.

The eye-opener for me was the prints and paintings of Bernice Berkman. Her career in art was brief, but she really had a fiery spirit and a remarkable empathy not only for her own people but for displaced African Americans as well. (She ended up marrying one and running a wallpaper company with him in NYC). Read the rest of this entry »

Project Projects’ “Test Fit”

By Jason Foumberg

A new method of curating diverges from the standard model of curator-as-expert, but instead of watering down the practice by crowd-sourcing, this new train-of-thought curating culls from the seemingly endless stream of digital images in order to casually organize them. The exhibition is infinite. Image-sourced exhibitions, whether in real gallery spaces or online, tend to flatten the collected images and emphasize their logic of connections. It’s a loose logic. The organizational flow emphasizes the personality of the organizer, as well as the conditions of browsing and receiving images in a fast-paced viewing environment, rather than the slow contemplation of single images or masterpieces.

This is the case in “Test Fit,” an experimental exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, facilitated by the museum’s curatorial department of design in which the NYC-based graphic design team Project Projects (composed of Rob Giampietro, Prem Krishnamurthy and Adam Michaels) plucked images from the museum’s permanent collection database and arranged reproductions of art objects—paintings, drawings, decorative objects and more—into an idiosyncratic display in the Modern Wing. No original art objects are included, the walls are painted mental-institution blue, and the reproduced images are all printed in black-and-white, at their original sizes. The effect of the associative image collection is almost convincing as a romp through Project Projects’ brain, but it’s their object labels that are most original. Accompanying Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s “Nuclear 1, CH,” the label reads: “This is a painting of the end of the world. What is your strongest memory of the sky? In the city, it always looks like an illusion.” Each image is appended with these daydream narratives. The real Moholy-Nagy painting can be viewed downstairs, in another exhibition. Read the rest of this entry »

Lesley Dill. “A Word Made Flesh…Throat,” 1994. Gift of Stanley Freehling.

RECOMMENDED

In conjunction with the newly opened “Picasso and Chicago” exhibit, the Art Institute’s Prints and Drawings department assembled “The Artist and the Poet”—a survey of twentieth-century collaborations and influences, though the connection is rather tenuous, as none of Picasso’s work is included within.

A poet, art critic and curator, Frank O’Hara is the most famous “poet among painters.” The curators devote ample space to his spirited collaborations, including over a half-dozen lithographs with Larry Rivers and an extraordinary print with Jasper Johns. From this last lithograph, titled “Skin with O’Hara Poem,” emerges the smeared image of a man’s face and hands pressed against glass. O’Hara’s poem, unusually gloomy, appears in faded typewriter text in the upper right corner. The ghost-like quality of the print is intensified by the fact that, of six planned prints, this was the only one realized before O’Hara’s early death in 1966. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Old Guitarist,” 1902–04.

RECOMMENDED

In 1926, the Art Institute of Chicago was the first American museum to place a painting by Pablo Picasso (“The Old Guitarist”) on permanent display, so it’s a bit surprising that forty years after his death “Picasso and Chicago” is the first major retrospective for what the museum’s director calls “the most transformative artist of the twentieth century.” The current show is mostly items from the museum’s own collection, enhanced by several loaned artworks from private Chicago collections. But with more than four-hundred pieces to draw from, it still offers a memorable stroll through that exceptional artist’s seventy-year career. Read the rest of this entry »

Bust of Athena (detail), c. 2nd century a.d.

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As the earliest visual expression of rational and democratic ideals, the art of the Greco-Roman world was cherished by the European civilization that overran North America a thousand years later and built the Neo-Classical temple of culture that’s called the Art Institute of Chicago. The Periclean golden age was well represented by casts of the sculptural frieze that once encircled the Parthenon—they can still be seen up near the ceiling above the grand staircase. A plaster bust of Athena was hung above the front entrance on Michigan Avenue. Read the rest of this entry »

from “Bear”

RECOMMENDED

As a child growing up in London, Steve McQueen—not the deceased film star, but the contemporary film artist—says that seeing the 1981 Irish hunger strike on television was one of those “impressionable moments,” the kind that carries with you into adulthood. In 2008, seventeen years after that initial haunting, he released his first feature-length film “Hunger,” a hyperrealistic, oft-times completely gruesome look at the 1981 hunger strike inside the HM Prison Maze. McQueen captures the demise of Bobby Sands, a member of the British Parliament and volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who starved himself to death between the prison’s cinder walls. McQueen followed up on this breakout movie with his 2011 film “Shame,” about an attractive thirty-something New Yorker named Brandon through the tunnels of his sex addiction. But McQueen did not start out as a feature-length filmmaker; rather, this newfound vision came out of more than twenty years of shorter works in mediums such as 8mm film, 16mm, 35mm slides and color video, all of which are represented in this stunning survey of his work to date. Read the rest of this entry »

Allen Ruppersberg, “No Time Left to Start Again/The B and D of R ‘n’ R”

First-generation and L.A. conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg stands apart from his contemporaries for his greater involvement with everyday life and performance. Whereas Ed Ruscha surveyed the Sunset Strip in photographs, Ruppersberg opened “Al’s Grand Hotel” on Sunset Boulevard, a performance hotel that hosted guests in absurdly decorated rooms.

“No Time Left to Start Again/The B and D of R ‘n’ R,” an expansive new artwork at the Art Institute of Chicago, continues Ruppersberg’s established practice of presenting culture by way of its advertising and visual materials. The installation in the Modern Wing’s photography galleries takes on the history of rock music (the title’s “R ‘n’ R”) from its birth to its death (the “B” and “D”). Ruppersberg selected, scanned and laminated rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, including musicians’ obituaries, album covers, and snapshots. The mementos hang on brightly colored pegboards, reminiscent of a fan-club headquarters, while a black leather couch and music on the speakers invite viewers to follow the Rolling Stones’ advice to get “lost in your rock ‘n’ roll.” Yet something hinders; visitors behave in typical museum mode, quietly contemplating and plainly observing the presented materials. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Despite Jeanne Gang’s reputation as inheritor of the mantle worn by Sullivan, Wright, and Mies, “Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects,” which opened last week in the Art Institute’s Modern Wing, emphasizes the collaborative energy and achievements of the studio over those of the individual. Drawings, plans and proposals diffuse the old model of the architectural genius and his great static monuments to reveal the actual teamwork of the creative process, but not only among the members of her practice; a wealth of materials in the exhibition visualize the crucial dialogues and fluid synergies between a building and its site, the clients who commission, and the buildings’ future inhabitants. Studio Gang and the curators at the AIC have created a dynamic, interactive and graceful space, papering the walls with information—photographs, plans, drawings and models of several finished and unfinished proposals. The viewer leaves with renewed insight into the complexity and excitement of Studio Gang’s engagement with the problems and possibilities of our moment, and importantly, the centrality of good design to the future of cities and urban life. Aqua Tower is featured prominently among projects far-flung and local, from Hyderabad, India to Glencoe, Illinois. The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, currently under construction at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, will make use of low-carbon, highly thermal construction materials and techniques. Read the rest of this entry »

Artwork and Photo by Matthew Hoffman (HeyItsMatthew.com )
Matthew is a 2006 Newcity Breakout Artist

“A friend recently confessed to me that he secretly ranks the participants in Chicago’s art world according to their importance,” wrote artist Molly Zuckerman-Hartung in this publication. Molly’s friend doesn’t work at Newcity; although we annually rank half-a-hundred scenesters of the stage and page, this is our first line-up of visual artists. But everyone intimately knows Molly’s secret friend—the shuffler of the big rolodex, the line cutter, who maybe crept through a Deb Sokolow conspiracy, who buys all your friends’ artworks but never yours. Guess who? It’s you. You made this list and you ranked it and you live in it. You’re either on this list or you’re a product of this list or you’re on this list’s parallel universe (maybe, the Top Fifty People Who Read Lists list). Congrats!

We agree that a linear fifty names is simplistic. Instead, picture this list as a family tree that’s been trimmed into an MC Escher hedge maze. Or see the names as intersecting circles, a cosmic Venn diagram, or raindrops hitting a lake. There could be a list of fifty (or 500) best painters, or a new list for every week we publish this newspaper. For now, here are fifty people who have made an impression on other peoples’ lives.

Who are these people? They are mentors, magnets, peers, alchemists, art mothers, Chicago-ish, artists’ artists, evangelicals, alive today, polarizing, underrated, retired, workhorses and teachers. Lots of teachers. If you’re an artist in Chicago it’s likely that a handful of these artists trained you, or showed you that art was even a possibility. The bonus of local legends is that we can learn from them, face to face. Many lead by example.

About the selection process: Artists only for this list. (Power curators and other hangers-on get their own list, next year). To rank these artists we surveyed hundreds of local living artists, racked our brains, had conversations, wrote emails, canvassed the streets with art critics, cast votes, then recalls, called important curators in London who promptly hung up on us, drank pumpkin latte, checked emails and then finally wrote it all down. And now, we present to you, the Art 50. (Jason Foumberg)

The Art 50 was written by AJ Aronstein, Janina Ciezadlo, Stephanie Cristello, Alicia Eler, Pat Elifritz, Jason Foumberg, Amelia Ishmael, Anastasia Karpova, Harrison Smith, Bert Stabler, Pedro Velez, Katie Waddell and Monica Westin. Read the rest of this entry »