It’s the time of year when critics wax nostalgic about
what’s happened during the past 12 months, often choosing to list the “best
of…” the year. I have enjoyed doing this myself in the past. However, Mary
Louise Schumacher’s best of the year list was published yesterday in Art City and I
can’t improve on it.
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| Aten Reign, James Turrell |
Before I get to Chicago, I will simply add three outstanding
art experiences I feel fortunate to have been able to travel to see in 2013. My
favorite was the mesmerizing James Turrell exhibit at the Guggenheim in New
York. I wrote about it in August. In Santa Fe I saw and wrote about a
surprising and excellent installation of 3-dimensional video work by Peter
Sarkisian at the New Mexico Museum of Art. And there was art galore in London
(of course!)
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| Peter Sarkisian with one of his 3D videos |
But I was in Chicago over the weekend where I saw three good
shows in three distinct museums, one of which—at the Museum of Contemporary
Art—could easily make it onto my top ten list.
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| McCormick House, detail |
I’ll begin where I began, a small museum in Elmhurst, a
suburb about 15 miles due west of Chicago’s loop. The centerpiece of the
Elmhurst Art Museum is one of only three houses in the US designed by Mies van
der Rohe. The McCormick house, built in 1952, was moved from its residential
neighborhood to the park setting of the museum campus. Although the interior
has mostly been repurposed for office space—except for the living room, which
was renovated for the public to get a sense of the space—the exterior massing
and detail is intact. It’s a gem.
The current show, coincidentally, is the first ever
comprehensive viewing of the permanent collection. Entitled, appropriately
enough, Inventory_The EAM Collection,
the work is installed salon style throughout the museum. There are only a few
familiar names, as varied as Eakins, Remington and Dalí, and a significant proportion of the
work seemed to be from the local and greater Chicago vicinity. Far from being a
limitation, I found that refreshing. I truly enjoyed seeing good work by
artists who haven’t risen to national attention. It’s a hopeful sign, I think,
that the art itself, and not the celebrity of the artist, is being valued.
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| Blanket Statement, Mary Dritschel (detail) |
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| Vertigo, Mike Love |
If you ever find yourself on the west side of Chicago with some time
to spare, this is a worthwhile stop. The current show closes on January 5, but
the next one sounds good: Spotlight
opens Jan. 18 and will feature light-based
sculptures, installations, and videos.
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| from 8 Natural Handstands, R. Kinmont |
Next we went to the Smart Museum of Art
at the U of Chicago in Hyde Park. Unlike EAM, I’d been to the Smart before and
knew the quality of the permanent collection, which boasts an impressive number
of unfamiliar works by familiar names. But we went there to see a traveling
exhibit called, State of Mind: New
California Art Circa 1970. The exhibit is billed as the “first in-depth
survey of conceptual art in California” and it is indeed a comprehensive show.
It demonstrates, as the curators intended (according to wall text), the
significance of California to the conceptual art movement at this crucial
moment in its development. Major players, like John Baldessari, Paul McCarthy,
the Ant Farm collective and Ed Ruscha are among the over 50 artists
represented.
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| Yellow Room (Triangular), Bruce Nauman |
Pure conceptual art, with its disdain
for the physical object, its quirky, often self-referential themes and
anti-aesthetic stance, often leaves me cold, I must confess. When it works, it
can be profoundly moving or amusing or both. The scope of this show brings
together a little of everything, which I found interesting for its historical
significance.
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| Paul Kos, Untitled (the sound of ice melting) |
State
of Mind is also nearing the end of its run at
the Smart. It closes Jan. 12. But, again, if you’re in the vicinity before
then, I recommend checking it out.
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| Copperheads, M. Davey (detail) |
The real find and the best of this trio
of fine shows is at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Way of the Shovel: Art as Archeology explores the role of
historical research in art during the past decade. Archeology, while not
necessarily foremost in the minds of the artists when they created the works,
has been used by curator Dieter Roelstraete as a metaphor for the ways artists
examine the past.
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| Copperheads, Moyra Davey (detail) |
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| Some Boarded up Houses, J. Koester |
The exhibit, which sprawls throughout the entire top floor
galleries of the museum, is loosely divided into themes with titles like On Narrating and Storytelling and On the Crisis of Memory. Some of the
individual works are as conceptual as anything I’d just seen at the Smart.
Many, as the exhibit rationale indicates, clearly required an impressive amount
of historical research. A few are more straightforwardly phenomenological.
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| Concerning the Dig, Marc Dion |
Photography, videography and sculpture are the dominant, but
by no means exclusive, mediums of expression. Although much of the art has
European origins, there is also a strong local component devoted specifically
to Chicago and the MCA itself. The latter is a special section titled, Shifting Grounds: Block 21
and Chicago’s MCA.
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| Plot (still from video), Derek Brunen |
In fact, in my opinion, the jewel in the crown of what is
overall an excellent exhibit, is an elaborate multifaceted installation by Chicago
native son Michael Rakowitz. Entitled The
Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, its subject matter is derived from the
looting of the National Museum of Baghdad in the aftermath of the US-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003. The installation includes drawings and a musical
component as well as the centerpiece: a series of elaborately reproduced
artifacts that were stolen or otherwise went missing that have never been
recovered.
The sculptures are made from colorful packaging from Middle
Eastern food products and Arabic language newspapers. Each is presented with
identifying labels such as would have accompanied the original museum displays.
However, the labels also include poignant or ironic statements made by a wide
variety of experts and Iraq War players. I’ll cite just two examples. Donald
Rumsfeld is quoted: “It’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are
free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to
live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here.”
Someone named Polk, referring to the artifact that is reproduced in newsprint,
says simply, “And today it is no more.”
