Modersohn-Becker and the Horvitz Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago

Paula Modersohn-Becker, (1876 - 1907 )Reclining Mother with Child II, 1906

Death of Demosthenes 1805,  Georges Rouget (1783-1869)

I doubt the Art Institute of Chicago had any intention of mounting  these two shows simultaneously.

but they do complement each other quite nicely:

The world of men — the world of women

Public — private

Aristocrats — commoners

Theater stage — bedroom.       

Three dimensions — two dimensions    

Strong colors —  muted colors

 Dynamic, complex anatomy — blockish, simplified anatomy

Extraordinary—ordinary.      

Violence — nurture

Melodrama — no drama 

Historically, the one might well be understood as a strong reaction to the other,

especially with the examples of  French Neoclassicism as collected by Jeffrey E. Horvitz.

Evidentially, he had no interest in painterly quality except as it delivers overwrought melodrama.

Jacques Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1784

We can’t blame Horvitz for collecting Rouget instead of the unavailable work of his master, David.  One  might attempt to characterize how the above differs from "The Death of Demosthenes" - but if you’re reading this blog, you already know. Rouget could render strong figures  but he had no talent for graphic design or narrative staging.  And the same might be said for the entire  Horvitz collection. 

The 2006 Girodet  exhibition at the A,I.C., however, proved, at least to me, that artists trained in French Neo Classicism could make masterpieces despite being  quite unfamiliar to contemporary American eyes.  I’ve posted some examples below:

Regnault, Judgment of Paris, 1820

Here’s Neo-Classical painting at its colorful, saccharine, well-staged best, even though the artist is neither David nor Ingres.

Jean-Germain Drouais (1763-1788). Marius at Miturnae, 1786

and here’s a much better variation by another pupil of David

Regretfully, Horvitz did not find work at this level - so no more attention need be given to his collection.

( Norman Bryson's chapter on French Neo-Classicism is discussed here )

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The Paula Modersohn-Becker exhibit, however, is fascinating.  Traditionally ( and  probably universally) motherhood  is the crowning achievement of a woman’s life. So it was no surprise that Mary Cassatt, one of the few pre-modern women to have a career in art, painted women with children. But what other names come to your mind? It seems that motherhood and a career in art have long been conflicting interests for women in the modern, and post modern world.

Elizabeth Catlett, 1956

There are, course, exceptions.

Here’s a small terracotta from the fifties

Rose Frantzen

Here’s a contemporary oil painting by the queen of Maquoketa, Iowa.

With the millions of  talented contemporary women around the world, there are bound to be many more good examples - but you will be challenged to find them in galleries or museums - and indeed, Paula Modersohn-Becker was probably an unfamiliar name to almost everyone who visited this exhibit. 

She did not make paintings about painting (Cubism) or about the challenged  psyche (Surrealism) or social justice (social realism).  She just depicted a healthy,  ordinary woman’s life, including her own She was a total outlier.

Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945)

Modersohn-Becker

Here’s how compares with a much better know woman of her era.

Self portrait with Two Flowers, 1907

Mummy portrait, Egypt, 120-140 CE

Here’s how she compares with a piece referenced by gallery signage. 

There’s less gravitas than Kollwitz and less eternity than the ancient  Fayum portrait. Taken from one of her letters, "I am me" is the title given to this show - and maybe we’d like to see her striving for something a little more.

But still …. there a competent and engaging presentation of her life spirit - something which is rarely found among contemporary artists unless it is non-objective.  It’s like what Van Gogh did - though not as powerful or delicious as that great visionary. 

Here are some of my other favorite pieces from the show, all of it pleasant and engaging as a unique point of view — but not quite as timeless and stirring as this sculptural monument by a friend commemorating her untimely death:

Bernard Hoetger (1874-1949 ) Mother and Child , 1907

Hoetger was one of the great sculptors of that period,  yet sadly he remains even more obscure than his subject.

 

Scott Wolniak at O’Connor Gallery

Spiral, 74 x 74, acrylic, graphite, pumice medium on canvas

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Detail

Even when Chicago artists aren’t delineating figures,  they’re still looking outward, not inward - and they offer as much tension and noticeable craftsmanship as the Imagists.     Miyoko Ito (1918-1983) , Barbara Rossi (1940-2023), Candida Alvarez (b.1955), and Magalie Guerin (b. 1973)  might serve as examples. They depict objects in the world - even if unrecognizable. And those objects are accompanied by attitudes of satire or puzzlement or humor or wonder or whatever.  Always intense - always personal.  Deeply so. That’s the Chicago way.

In this show, however, Scott Wolniak  (b. 1971) goes in nearly the  opposite direction.

Pieces are indeed well made - but they feel more casual,- even passive.    Shapes float rather than assert - and  they seem to be appearing on their own - like moisture stains or cracks in a wall. There is no provocative personality here - just acceptance.  Like George Harrison’s "Life flows on within you and without you". 

The title of the exhibit, "Aggregations", refers to how the paintings were made in layers. First, a flat pattern of hollow tubing was sketched in - usually as a spiral. Then, like sausage casings, they were filled in with a variety of stuff:  splotches, marks, lines, whatever. The piece as a whole may feel tired and boring, yet often there is a quirky beauty in areas of detail.  It’s not a beauty that slaps you in the face.  It’s just that whenever you look for it - there’s a surprising variety of textures, surfaces, and marks that feel unpredictable and is echoed, in some way, across the canvas.

The results are the same calm you might feel from Persian carpets - and they likewise share an inexorable pull from the edges towards the center.  Chicago art is notably high spirited.  These  paintings are more like meditational/spiritual.  

Some of them might serve well as mandalas at a yoga retreat - but they aren’t really targeted at any one specific spiritual practice.  Wolniak teaches in the visual art department at the University of Chicago  so he makes conceptual installations as well. ( 2009 :  "Ungray: Color, Light, and Other Balms" at the Cultural Center).  We might then think of his work as being about spirituality - in an intellectual way - rather than actually being part of a spiritual practice.  Experimentation is more important than rectitude or enlightenment.  Which does not mean that they necessarily look better or worse than what might be found in a Tibetan monastery.  Though they do feel less serious.  Unity with the spirit of the cosmos is not at stake.  

Allium, 36 x 30,  acrylic, oil, pumice medium, fiber paste on canvas

Detail

What a wonderfully watery piece

pulled every which way - and loose.

Walk in the Park, 21 x 17, acrylic, oil, pumice medium, fiber paste on canvas

The least spiritual, and most enjoyable piece in the show

Might serve as the cover for a Brian Eno album.

I’ m guessing that the title is an afterthought.

Detail

Maurice Prendergast, Franklin Park, Boston, 1895

Here’s another stroll through a park.

On the other hand, the pieces in Wozniak’s 2023 show. "Cross currents", at Goldfinch Gallery were quite different:

Radish, Et Al,” 2022, acrylic, graphite, paper pulp and pumice medium on canvas, 72″ x 60″ 

It also resembles a Tibetan thangka, but it’s more like a figurative one - even if it has no recognizable figures. 

I

The Resplendent One, 14th Century

Going back to his 2014 show at Valerie Carberry,

we find the wild, chaotic intensity of an early modernist like Pavel Filonov:

Current, 2014, Acrylic, ink, and watercolor on carved plaster, burlap , and plywood., 24 x 21

Now this is more like Chicago art.

It’s something Bruce Thorn might do.

Clearly Scott Wolniak is moving in an ever more spiritual/meditational direction and I look forward to seeing a retrospective someday.  He might even end up with the emptiness of Malevich or Rothko.

But  God, I hope not.

*****

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This show also includes these small sculptures:

 

Wolniak has taken his lumpy shapes off the wall and made them sculptural objects.  Now their value is entirely conceptual. These painted plaster casts are so realistic that indeed wild birds might peck at them ( remember Zeuxis of Heraclea? ) They may be humorous.- but their forms are as disposable as the overripe fruit they represent.  I’m sure the janitorial staff had to be cautioned not to pitch them in the garbage.

John Himmelfarb at Koehnline Museum

 A review of John Himmelfarb "How things Stack up" at the Koehnline Museum

KB3 - 2014

Girls like dolls. Boys like toy trucks: they carry stuff - they have wheels - they race downhill - dad may  own the real thing.  And John Himmelfarb (b. 1946) still can’t get enough of them.  As the gallery sitter informed me, every single piece in this career spanning exhibition has a truck (though you may have to look very very hard to find it)

Above is a vintage real truck that he’s stuffed with junk - not unlike the metal salvagers who patrol the alleys of Chicago.  I’ve always loved  rusting farm machinery whenever found,  but even better, this pile of junk has  been as tastefully arranged as a bouquet of flowers.

The Ink Truck is Here, 2015

While here is a really dynamic, and scary,  wood block print. Himmelfarb may be locked onto a single subject matter - but can use a variety of materials and techniques to great advantage. Reminds me of the 4x8 plywood sheet prints of fellow Midwesterner, Tom Huck.

This bronze "Ur Truck" (2019) seems to have driven in from another dimension.

Playful and mysterious, it has the blue-green patina of an ancient relic. Not surprising that the artist once worked in the studio of Ruth Duckworth.

Drama, 2020

Himmelfarb plays with styles as well as materials.

This piece could have hung in a Hairy Who?  exhibit of the sixties. 

High-chroma silliness done really well.

Girder, 2012

And he makes plywood constructions that suggest buildings or factory machinery.

All of the above is a boy’s  delight in building and beholding the great and incomprehensible world of men. Like the Chicago Imagists, he doesn’t want to grow up.  And why should he ?  Everything he touches becomes delightful - at least for a moment.

PV84, 2015

Could be trucks, could be wine bottles, 

could be text written in a lost alphabet.

Or could just be an expressive abstract painting.

It’s not the only such piece in this show.

There’s a feeling of passionate emergence here,

a thought trying to clarify itself. A brain at work.

Or maybe just the corroding undercarriage of a a semi ?

 

This is the one piece in the show that feels like it's seeking rather than entertaining.

I’m glad he does both- but also wish he made things that  transcend the busy, mundane  life of the street or nursery.

Himmelfarb's art has a warm, cheerful, positive glow.  The workmanship broadcasts good will. 

Yet it also echoes the great suburban sprawl of our civilization as it smothers the planet with highways, strip malls, industrial parks, and housing developments.  Everything solidly built, nothing beautiful.  No refuge here for contemplation.  No ideal beyond the accumulation of more stuff - stacked high in the bed of a cute old pick-up.

 

 

Sol Kordich at Mariane Ibrahim

 

So much thought and skill has gone into these  ambitious pieces.

Coming Back to the One, 2024,  75 x 77

A cosmic theme presented by swirling, virtuosic brush work.

It’s just that it makes me feel nothing.

Sensual - but not compelling 

Serious but not profound

Energetic but not powerful

Appealing but not beautiful 

This is an aesthetic perhaps better realized with died fabric rather than paint.

The images don’t really seem appropriate for flat, rectangular surfaces,

and the artist seems to be pulling yarn rather that attaching herself to a canvas through the tip of a paint laden brush.

Sol Kordich (b.  Buenos Aires, 1995) was trained as an architect, and the impersonality here would fit better in the lobby of a glistening new hi-rise than in the more personal space of an apartment.

Bill Conger at 65 Grand

Any diversion from popular cartoon-like art is much to be welcomed into the Chicago artworld.  No garish colors and aggressive figuration here.  These pieces resemble  circular Petri dishes that have been marked up by bacteria on a thin film of agar. So what we feel here is a force of nature, not the hand of man.  There was some gestural painting done at the beginning of the process, but it was transferred and layered onto another support.

From a distance, these meditative circles might suggest classical Chinese landscape painting - but there is nothing monumental or sentimental about them.  It takes so much effort to feel how they pull together as a design, you might as well be  looking at something that happened rather than something that was shaped.  The swirling  lines shown above might be the strands of hair pulled into the drain of a bathtub.  Perhaps photography  is the best way to create such effects - it's certainly less labor intensive.

Though not readily connectable to Chicago (as are the paintings of the other William Conger), this cool, earth-tone nature art is widely made in the Mid-west.  (and the artist lives downstate).  Before it’s closing, Perimeter Gallery was a good place to find it.

detail

 

Can you feel any kind of human striving, play, or emotion in here ?  It might require a dedication, formal sensitivity, and patience greater than my own.  Yet still -  when so many other kinds of painting swiftly transport me to ecstasy - why would I want to do so much work?

These pieces feel less like a celebration than a penance.

Entre Horizontes : Art and Activism between Puerto Rico and Chicago

A review of  Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico 

at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

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 Arnaldo Roche Rabell (1955-2018) Aqui y alla  (Here and There),1989 

There is no indication online that Rabell identified as gay - but four beefy guys cavorting on a boat at night off the coast of Chicago’s north side seems like that kind of theme.  They’re naked and certainly burning with something - probably desire. Rabell’s technique is incomprehensible to me.  He somehow wrapped a paint loaded canvas around  unclothed models. Nevertheless,  the results are quite powerful.  Obviously he made just the right alterations. And probably he was some kind of magician.

Armaldo Roche Rabell ,  Isla Vacia, (vacant island), 1987

More magic from Rabell - a memento mori still-life combined with an aerial cityscape of what must be San Juan -  and the all-too empty chairs.  He's quite passionate about the loss.

Angel Otero (b. 1981), Exquisito, 2009 

This is the kind of work Otero was doing right after he got his MFA at SAIC and was shown at the Chicago Cultural Center.  It recalls the home of his grandmother.  Like Rabell, it drips with sensuality, and it’s a kind of collage.  Otero uses scraped off paint skins.  A cool, distant, objective view of these things (all things?) is not possible. It’s all about emotion.

Candida Alvarez (b. 1955), Licking  a Red Rose, 2020

This piece is from the MCA’s own collection - and I can see why they acquired it.  It’s gorgeous. Signage tells us that it refers to the 2020 election as well as a friend licking a rose. But I think it’s just about Candida's joy of being alive.

Jose Lerma (b. 1971). Dorothy, 2023

As this photo shows, this is quite a large piece.

The artist used a special broom to brush thick acrylic paint across burlap.

It depicts Dorothy Dene, purportedly a model for Luis A. Ferre’s great gift to the museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico, ‘Flaming June’

Lord Leighton, Flaming June, 1895

Lerma has hinted at some ideological content behind his current work - as there was in his spoof of international banking in his show at Kavi Gupta ten years ago (Here is my review)

But gallery signage doesn’t mention it  - so I take it as just an update on the theme of stately young women - suitable now for a corporate headquarters instead of a mogul’s mansion.

It has the pleasant aesthetic of a quilt or soft sculpture.

Sebastian Vallejo ( b. 1982) Esperando La Tormenta, 2017

Signage tells us that the artist painted this in NewYork while Hurricane Maria was devastating Puerto Rico.  For me, it has the excitement of Van Gogh - so I’m not sure that his reaction was one of despair or anxiety.

…and apparently the MCA thought it was decorative enough for a pillow

Vallejo appeared in a show of young artists at the Puerto Rican Community Center in 2016

and I mentioned him here

Sebastian Vallejo, Paseo por la Costa (walk along the coast), 2020

Vallejo would be an ABX painter- except that his subject is his beloved homeland - not his own troubled mind.

I wish he had a gallery in Chicago.

Omar Velazquez (b. 1984) Caguama, 2020

Signage tells us that this depicts the artist’s encounter with a sea turtle while canoeing in the mangroves near Salinas, Puerto Rico. Possibly he encountered a duck as well, and had fruit and musical instruments on board.

 

It's pleasant and lighthearted, but I'm sure I don't enjoy it as much as the artist did remembering his experience.  I have no interest in seeing it again.

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Allegedly, this exhibit "examines the artistic genealogies and social justice movements that connect Puerto Rico with Chicago" 

 But what's really interesting were the above paintings on display.  They demonstrate a quite fruitful connection between Puerto Rico and the  School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Two of the above artists are currently faculty members ( Alvarez and Lerma), while the rest all studied there.  They have brought so much beauty and joy to a regional art scene that has mostly been interested in other things.

And though it’s anathema to a Modernist sensitivity, most of their work is saturated with nostalgia. If squeezed, the tears could fill buckets.  That’s probably why the curator chose to emphasize something more fashionable like "Activism".

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As Lori Waxman wrote for Hyperallergic:

The real stars of entre horizontes are big, lush paintings invoking no particular politics but using a variety of techniques borrowed from printmaking: Ángel Otero’s and Arnaldo Roche Rabell’s messy kitchen tables, with collaged fabrics and impressed textures; José Lerma’s breathtakingly confident profile of a woman, brushed in inch-thick acrylics with a commercial broom; Nora Maité Nieves’s “Magnetic Field” — two pairs of iridescent geometric patterned canvases.

So she mostly agrees with me — except that I found Nieves’  grid-obsessed  "Magnetic Field" too boring to mention.  She must have studied with a conceptualist like Michelle Grabner while at SAIC.  By the way, some of the other work she shows online is quite different.