Anna Kunz at McCormick Gallery

 

Masterpieces of spiritual art can also be quite decorative.  Think of all those graceful Buddhas in the living rooms of upscale, non-Buddhist Americans.  While decorative art, like ceramic ornamental tiles, can appear on the walls of mosques as well as private homes.   But still …..can’t we distinguish between what makes one feel good - and what jolts the soul like a divine revelation?

Both kinds of Anna Kunz paintings  can now be seen in McCormick Gallery - but curiously enough,  it’s only the decorative ones that  are in the featured exhibit of smaller pieces called "Rosy".  The larger, more impressive pieces are in the back rooms of inventory.

Size doesn’t really matter.  Think of the amazing four-inch paintings by Nicholas Sistler .  The abstract watercolors of A.R. Ammons that came to the Poetry Center a few years ago were not much larger than the 11x13" pieces in this show -  yet what an amazing impact they had.  Most of the 30 small oil paintings pieces in "Rosy’ do no more than demonstrate the artist’s commendable skill and taste - while the half-dozen watercolors are just puzzling,  Kunz achieves luminosity so well in her oils - so why do her watercolors feel so dark and gloomy? Is that really what she was aiming for?

11" x 13"

A few of these small pieces, however, like the one above, really do proclaim the joy of paint as it registers shape, rhythm, hue and luminosity.  It recalls  the strength and delicacy of an earlier Chicago abstractionist, Miyoko Ito, though with a spirituality that’s more European than Japanese.

Anna Kunz, Well, 2023, 53x53"

This large piece, found in a back room, is even more emphatic in its connection to traditional European religion.  It draws the viewer in to a glowing center of divine revelation.  These are pieces that belong in a chapel not a dining room or corporate office.  It needs equally inspired architects to design such a space - like those who created the Rothko chapel.  If only our local billionaires were as committed to aesthetics as much as right wing politics.

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In his New City review, Alan Pocaro  is  more concerned with the idea of color than whatever emotional, spiritual, or narrative effect these particular colors may have. He does call the pieces "Ernest and poetic", but he does not elaborate on the content of that poetry or find any qualitative difference between the oils, watercolors, and the dyed hanging fabric.  Given their prices ($6000 each) I was reluctant to call these small pieces studies - but Alan correctly identifies them as such ( as confirmed by gallery website text that refers to them as "foundational pieces that ground her studio practice and inform her larger canvases and installations."