Whatever happened to Romanticism in Chicago? The moody autumn landscapes, the lonely beaches, the charming views of quaint rustic cabins? And sometimes, even the languid nude? (Although nudity was never very acceptable in Midwestern homes.) Romantic views of the world dominated the first eighty years of Chicago art history and then, poof! they were gone. Well, not really gone, but stripped of their medals, broken in rank, and shipped off to the shopping malls, and other the remote, middle-brow corners of the art world. One such corner being the Bella Vista Gallery, which is wandering around the North Side of Chicago and has temporarily settled at the corner of California and Augusta. But still, the Romantic spirit lives on! Romantic paintings are much smaller today than they were a hundred years ago. They’re more like sketches, furtive accounts of a passing world. But several of the artists in this exhibition are just as good, having mastered their craft over a lifetime of practice. Of special note in this exhibition of painting, photography, drawing, and sculpture are the finely-chiseled figure drawings of Lenin Del Sol, the silvery, monochrome landscapes of Kathleen Newman, and the dark but beautiful nudes of Mary Qian. (Chris Miller)
