Digressions in Paint

Recently artist Bill Gross sat down for an IM chat with me, except Carl Baratta, another artist, answered. What follows is a conversation that accidentally became an interesting discussion.


I really want to see a huge revival of Gene Davis' paintings and esp. drawings!

Sorry Bill, it's Carl.
Gene Davis huh? You thinking about stripes because it's summer? Because you yearn for the NJ shore?

I love stripes.

They love you. Maybe you and they should get married.

I really wish I had a house that one of his paintings would look good in. Big walls with a window that looked out onto my sweet pool and coniferous trees.
Then the stripes would be meaningful.

Yeah, the stripes definitely need a place to get them going. Why do you dig stripes so much?

They're less complicated than bricks for one. [Gross makes paintings of bricks.]

Hahah.

And you can use them for camouflage if you wear stripe shirts.

That's fair.

Davis' paint[ing]s are so pointless and without affect. And right now that seems appealing, plus it would seem so weird if there really was a revival. Hey, it happened for Lucio Fontana, and who would have expected that?

I never understood stripe paintings....... did it really?
Oh! You mean like 10 years ago?

It's still going on really. He has a career again, surprisingly weird.
What's not to understand about stripes?

There's this thing I've noticed as of late. This fascination with stone faced abstraction. Why do you suppose that's what's up right now? At 1st I thought it was some knee jerking from all the unicorn art that was bopping around the last 10 years. But now I'm not so sure.

Well, I think there is a reason beyond the anti-unicorn one, but we'll have to hash that out later cuz I gotta go push a cart.
...
But it starts with people such as myself not giving a shit about other people’s stories. Willie Doherty and the like want me to give a shit about their world, but truthfully, when I step back from thinking that I should care, I confront the reality that I couldn't give a shit. Then the ante is upped and someone tries to entertain me [like] M. Barney... with his retarded surrealism, and I still couldn't care less.

Stripes don't ask me to care about someone else’s reality, so I thank the artist for giving me something that can stimulate my own thoughts. About sweet shirts and chicks with umbrellas.

That's fair.
Yeah, I think if you are going to go the route of entertaining stories, there has to be some serious formal play that's interesting to fall back on. Otherwise the work is solely hinged on the artist’s charisma.
And we're all fucking nerds so that's a mistake.

We ARE ALL nerds!! :-( OK I really gotta run.

Aight. Don't cry guy. Nerds are the new preps!

Rally Round Your Family, with a Pocket Full of Shells

UPDATE, 6/13/7: I got word that the ordinance, the one the City proposed, passed. No word on who showed up this morning though.



Yes, Art or Idiocy? was on hand to see what all the fuss was about at Paul Klein et. al's rally against the city’s proposed public art ordinance . There are some pictures in the Art or Idiocy? photostream on Filckr you can check out. It was a peaceful demonstration. There were people with signs and Amanda Browder from Bad at Sports was dressed as either a log or the John Hancock Building. A lot of the signs were understandable but confusing.

Manny Flores, my alderman, spoke. He is a good guy. Paul Klein spoke and so did Tony Fitzpatrick, Wesely Kimler was asked but declined. Edmar from Lumpen spoke and so did others. I couldn’t hear very well, I assume there is some ordinance about not having too loud of speakers at a public gathering.

There was a little boy handing out flyers that had information about the situation on one side and a list of all the aldermen and their contact info on the other. That was weird, although I prefer it to when people have kids hand out flyers about how bad abortion is. Mike Lash, who used to be involved in public art until he threw his phone at someone’s face, was there. The cops were there, but they sat on a bench at the far side of the plaza because no one was being disorderly. William Lieberman from Zolla Lieberman Gallery was there. The Bad at Sports people where their. Philip Von Zweck , of Von Zweck and the Driehaus award was there, with his skateboard. Dan Anhorn, who was with a sweet skateboard that may or may not have been his, and Caroline Picard from Green Lantern were there too. David Roth of Sharkforum was there too, whom I met for the first time. There were also a lot of wacky, burned out looking old bohemians, wearing berets and what not. The guy who is working on the world’s longest poem wasn’t there though. And I didn’t see any face painting.



There wasn’t a huge crowd and there wasn’t a lot energy. It seemed pretty calm and subdued. I'm still ambivalent about the whole thing.

Most people I talked to said they were there to see what was going on out of curiosity. Most agreed that whenever government, and particularly one like Chicago’s, takes steps to remove the public from its process, it’s bad for the city and its citizens. Others voiced another valid concern. Is this all an odd job interview for Paul Klein. He’s made no secret of wanting Lois Weinberg, the current political appointee’s position when she leaves. Was this a platform for him to display a backdrop of supporters, a constituency of sorts?

> Flickr Photostream

A CONSORTIUM! (The Acceptable Kind)

You’ve probably heard there is going to be a rally at the Picasso sculpture in downtown Chicago today at 530P. It is all about an ordinance that will change the way public art is commissioned in Chicago. The new ordinance, among other things places the burden on the Alderman’s office of the particular ward where a proposed artwork will go. The Alderman will hold public meetings, not the Department of Cultural Affairs. What is so wrong with this? It seems pretty logical for it to be relegated to the specific community where the work will go. At any rate, "the revised ordinance, scheduled for a final vote by the City Council on Wednesday, would do away with the grassroots citizen panels that currently play the key role in deciding public art commissions. If the change is approved by a majority of the aldermen, the process of awarding commissions will be decided by the Public Art Program staff outside of the purview of the Open Meetings Act." According to Kevin Nance's Sun-Times piece.

Paul Klein, who ran a gallery, and then tried to start an art museum, and now mainly blogs about Chicago art (yes, Artletter is blogging) , has started a “consortium” against this ordinance, including “Lumpen, the Chicago Artists Coalition, Sharkforum, Around the Coyote, ArtLetter, Bridge Art Fair, Navy Pier Walk, Punk Planet, and Art Advisory, LTD,” among its ranks in this “Rally for Artists Rights." Strangely Bad at Sports wasn't on the list. [It was a mistaken omission, see the comments]

The problem is that the ordinance really has little effect on art and the community here. It is strictly in regards to public art commissions. How many artists’ sole income in Chicago is based on public art commissions from the City? Honestly, I am not the biggest fan of public art. In being public, it is necessarily populist and only successful when everyone loves it. Anish Kappoor’s giant bean? Not great art, but very cool. The same can be said of the way everyone cools off in the Jaume Plensa fountain in summer, both in Millennium Park.

If you look at the track record of Klein’s (and others in the group) aesthetic tastes, it would be a safe bet that had they been around when the Picasso was being erected, they would have protested that, if nothing for the fact that it was a European artist, and not a Chicagoan. The same with the DuBuffet, and how about the Chagall in the Exelon Plaza, and Calder in front of the Post Office? God forbid Chicagoans ever get to see art made by anyone living outside the city limits.

The real question is what are Klein’s motivations? What is he hoping to gain? No one ever does anything purely out of the goodness of their heart. So what does this offer him? It seems from Artletter to The Chicago Art Museum to this, Klein has an ambition of securing a place in the City’s cultural and societal elite. There is nothing wrong with that. It just seems a little seedy to wrap oneself in a banner of pure selflessness and rah rah rah for local artists.

I believe that most are involved in the rally for good reasons, and do care. I’m sure Klein cares too. But the whole thing is too ridiculous, and seems too many are on the bandwagon for publicity.

If people really wanted to rally against ills in Chicago, they could attack abysmal public transportation, the endless nepotism and cronyism, the state of public schools, or Stroger County Hospital and on.

---

Here are some fun facts about the rally:
From the Artletter Email:
The whole thing should be meaningful, significant, powerful and not much longer than 30 to 45 minutes.

People are making signs. Be creative and upbeat. Face painting is okay.

And from the Sun-Times article:
Gregory Knight, the department's deputy commissioner and head of the public art program, isn't convinced. The Monday rally, he said, is being organized "by people I don't have the greatest respect for." He specifically called Klein "shrill."

CRISIS!

E X T R A: Members of the upper class affected by inexplicable phenomenon of lost status. From millionaire to kitchen hand: When James Dobbes came home yesterday, home was no longer there. Psychological Comment: Parallels with East Germany

I came across these stuffed into newspaper stands in the loop this morning. At first I thought it was another one of those Chicago activist intervention things. You know, espousing the benefits of some leftist programme and slamming everything mainstream, and doing it in a way that can only alienate people, even those that are sympathetic to the points attempting to be made.

Actually, this is a piece by German artist Jana Gunstheimer. So it doesn’t actually have to achieve any real success since it is art. It is in connection with her upcoming focus show at the Art Institute of Chicago. Maybe I’m too elitist, but having this project take place under the authority of an institution like AIC gives it more of a kick. Especially since the elites being targeted by this mysterious sci-fi scenario of fancy condos going Cabrini Green are the same people that support places like museums. The work is aiming to examine ideas of class, economics and social infrastructures. Hopefully it will actually provide an interesting comment on those themes instead of just bringing them up, like most political art. Coming from someone born into the Eastern Bloc of Germany, she offers a unique insight.

Mixing ethnology, installation art a fictional corporation called Nova Porta and refined figurative drawing, Status L Phenomenon promises to be an interesting exhibition. This is the artists first museum show in the America. Chicago often plays home to many artists’ first museum shows, a fact often overlooked by the art press.

> AIC PAGE
> NOVA PORTA

DIVORCE!

Yesterday the Chicago Sun-Times and other media outlets went nuts with reports of the biggest divorce in city history. The parties are of course Michael and Maya Polsky. Maya is being given a rather hard time, described as "primarily a homemaker during the couple's 31-year marriage" in the Metromix piece by Tribune Staff Reporter Michael Higgins. Maya Polsky, of course, runs a gallery in Chicago's River North district and was Ed Pascke's primary dealer.

> METROMIX
> CRAIN'S ON PASCHKE & POLSKY

At Finer Newsstands Everywhere

Pick up this week’s TimeOut Chicago for my review of Matthew Steinke’s show at Deadtech, Haruspex. You can view a clip of his animation, and work from the show on his website.


Stills from Sky of Breaths by Matthew Steinke

> REVIEW
> DEADTECH
> MATTHEW STEINKE