 |
|
|
|
Art Review Archives:
|
AROUND THE COYOTE:
AROUND THE COYOTE: Curator's Choice. Chicago's twelfth annual "Around The Coyote: Fall Arts Festival" brings together over 200 visual artists, eleven galleries and thirty businesses in an offering of art, video, theater, dance, and poetry. This event, centered about Damen, North, and Milwaukee Avenues in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood, runs from September 6th through 9th, 2001. In the past decade or so, Wicker Park has attracted numerous Chicago artists, and although in recent years this has also brought gentrification, those artists still resident are nonetheless joined by others from around the city; as a consequence several added festival spaces supplement the large number of Artists' Open Studios. "Curator's Choice" is a juried selection and this year it is dispersed over three areas: the Flat Iron Arts Building (1579 N. Milwaukee Avenue, third floor); Wicker Park Fieldhouse (1425 N. Damen); and the Dry Cleaners (1701 N. Milwaukee). "Curator's Choice" is an exhibition and silent auction (August 31 to September 9). This year it has been curated by Gregory Knight, Curator at the Chicago Cultural Center; Julia Friedman, Director of the Julia Friedman Gallery; and Chuck Thurow, Director of the Hyde Park Art Center. All three selectors are highly respected and each has a history of fine exhibitions. This raises expectations; although, in any open call for submissions, a juror examines what is submitted. Much current art bends to a consistent sensibility: an acquiescence to a Post-Modernism accepted by so many contemporary artists. A visitor longs for any sort of strong commitments... of renewal, of viable and stirring, effective art. A number of pieces stand out, but they build on established approaches: a sense of art which, although not novel, still touches fundamental roots. Scott Westgard's mezzotint, Powerless (2001), is dramatic, darkly romantic. From hellish storm clouds, a lightning bolt strikes down at a darkened power plant. Westgard espouses a Gia hypothesis. The ATC catalogue statement asserts: "As man disturbs the balance of life and the environment, Earth perhaps will decide to stabilize itself by destroying man." Here, a viewer meets a sincere belief, a focused technique, and expressive imagery. Whether or not one endorses the artist's assumptions, the final image has great strength.
An artist's work need not be so somber, so reactive. Human nature finds delight in natural growth as well. In Shari Schwartz's untitled pastel on paper, color and form are foremost. Color is seductive. The Fauvists used color to dazzle, to seduce the eye; color as a substitute for tint and tone -- a subtle green will serve as 'shadow,' where yellow stands as 'light.' Equally, form can mimic nature, or else deviate and play with devised alternatives. All this once seemed avant-garde. It is now an effectual vocabulary of art. When done with intensity, with a desire to create, it works. Focused composition -- a sense of form and flow -- gives it life. In Schwartz's entry, the visual gravity gathers at image left, a smaller counterfoil pulls to lower right: in all, a well-executed image. One finds an added whimsy in the artist's stylized tendrils. The judgments in "Curator's Choice" deserve praise. Given a general offering, the standards here are well met. "Curator's Choice" succeeds, where so much of contemporary art-making fails to deeply involve or even satisfy one seeking art. ATC "Curator's Choice," in its selections, brings to the fore a contemporary ambivalence -- loosely termed 'Post-Modernism.' Post-Modernism, a glossary word, is only the latest academic fashion; a label first coined about 1960 for a process that was growing long before. Official arbitres du gout define it as a rejection of 'Formalism' -- any sort of general consensus in art which anticipates the accessible, discernable, any dialogue between artist and patron. In producing and critiquing art, Post-Modernists tout eclecticism (a term derived from the Greek for gathering what lies about and what one stumbles upon): a combining of periods and expressions, a rejection of 'purity' and artistic authority. Such fashion enshrines its own Pluralism: an appropriation of disparate sources and elements; in short, a visual confusion, born, mostly likely, of vague intent or no intents at all. Post-Modernism... art merely done... as one goes along. In recent years, "Curator's Choice" has bridged art in the studio with art as recognized in established circles. Where voices in the wilderness receive a hearing, it is a good thing. And, where authority is open-eyed and sees the new and fresh -- or the very good -- all benefit. Effective art expands human growth. It rarely settles anything other than the need to experience, the hope to make some sense of what one subsequently feels. What is generally displayed among today's art officialdom is not bad art; it simply does not stir adrenaline or allow of any real significance. Much of what comes out of schools and in the door seems only hope -- that someone, somewhere, will find coherent challenges within it, and then devise most clever rationales on behalf of the artist, will credit a depth the artist did not even suspect within himself. Artists, and their judges, deal as best they can with current trends and ideologies. Art today is beset with thought, with veneers of thought.
A gallery asks: "What will sell?" Elsewhere, an artist explains that his mentor doesn't feel his art will draw publicity. So artists are asked to fit passions to their vocabularies, rather than to let their expression evolve and demand its required techniques as they create. Often, one suspects that many students choose art in order to be artists, seeking some 'Fame or Fortune' -- a mercantile formula. Without serious commitment, art falls back on formulae. The best turn to art because something above and beyond compels expression, and art releases it. What sells? What draws reviews? What perhaps will endure? Abstract art, Neo-Impressionism, Realism, Post-Modernism? Such questions beg pat recipes. The reply -- good art, however it may come -- does not satisfy. "Curator's Choice" surveys good art, difficult to define as that may be at times. The exhibition choices veer toward very current sensibilities, but the judgement here is of individual performance. Ultimately, that is where art succeeds; not in genre, approach, technique; not in mainstream formulae or fashion, but in what the artist must do, and his struggle to make materials obey. Medium itself asserts alternatives, even contraries. Without collaboration between initial will, a need to express for others, the intransigence of materials, we get interior decor and Tinker Toys. Mere play, in art as in life, has merits, but an active, creative individual, working freely with the materials of art, opens unexpected possibilities. Chicago has been fortunate; and it is looked to by others elsewhere. When Chicago artists are freed from 'prestige centers' and the glossy art magazines, they have produced surprises and some truly innovative work. "Curator's Choice" presents some very hopeful trends. In ATC's "Curator's Choice," the Ideal does 'hit the streets.' In recent years, the Wicker Park events have attracted the attention of very prominent jurors. It is to the credit of the artists and their monitors that among the juried work, there is art of substance. So much current art, well-written-of and promoted, touches upon mere form, color, an unusual trick of sight... perhaps even some cranial concept. What much contemporary art lacks is a clear purpose, a gut need to be born. "Curator's Choice" selects fine examples of Chicago art. Is there a need for uneasiness? Only... Perhaps.
Current conventions, favored by museum and journal circuits, create a certain norm. Where power meets talent, the outcome is always uncertain. Pope Julius II drew from Michelangelo more than the artist knew he had within. Strangely, he both hated and welcomed that. For others, a least common denominator, in the end, wins out. An observer often cheers the Dark Horse, the maverick, the newly born, even the honest dissident. Success, or at least attention, can breed routine. Herein lies uneasiness. Artists must do art. They'll do it and risk starving (a consequence never advocated). But artists do need to eat. Dialogue between officialdom and the mass of artists who have not yet 'arrived' is desirable: In the U.S. today, art is not supported as a matter of course. And so... there are temptations; of quick success, of a merely facile art, of an art produced of influence. Art-to-the-street events allow some entrance, a forum, to the mavericks, as well as to artists who build on approaches not currently in fashion among those arbiters of taste: the art academies, mainstream critics, publicists... kibitzers. An abandonment of judgement, value -- sheer will -- may explain the increasing role of restricted agendas, 'special interests,' and the emergence of a new conventionalism of 'cited' image: a banal reworking and a peculiar lack of involvement with anything but academic rules of art. If at times, much sanctioned art seems weighted toward a melange of disparate image bits in free-floating composition, it may be due to the art schools and a general, idiosyncratic, gaming against the urges of a living and very human gut response -- a refusal to take fundamental human perception and response, and make it new. Where the artist has absorbed the momentum of existing art and continues an unspoken dialogue with the viewer, the result is gratifying. Dana Day's Ascending the Stairs (2001) makes one stop and search out meaning. Ascending the Stairs proffers skill in formal composition and execution, communicative image; and room for speculation. Susannah Pegg's almost Turner-esque reverie, Green Boat, Lake series #13 (2001), draws on natural phenomena, but deliberately reduces its image -- emotional mood edges toward a direct, nearly abstract dreaming state.
Art strikes particulars of time and place. When it is good, it resonates beyond. When it merely strikes a safe note, the item pleases for a while, and, mercifully, passes out of memory. Often, enduring art learns less from contemporaries and more from past art; from art far removed, an exotic art; or outside pursuits. There the artist cannot imitate: he is forced to examine, analyze, experience, explore for himself. Today, an all too common default is irony: a reticence, a refusal to challenge self, an unrelease, a closeting born of fear -- as much a failure as escapism or a purely decorative performance.
It is hard to explain when patterns, striking hues, satisfying effects -- a decorative aesthetic -- arise into an art of significance. In modern art, boundaries shift, just as shared, native language alters with circumstance and time. Entries by Elizabeth Buchanan and Heide van Wieren focus on detail and visual effect. A strong sense of biological form emerges in Elizabeth Buchanan's Grass (2001). Heide van Wieren's Blue Houdini and Grape Koolaid (2001) recalls some of the experiments by artists such as Hans Hartung in the 60s, Brice Marden or Victor Pasmore in the 80s. A passer-by looks, stops, remembers. And returns. In the past, Chicago art has responded distinctively to general trends and fashions in contemporary art. (One need only recall the rise of Chicago Imagism, loosely defined, but definitely Chicago art.) A critical rethinking and independence here has avoided much silliness which at times has afflicted art circles in New York or Los Angeles. Chicago is also fortunate that established venues often range out into art communities and nourish talent there -- the barriers and spheres of influence are not so parochial or stratified as elsewhere. (They are even less so among Chicago galleries.) If distinguished jurors and curators continue to offer encouragement and access, it will be a good thing. If artists or their patrons begin to ask what plays to the markets or wins mainstream academic acclaim, it may be cause for uneasiness. Chicago's twelfth annual "Around The Coyote: Fall Arts Festival" offers the public an opportunity to witness and assess a current overview of new possibilities. It certainly presents a wide range of art. "Curator's Choice" highlights fine work among the "Around The Coyote" fall festival. The surrounding district, apart from "Curator's Choice," offers open studios, accompanying events, and, inevitably, unscheduled participants. "Curator's Choice" runs from September 6th through 9th, 2001, in Chicago's Wicker Park artist district, centered about the intersection of Milwaukee, Damen and North Avenues. "Curator's Choice" was juried by Gregory Knight, Director of the Chicago Cultural Center; Julia Friedman, Director of the Julia Friedman Gallery; and Chuck Thurow, Director of the Hyde Park Art Center. A 32-page brochure accompanies this late-season ATC festival. "Around The Coyote" sponsors other events throughout the year. Details are available at http://www.aroundthecoyote.org. --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written or art edited for American Spectator, Anonym, Artful Dodge, Nit&Wit:Chicago's Art Magazine, Strong Coffee, and numerous others. Graphic artist and designer, he's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek Polanski is also Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. Editorial Note: Books mentioned in www.artscope.net reviews may be purchased through this site's amazon.com link. Examples of work by Hans Hartung, Brice Marden, and Victor Pasmore are given in The 20th Century Art Book (Phaidon Press: 2000). Chicago Imagists were earlier reviewed in www.artscope.net ("Jumpin' Backflash":Jan.2000). |
Home | Art Reviews | Bookstore | eArtist | Galleries | RSS
Search | About ArtScope.net | Advertise on ArtScope.net | Contact
