Picasso: Drawing from Life - at the Art Institute of Chicago

 A review of "Picasso: Drawing from Life" at the Art Institute of Chicago

Picasso, Minotaur Caressing Sleeping Woman, 

drypoint on copper, June 18 ,  1933, from the Vollard  Suite

I love the Vollard Suite - especially the drawings made in the Spring of 1933 when the fifty-two year old artist was midway through his affair with a woman twenty seven years younger.

Picasso, Faun Uncovering Sleeping Woman, June 12, 1936, 12 x 16"

Aquatint and sugar lift etching with scraping and engraving on copper

(After Rembrandt)

Three years later he’s applied some new techniques to a similar theme

Utterly delicious - and apparently the eager faun thinks so as well

Rembrandt, Jupiter and Antiope, 1659, 5 x 8 "

The title of this exhibit, "Drawing from Life" is misleading.  Most of the pieces, like these in the Vollard Suite, do not appear to be based on a model posing — as appears to be the case with this Rembrandt etching that inspired Picasso’s variation.

Picasso: Sculptor, Reclining Model, and Self-Portrait as Sculpture of Hercules, 

 March 17, 1933

Picasso’s vision of himself with a much younger nude woman was more benign at the very beginning of the series.  It progressively got darker:  the man turns into a man/beast and the woman falls asleep, becoming more helpless and vulnerable.

I’ve loved the above image for more than 50 years - purchasing a small pamphlet of print reproductions with the meager funds earned from washing dishes.   It looked like an idyllic life - and so much has been accomplished with such a simple tool.  The contour lines are so effective.  The overall design is throbbing.

The Art Institute owns a copy, but it was not included in this exhibit.  Picasso has become a bette noire for his treatment of women and evidently the curators wanted to confront that issue head on. Can we celebrate his art while condemning the kind of behavior that art presents - and perhaps even glorifies? Can we agree that an art museum, unlike a church, is not necessarily a place for moral instruction?  So the National Cathedral was right to cancel it’s racist stain glass windows - while it would be OK for the AIC to display them (if they didn’t look so stiff, lame, and tacky - even if that does suggest irony, intended or otherwise)

Picasso, Fernando Olivier, 1906, 18 x 24

Charcoal on cream laid paper

The prints and drawings galleries were filled with many decades of Picasso from the AIC’s extensive permanent collection.

Another small area that caught my attention were three portraits of the same woman done when the artist was  in his mid twenties.  Hanging them side-by-side gives the viewer some idea of the artist finding his voice.

My favorite is the above - and I would have been quite happy if Picasso  remained something like a portraitist of the Spanish royal family.  (Doesn’t this remind you of Goya?)

But Picasso was more ambitious than that :

Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1909, oil on canvas,  24 x 20

For better or worse, we have entered a new, more turbulent, unsettling world of conflicted, unhappy people

Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1909, 24 x 20, oil on canvas

Not as appealing as the charcoal drawing - but maybe more exciting. A new kind of pictorial space is being created with an uncomfortable tension between surface and imaginary volume.

 

Women on the Verge at Rhona Hoffman

A review of "Women on the Verge" at Rhona Hoffman Gallery

Robin F. Williams Abject Terror (Ripley), 

2023 Oil and acrylic on canvas 26 x 20 in.

As the show’s curator, art historian Lisa Wainwright, notes in the catalog :  "Phantasmagorical images of women populate figurative painting these days. "… and as her exhibition demonstrates, that’s been happening for more than fifty years.  The chronology in this exhibit begins with Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, Paris)  and ends with Payton Harris-Woodard (b. 1996, Chicago). 

Louise Bourgeois  Untitled, 1950 Ink on paper 14 x 11 in.

Payton Harris-Woodard, Brown Fury

Some of the women depicted, like the wide-eyed face shown at the top,  do seem on the verge of that nervous breakdown seen in the celebrated Spanish film (Pedro Aldomar) of that title.  Wainwright’s text  says they are on the verge of "making a really big ruckus" to "deflect  the evils of the patriarchy".  They certainly are not playing the roles of the enticing lover, demure spouse,  or nurturing mother.  But neither do they seem especially interested in disrupting anything other than their own  lives.   They’re as goofy, giddy, dysfunctional, and self enthralled as a rebellious adolescent.  Welcome to the world of Chicago Imagism, a tradition now over sixty  years old and still going strong.

Wainwright  has included both the very famous - and the very unknown  (especially if they’re connected to her own  institution, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago).  That might be expected. But what is surprising is that she has apparently selected paintings that are visually appealing  rather than  especially outrageous or typical for the artist. Compare the piece shown at the top, for example, with other recent work by Robin Williams:

Robin F. Williams, gallery shot from her show "Outlookers"

"Abject Terror" is so much less provocative and puzzling than the above - while it is visually more delicious.

Nicola Tyson The Disconnect, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 1001⁄2 in.

Or consider the above large canvas by Nicola Tyson.  Powerful painting that it is, it hardly seems figurative at all - while, as you can see below, usually female human figures are clearly identifiable in Tyson’s work:

None of which should be taken as a criticism of the curator.  She has evidentially selected paintings she likes to look at more than once - - - and so do I.

 Cindy Sherman Untitled, 1987 Chromogenic color print 45 x 30 in. 

Wainwright’s arrangement of pieces within the gallery also makes visual sense to me. The place to see Cindy Sherman’s obtuse, pathetic, furtive figure is in a dark corner at the periphery - and that’s exactly where Wainwright has hung it - in a dimly lit hall beyond the gallery’s kitchen.

Celeste Rapone - Gladys Nilsson (2),   Elizabeth Glaessner

Meanwhile, this lineup of more attractive pieces deserves its central position in the gallery  - especially the two gorgeous watercolors at the very center by Gladys Nilsson.

Elizabeth Glaessner (b. 1984) , Medusa, 2023 Oil on linen 36 x 24 in.

Medusa was indeed a "woman on the verge", 

but I have no idea how this mythopoetic work relates to her.  

I do enjoy trying to figure it out, however.

Celeste Rapone (b. 1985),  Girl’s Girl, oil on canvas, 34 x 30

A humorous and beautiful design of a shirtless, heavy set  girl playing cards presumably with another woman. 

But how is she on the verge of anything other than a winning hand of Poker?

The exhibit was not hung chronologically -  but still it’s hard to resist querying the seventy years of art history spanned by these 27 artists.  The feminist seriousness of Bourgeois and Lassnig, both born in Europe, has given way to a more sensual and often silly self expression - suggesting that feminism itself is now less of a cultural critique and more about personal lifestyle.

But where can we find all the  other kinds of women that women depict?  Everyone still needs a loving, nurturing mother.  Why can’t women depict women as such?  Or what about women as athletes, community leaders,  venture capitalists, house painters, or scientists ?  Does any female artist depict women on the verge of a responsible, productive, inspired adult life?  Or maybe even as old  and wise?  Or what about craven, dishonest and manipulative?

Of course many  female artists do address a wider range of character,  but you’re not going to find them in the echo chamber of contemporary art in Chicago.

Rose Frantzen, self portrait, 2017

(Not in this show)

Ruth Duckworth at the Smart Museum

 A review of "Ruth Duckworth: Life as Unity" at the Smart Museum

Sometime in the mid sixties -  around the time when the first full-disc photos of our planet were being published - Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009) had an epiphany:  "I think of life as a unity. This includes mountains, mice, rocks, trees, women, and men. It's all one big lump of clay. I  think of life as a unity."

It was soon commemorated by "Earth, Water, Sky" (1967-1968), a room-sized, permanent installation commissioned for the newly built Harry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Only the maquette could be included in this show  but you can already feel the inner power of our wonderful planet.

It’s constituent elements (earth, water, sky) are represented by the smaller ceramics included in this show.  She has fashioned clay into aerodynamic birds, round  heavy pots, and watery flowing waves.  All of these pieces are pleasant and imaginative, running the gamut of ceramic technique.  But none of them appear to be seeking the transformative, volcanic power of her immersive installation two blocks south on Ellis Avenue.  Nor do they have the formal intensity that traditional potters can summon for  the simple shapes of a cup or bowl.  Her pieces are more like a personal journey through the academic trends that coincided with her life.  They do not feel psychological - like the work of her more famous contemporary, Lee Bontecou.  Duckworth looks outward, not inward.

There’s the machine aesthetic of  British modernist sculpture;  the down-to-earth organics of environmentalism; and the provocation of feminism. A perforated tube that might suggest an alien space station is juxtaposed with a severely elegant bird form and a somewhat scary eruption of female genitalia.  Then there are the serene, watery pieces that belong in the lobby of a hotel or airport waiting room.

Duckworth retired from the University  of Chicago in 1977 - a few years before social justice swept over academia and rendered her work decidedly old-school elitist.  Oppressed people of the world don’t have time for natural cosmology, and neither do those who seek justice for them.    But the curators of this exhibit have added an extra gallery to present her "networks of influence", including the various community ceramic studios around the city.  But if Duckworth had ever contributed to them,  surely we would be told about it.  And what about her students at the university?  She taught there for 13 years.  Where are those who continued to work with clay and acknowledge her as a mentor?  There is a feeling of aloof loneliness in so much of her work. 

So far, the Smart is the only art (rather than craft) museum that has given her a retrospective.  This exhibit  will probably not change that.  But it does reveal a human life of industry, imagination, and sensitivity to the academic world around her.  Visualizing a cosmology based on science is a noble, daring, and maybe even indispensable project for a species that must think globally rather than tribally. Hopefully another artist will pick up where Duckworth has  left off.

************

You might want to check out the landscape paintings by Duckworth's good friend, Martyl Langsdorf.  They feel quite similar to Duckworth's ceramics.

Funky naturalism - like detritus on the forest floor.

The bowl in the rear might be an old discarded hat.

Mysterious lumps.

Nature loves to bulge.

Seeds in a pod - or windows in a space station.

Not sure which.

Not for the eyes of men,

And especially not for  boys.

Serenity

Guardian

Spirit of Survival

Being unfamiliar with her public sculpture, I would have appreciated having the maquettes displayed beside each other - and accompanied by photographs of the installations.  

They feel silly - yet also quietly statist - like ancient Egyptian pharaohs carved in granite. Definitely not the celebration of the individual spirit - like monuments by Richard Hunt.

*****

By way of contrast —— consider Amber Ginsburg who currently teaches the ceramic classes at the University of Chicago. It’s possible that she actually works with clay herself, but if so, she has chosen not to show  any such work on her website.

She does show photos of a "tea project’ - but as you can see, the teacups are mass produced styrofoam and the accompanying text is all about politics.

Sixty years ago, Duckworth struck a balance between spiritual growth, political correctness, and aesthetic joy.

That’s probably not possible for those who teach visual art at the University of Chicago today.

Drawings of Ellsworth Kelly at the Art Institute of Chicago

 

Ellsworth Kelly, self portrait, 1992

Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is not known for figurative art.  He might be called a non-objective painter, except that his curved, monochrome panels assert themselves as objects that endlessly pose the question, "why is this thing here?" As he puts it, he wants them to feel "found", rather than purposefully created.

 But as it turns out, he was quite talented at the kind of linear figurative drawing that Matisse and Picasso had made famous.

Lhote - Picasso - Matisse

Andre Lhote (1885-1962) is now much less well known than the other two - but his Paris studio was a prime destination for American art students like Kelly.

Kelly, Nude Reclining, 1948

 Kelly - Jack Youngerman , 1949

Quite a powerful presence for this young painter from Kentucky whom Kelly befriended in Paris

Kelly - Louis Chartier (fisherman), 1949

Note how the pictorial space is well served by using a lighter line in the more distant shoulder.

Kelly - self portrait,1949

Gallery signage notes that this fine drawing is in the manner of Max Beckmann whom Kelly much admired.

Max Beckmann, self portrait,  1918

Kelly, self portrait, 1947

Self Portrait with Bugle, 1947

Kelly, Self Portrait, 1955

Portrait of a young man on the go -

Going right out of figurative art

and straight to the fame and money.

Simultaneously presenting a character and designing a page -

the result of an art education that Kelly then abandoned in his larger work. Perhaps by maximizing the figurative pictorial in drawing, it helped him go the opposite direction in painting and sculpture.