RECOMMENDED

As part of his broader study of “industrialized space” in the era of globalization, photographer and installation artist Mark Curran honed in on the Hewlett-Packard Manufacturing and Research complex in Leixlip, Ireland that has since been closed down as the multinational technology giant went in search of cheaper labor. If we did not know the back story, we would look at Curran’s unframed, large-format photographic documentary portraits of the factory’s workers—tacked on the gallery’s walls—not as commentaries on the depredations of corporate capitalism, but as reflections on how individuals have become trapped in a technological environment, in which, in this case, they are wrapped in sterile white gowns, gloves and caps in order to protect the environment from them. Curran’s subjects, in frontal poses, jar through their juxtaposition of all-too-human faces and the inhuman workplace that other human beings have created. Curran’s anti-capitalist critique and the critique of technology that his images betray operate somewhat at cross-purposes, yet both have their truth. (Michael Weinstein)

Through March 19 at the DePaul University Museum, 2350 N. Kenmore

Hank Willis Thomas, “Smokin Joe isn’t j’mama” (1978/2006)

RECOMMENDED

From straight documentary to cultural criticism of representation; from celebrations of tradition to biting postmodern play; from sentimentality to irony, this lavish exhibition is the most brilliant survey of recent African-American photography ever to hit Chicago. The contemporary stars–Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Willie Robert Middlebrook, et al.–are in the house, but so are less well-known lights whose works deserve long looks. For stabbing wit, no one is better than Hank Willis Thomas whose “Smokin Joe isn’t j’mama” (1978/2006) captures his chunky subject donning a blue bonnet as he sits leaning over a stack of pancakes with an air of bemusement. For the recovery of lost memories, Thomas comes through again with “The Oft Forgotten Flower Children of Harlem” (1969/2006), which shows the hippies in all their laid-back splendor hanging out on the street–icons of peace and love with a dash of Jimi Hendrix. Thomas does it all with panache, but that is just a slice of this stellar show. (Michael Weinstein)

Through June 14 at DePaul University Museum, 2350 N. Kenmore

Artist unknown, "Trinity," 18th century

RECOMMENDED

In the early decades of the seventeenth-century, Cuszo was home to the first school of native artists in the colonial new world, using mostly European forms to serve a mostly European religion. But somehow it was different. The Virgin was just a little more like a giant earth mother—and the Trinity was sometimes presented as three separate-but-equal gods, enthroned side by side. Somehow, the visions of saints and angels seemed more innocent and comforting, as if made for the benefit of children. So it’s something of a culture shock to be immersed in this strange, imaginary world, an experience now offered by the DePaul University Museum. Nowadays, fantasies like this are usually found as illustrations for children’s books, but several of these large pieces have been designed to dominate a room, and the effect is disconcerting. The air becomes thick and sweet, as if with the smell of incense and flowers, and the room becomes claustrophobic. (Chris Miller)

Through March 20 at DePaul University Museum, 2320 N. Kenmore.

Emory Douglas

By Abraham Ritchie

The exhibition “Paper Trail” at Gallery 400 is not a typical art exhibition, and it doesn’t claim to be one. Instead, it recreates the gallery as a gathering place, bringing together ephemera, mostly photographs, newspapers and books, from the late 1960s and early seventies related to various American radical political groups. The hope—now that “hope” is in vogue again—is to have visitors consider solutions to social problems that have existed in Chicago for more than four decades.

What are these persisting problems from four decades ago? Consider Marvin Gaye’s 1970 sonic masterpiece, “What’s Going On.” Gaye sings, “Brother, brother there’s far too many of you dying”—still shamefully true as Chicago closed out 2008 with 507 homicides. “We don’t need to escalate, war is not the answer”—the US continues war on two fronts. “Don’t punish me with brutality”—unbelievably, police brutality is still a problem, a recent shocker being that a CPD officer beat a man handcuffed in a wheelchair.

The problems Gaye immortalized in song are given visual form here in a large group of anonymous and untitled photographs from about forty years ago. They display the visual history from the protest era; concerns about community welfare and livelihood, and efforts to abolish violence. There are images of communities organizing and banding together: a rally for a playground, children playing on bare asphalt and lots of speeches, protests and raised fists. Two images indicate that era’s racial solidarity against “The System” and “The Man.” In one, Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton strongly clenches a fellow radical’s hand. The other shows a press conference attended by both whites and blacks, and all are dressed in typical revolutionary gear of black berets and dark sunglasses.

The underground newspapers of the time, Seed and The Black Panther Community News, featured artistic illustrations on their covers, and both are on view here. Whereas the designs for “Seed” were often psychedelic and anonymous, The Black Panther Community News featured work by Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party from 1967-1980. Douglas was the subject of a retrospective at LA MOCA’s Pacific Design Center last year, and his images use photocollage techniques, certain elements of Chinese Communist propaganda and the artist’s own hand-drawn illustrations.

One of the most powerful images that Douglas created was a poster for the August 21, 1970, issue of Community News. Headed with the phrase, “We shall survive. Without a doubt,” the image depicts a brilliantly smiling young African-American child wearing glasses and, in place of lenses, are images of the young being educated—we assume in Black Panther community schools. Atop his head is a floppy, zoot-style hat, emanating red rays quoted directly from Chinese revolutionaries. Douglas’ consistent use of Communist propaganda techniques appropriates the galvanizing force of that style. Typically in the Chinese source images, one would see the red rays emanating from behind Mao, the leader, but in his works Douglas links them to the children, granting them agents of change. Douglas’ image posits hope and optimism in stark contrast to an era characterized by violence, racism and uncertainty.

The children depicted in Douglas’ work, and in many other images throughout the exhibition, are an unexpectedly repetitious motif, yet they successfully invoke “the future.” With the election of Barack Obama, it would seem that one of the objectives from the 1960s has been fulfilled, but this exhibition shows us that individuals and communities have the power to affect change, perhaps even more so now that our leader speaks the same language. “Paper Trail” comes at a time to keep the momentum from the election-elation going, and explicitly cites issues of affordable housing, health care and poverty—all these battles need warriors.

“Paper Trail” takes the stance that, above all, education is central to solving these issues, and visitors are presented with a large, well-stocked reading room full of revolutionary and alternative literature. Here you can learn the history not told in school, such as the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which was aimed at dismantling radical political organizations like the Black Panthers and the Latino Young Lords.

“Paper Trail” fits into an unofficial series of exhibitions that have taken place all over Chicago this past year, marking the fortieth anniversary of the radical sixties. Other exhibitions have focused successfully on the period’s art, such as the DePaul University Museum’s excellent “1968” exhibition and the University of Chicago’s “Looks Like Freedom,” so “Paper Trail” uses an educational strategy in line with AREA’s special issue, “1968/2008” which is available in the reading room. The exhibition’s approach relies on the initiative of the viewer to read the books and study the newspapers, which can be daunting because of the mass of materials on hand. But the creation of an historical continuum, alongside many of Chicago’s alternative organizations behind this exhibition, prompts us to create the future by learning from the past.

“Paper Trail” shows at Gallery 400, 400 S. Peoria, through March 7

RECOMMENDED
Accompanying DePaul University Museum’s reflection on the 1968 Democratic convention, the school’s Center for Latino Research has mounted an independent double show with more than eighty photographs highlighting the Young Lords, Black Panthers and the precursors of the Rainbow Coalition, by a bevy of local shooters. A welcome supplement to the Museum’s images of the anti-war movement, the Center reminds us that 1960s activism was broad-based and addressed issues far beyond militarism. The contrast between protest in the parks and revolution in the ‘hoods could not be greater—the blacks and Latinos were tough and styled themselves as a militant, indeed, military movement, as we see most graphically in Hiram Maristany’s black-and-white photo “Formal Introduction of the Young Lords Organization to the Puerto Rican Community” (1969) where macho young men in berets stand on the stage with arms folded flanking a speaker haranguing a crowd of homies. Back in the day, class divergences that surfaced later were subsumed for a moment in a common resistance. (Michael Weinstein)

Through January 9, 2009 at DePaul University Library Haber Lounge, 2350 N. Kenmore, (773)325-7316.

RECOMMENDED
In a time of economic collapse and an unpopular war, it is worth looking back forty years to 1968 when Americans were told they could have “guns and butter,” and many of them said, “Hold the guns.” This lavish exhibit of the art that responded to the fabled Chicago Democratic Party convention and played a part in the protests against Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policy is suffused with the utopian optimism of the period—peaceful people in motion waving splashy placards and confident of their righteousness and in their people power—that was soon to be dispelled by the “police riot.” Among the ten documentary photographers on display here, most of whom show us crowds of the mainly white middle-class faithful, Robert Sengstacke introduces a counterpoint with his subdued color images of the “Wall of Respect Mural”—a tribute to black liberation at 43rd and Langley—that adds a needed fillip of the world from which Barack Obama came that was filled with genuine hope rather than a will to believe. (Michael Weinstein)

Through November 23 at DePaul University Museum, 2350 N. Kenmore, (773)325-7506.

RECOMMENDED

As a clerk at Ellis Island from 1892-1925, amateur photographer Augustus Sherman seized the opportunity to take portraits of immigrants who failed the initial screening process and were held for further interrogation. Although his aim was to document the variety of human types composing the tidal wave of migrants, according to the ethnological conceits of his time, Sherman’s posed formal studies of people—usually in their native dress—provide a panorama of old-country looks from around the world that would soon be dissolved in the proverbial melting pot of assimilation. Some of Sherman’s subjects did not make it through, including “Emma Goldman – Russian Jewish Anarchist,” who stares stonily and steadily into the camera, her lips curled downwards in an expression of morose defiance matched only by the looks of an Ethiopian family brought to our shores to be exhibited at circuses and zoos. (Michael Weinstein)

Through June 13 at DePaul University Museum, 2350 N. Kenmore.