Chicago Artists’ Coalition Newsletter
September 1996
Chicago Art
by Claire Wolf Krantz
Chicago’s contemporary art scene has been depicted as having many forms, but a diffuse shapelessness may be its most salient characteristic. While art can always be seen here, too much of Chicago art’s richness and variety is hidden: as in a rhizome, its complex interconnections underlie a seemingly bland surface dotted by apparently random eruptions. Thus, a host of mature, interesting, and significant work finds limited opportunities for continuing visibility and dialogue. I believe that a lack of unifying organizations and other structural weaknesses in our art establishment undermines and dissipates the energy of sustained artmaking, hampers its effectiveness, and complicates the outside critic or curator’s job of unearthing what is happening here.
There are several reasons why Chicago does not sustain a visible presence for more than a relatively few artists. Along with a paucity of well-regarded press coverage and exhibition spaces is the lack of truly inclusive institutions with the power, money, prestige, and also the will, to support a serious art scene. Our two major art museums, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, have looked elsewhere for artistic direction and have continually abrogated local responsibility. A prime example is the Art Institute’s abandonment of its long-standing “Chicago and Vicinity Show;” even this token of respect towards its own city no longer seems important to our most major museum. In addition, dauntingly familiar to those acquainted with city politics, Chicago’s art scene is fueled by other powerful, circumscribed, and non-overlapping spheres of interests and influences including galleries, critics and art schools. All of these mostly isolated dominions compete for dominance over crucial ideas that shape which art is designated to be significant and relevant, a situation in which the concerns of those who actually produce the art are ignored.
Although institutions must exist to provide frameworks for the presentation and explanation of art, in Chicago these organizations are too often used to empower certain artists and to disempower others. As categories are invented to classify and explain the meanings and uses of art, they are also used to divide artists. A glaring example can be found in Michael Brenson’s essay for the 1992 “Culture in Action” catalogue in which he used painting as a foil to justify and promote public art. Characterizing paintings as “emblems of power” instead of institutions as sites of power, artists are set against each other (again), while art world institutions remain free to utilize language and money to compete for power and prestige. Moreover, by buying into the hierarchical structures of artworld institutions without questioning their dogmas, artists who fit their work into narrow discourses driven by institutional self interest do a disservice to their own work and flatten its meaning. For example, attitudes characterized by Duchamp’s famous phrase “dumb like a painter” continue to be accepted as true, fostering a perception of “Public” or “Conceptual” art as being the only smart or relevant art. Claiming that they have “gone beyond” painting and sculpture, participants in these more recent genres accuse their sister arts (and often the unacknowledged core of what they do) of being based on outdated, elitist, or mercenary rationales, as they themselves sell their services to museums and granting agencies. Yet, as they defend themselves from claims of the death of painting, few painters or sculptors tackle the difficult and ongoing task of finding new means with which to discuss their work. Must we embrace and perpetuate these Oedipal models for behavior? Such divisions in the art world mirror those of mainstream America and do neither group any good.
Wishing to create unique identities that fulfill perceived needs for art, specialized non profit institutions tend to define themselves closely with the unintended effect of perpetuating easy classifications. Examples of organizations that, in spite of these limitations, show challenging work that stretches our knowledge and understanding include the Renaissance Society, which usually favors highly conceptual work by internationally acclaimed artists, Randolph Street and N.A.M.E. Galleries, which seek more content-based and socially oriented themes geared towards younger audiences, and Artemisia, which leans towards feminist issues. Sculpture Chicago and the Chicago Public Art Group seek ways to collaborate with communities to produce locally meaningful art. These highly focused institutions present a welcome variety of provocative and informative projects, exhibits, and programs, and offer us exposure to international currents in the arts, but their isolated and concentrated orientation also generates some predictability and limits their appeal to wide audiences.
However, some not for profit institutions are inclusive and multifarious. The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs exhibits all kinds of cultural production and sponsors public projects, events, and other services for artists. The Illinois Art Gallery, the Betty Rymer Gallery at the School of the Art Institute, and The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College present pertinent group shows that are issue oriented and actively seek out Chicago artists. Similarly, the “New Art Examiner” is to be commended for providing the majority of Chicago’s serious press coverage, and even more importantly, for its resolve to be comprehensive and open to local concerns. But they, and artists’ advocacy groups such as The Chicago Artists’ Coalition and the Chicago Art Alliance, can’t do the whole job of supporting a strong art environment by themselves. And it must unfortunately be noted that institutions that do strive to be open and inclusive are sometimes dismissed by the art establishment, including artists, as being diffuse and unfocused, or even worse, as supporting minor work. Thus, many fledgling alternative currents among artists who have no institutional or commercial affiliations never develop a voice, and opportunities for alternative discourses are lost. Meanwhile attention continues to be focused on the international art scene for direction.
Understandably, individual commercial galleries reflect the taste of their owners, and their primary mission is to sell art. Probably the only venue in the city that fully integrates many Chicago artists (albeit with gallery sponsorship) with internationally based ones is the highly visible “Art Expo.” A commercial venture, it successfully does what Chicago’s major museums refuse to do: it presents Chicago art on a level field with that of major artists everywhere, and it does it every year. In contrast, Westtown’s inclusive arts festival, “Around the Coyote,” is Chicago’s somewhat problematic analogue to the unjuried street fair and studio tour: a confusing and overwhelming supermarket of disorganized, competing stimuli. Unfortunately, while it successfully attracts new audiences for art, its policy of including all visual artists who apply is accompanied by a serious lack of quality control. Thus, with no framework for contextualizing the work, any claims for art’s having meaning is lost, thus raising serious questions about how well the arts are actually served by this representation to any public.
On the other hand, an assortment of university galleries, not-for-profits, and a few commercial galleries, have presented some very interesting groups shows that were organized by non-professional curators addressing intellectually stimulating ideas with a variety of work not generally seen elsewhere. Some recent artist or critic-curated group shows includes “Skew: The Unruly Grid”, co-curated in 1995 by Susan Senseman and Karen Indeck for the University of Illinois’ Gallery 400: a wild array of works indebted to the grid, as well as “Feint/Faint”: an imaginative and lively project and installation by 4 artists (Paul Krainak, Michiko Itatani, Leslie Bellavance, and Phil Berkman) in conjunction with a blood drive. Also in 1995, critic Susan Snodgrass curated “Public/Private: Women Artists Negotiate the Terrain,” for the Northern Illinois University Art Gallery to investigate the conjunction of public and private domains in personal works of seven artists previously associated with the public sphere. Its associated panel discussion breached facile premises and built connections among fragments that sometimes exist even within the artists themselves. Commercial galleries such as Gallery 312, Thomas Blackman Associates, and The Wood Street Gallery have supported similar undertakings. Wood Street’s owner Mary O’Shaunessy remarked that artist curated shows display a depth which goes beyond subject matter or genre and reveals something about the artists’ process. Wood Street’s 1995 “Adornment” show, curated by Richard DuBeshter, was a wonderfully inventive and stimulating admixture of genres that normally remain distinct: those of garments, art, and adornment. Although mainstream institutions regard these shows (particularly if artist-curators include their own work) as self-serving, they actually often explore passionately held and challenging ideas about what is happening at the grassroots level of artmaking, before the mainstream institutions have noticed.
Seeking ongoing catalysts for their work, small groups of artists have formed nourishing relationships in more private atmospheres, discussing mutual interests and fervently debating ideas. These groups formulate theories and beliefs, which contribute an alternative and vital energy to mainstream dogma. But their danger lies in their ability to become ingrown and tribal, and that is what I think happens here, where artists exhibit little mutual awareness of or support for outsiders. For instance, I saw virtually no studio artists last October at an opening of a major exhibit celebrating Chicago’s mural movement at the Illinois Art Gallery. On the other hand, do muralists attend other art events? Do we feel welcome in each other’s camps? Are we even interested in each other? Yet we all call ourselves artists, and we expect a general public that we’ve done little to educate to support us.
Diagnosing our ills can become a prelude towards solving them. Just as the city has become internationally known for jazz and theater, its image must be widened to include the visual arts. Wonderful art continues to be produced here, and its diversity must be made visible -- not just the token artists who have caught the eye of a critic or dealer, but others engaged in ongoing explorations of serious issues dealing with the problematic stuff of living which may be difficult but not fashionable or controversial. The newly opened Museum of Contemporary Art has raised hopes that it will become a leader in foregrounding our artists, but I hope that artists will also be more active in determining their own futures.
We must begin by rethinking our relationships with our institutions and with each other. We must pay attention to ourselves, to respect who we are and what we have to say. We must create powerful discourses about these concerns and demand that they be heard here and be transmitted to other artistic centers that learned to honor their artists long ago. Rather than by pursuing self-definitions in relationship to geography, ethnic or generational groupings, genre or medium, I think that a viable program lies in generating open dialogues and cooperation among these competing and often conflicting forces as well as insisting upon the support of the whole community.
As we demand more from our existing institutions, we must also begin thinking about creating new ones, and about breaking some of the taboos that serve to disempower artists. New galleries are opening in unlikely spaces both in Chicago and New York, but they are still run by dealers who act as intermediaries for artists. Artists might challenge the negative idea of the vanity gallery and find new ways to show their own work, possibly in temporary spaces, by themselves or with others. Perhaps “Around the Coyote” could be modified to serve as a model for a more serious presentation of accomplished art. In short, while engaging in international discourses, Chicago artists must insist on talking about their own interests, curating shows that examine and promote their ideas, writing about what they consider important issues, and supporting those institutions and publications that support them.
Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.