Public Works

Art or Idiocy has just learned that the City of Chicago is not in the process, but indeed has already cut, $500,000 from the budget for art. What is the great need for which the funds have been allocated? To provide healthcare to needy families? No. To assist the abysmal public transit system? No. It must be to bankroll the salaries of relatives and friends appointed to extraneous offices by nepotistic City Employees then, right? No.

It is to promote the City’s Olympic bid.

But that is OK. Because it will raise the profile of our fair metropolis, and more importantly bring development to the city's deprived south side. Of course the poor, economically disenfranchised minorities will be pushed further to the periphery.

Claude Cahun/SCA Finalists

Here's an image of the new Cahun piece acquired by The Art Institute of Chicago I reported on yesterday.


Claude Cahun • Object • 1936

This is a seriously creepy piece. It would be a silly Surrealist trope, but there is something about that eye and that hair. It is like the original Twilight Zone, a trophy for Hans Bellmer, or something out of Eraserhead.

---

The Final list for AIC's Society for Contemporary Art selection committee is:

Helena Almeida
Charles LeDray
Rosemarie Trockel
Franz West

Also there is the possibility of a “surprise guest” addition.
An anonymous tipster says it may well be James Coleman.

New AIC Aquistion: Claude Cahun

Just got word from The Art Institute of Chicago’s public affairs office that a new work has been acquired:

Claude Cahun’s Object (1936)

"This small, enigmatic work is currently on view in a new installation of some of the museum's Surrealist holdings in Gallery 273. There viewers will find such icons of the collection as René Magritte's Time Transfixed and Salvador Dalî's original plaster Venus de Milo with Drawers (acquired in 2005), as well as works by Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Balthus, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Angel Planells, and six boxes from the Lindy and Edwin Bergman Joseph Cornell Collection," states the press release.

This is an artist that had been an overlooked member of the Surrealist scene. But in recent years attention has returned, and grown, for the androgynous artist who was far ahead of her time.

"Cahun herself embodied the psychosexual energy found in much Surrealist work. Born Lucy Schwob in 1894, Cahun took on the androgynous pseudonym she is known by today some time around 1919. With her shaved head, mannish clothes, and radical attitudes about gender, Cahun transcended stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity. In fact, until the mid-1980s, scholars assumed she was a man. Her brazenly unconventional and creative persona led her to fellow members of the avant-garde. Shortly after meeting Surrealism-founder André Breton in 1932, she became an active member of the Surrealist movement, producing key writings on art, revolution and sexuality. She also participated in numerous Surrealist exhibitions, including the landmark 1936 exposition of Surrealist objects at the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris-an exhibition which inaugurated object-making as an integral part of Surrealist practice and where Cahun first debuted the Art Institute's newly acquired Object."

ALSO
Check out the comments on the Society for Contemporary Art post, an anonymous tipster has filled in the last finalist's name. Excluding, of course, a additional "surprise candidate."

New SCA Aquistion Prospects Announced

Last night at the Tomma Abts lecture for the Society for Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, Jay Dandy, President of the SCA, announced the upcoming exhibition of objects up for selection by the Society’s Acquisition Committee.

Artist’s whose works will be up for selection include: Franz West, Rosemarie Trockel, Charles LeDray and a final artist whose name I didn’t catch. Also there is the possibility of a “surprise guest” addition.

The work should be on view the first week of May. The Society will meet on Thursday May 17 to vote.

> SCA WEBSITE

More on the Tomma Abts lecture later.

More stuff out there to read

UR Chicago has changed hands and is out with a new issue. The theme of it is art, what with April being the big fair month. It is definitely worth picking up as it has a pretty broad cross section of what art is going on in Chicago. Including an artist profile I wrote on Bob Jones. On the UR website you can download the whole issue as a pdf, if you don't want to bother tracking down one on the street, although they're at just about every corner. And they're FREE.
> UR SITE
> BOB JONES


Time Out is also on newsstands. I have a review of Greg Stimac’s current show at Bucket Rider.
> MOWING THE LAWN
> BUCKET RIDER

Kurt Vonnegut 1922 - 2007

To speak in the vernacular Vonnegut:
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in the year 1922, nine months after his father ejaculated in his mother’s birth canal on a planet it’s inhabitants had named Earth, in a small area of the planet called Indianapolis. 84 years later, on April 11, in the year 2007, Mr. Vonnegut’s peephole closed.

So it goes.

photo by Peter Yang for Rolling Stone

There are a new batch of photos on our Art Openings - Season 2 photoset on Flickr HERE



They are from the opening of Ian Pedigo: Suddenly Cast From Grayness at 65GRAND. You should definitely stop by and check out the show.
> FLICKR PHOTOSET
> 65GRAND

---

ALSO


Pick up the new TimeOut Chicago because, you guessed it, I have a review in it. This time it is of the spectacular show of paintings by Howard Fonda at duchess. I am not sure how well I articulated my thoughts on it, so see the show, and draw your own conclusions. Below are some installation shots of the show, for your viewering pleasure.
> TOC ARTICLE
> DUCHESS



Howard Fonda • light from the mouth or near the beginning • 2007 • oil on canvas • 30 x 23 inches



Howard Fonda
From left: heart to heart (an attempt at true understanding) • 2007 • oil on canvas • 40 x 30 inches • light from the mouth or near the beginning



Howard Fonda
From left: Untitled • 2007 • oil on canvas • 48 x 36 inches • Untitled • 2007 • oil on canvas • 40 x 30 inches

Sol LeWitt 1928 - 2007

Sol LeWitt • Cube Structures Based on Five Modules • 1971-4 • painted wood • via Crown Point Press

Michael Kimmelman, in his NYT obituary cites an amazing quote of LeWitt's from Artforum in 1967:"Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable."

Searching for LeWitt images, we came across this quote on Sketchblog: "I would like to produce something I would not be ashamed to show Giotto." And also this sweet picture from an installation at the gemeentemuseum in the Hague.