John Marin at the Art Institute of Chicago

John Marin's Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism
Art Institute of Chicago
thru April 17






Sometime in the last century, the shameless huckster became the marketing professional, and the skills of building brand and market share were applied to fine arts as well as chewing gum. What’s so fascinating about Arthur Stieglitz is that he remains so admirable as an aesthete, as well as an artist and successful promoter. The permanent installation in Gallery 265 is the tribute that the Art Institute pays to his uncanny ability to help turn exceptional but obscure young artists into national icons: Georgia O’Keefe, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Edward Steichen, and John Marin.

Stieglitz began his career promoting photography, but what ultimately captured his enthusiasm was Modernism, the kind that was strong, bold, personal, and just as spontaneous as a shutter click. It was distinguished by its form rather than its perceived content, and none of the work he sold exemplified that any more than the watercolors of John Marin which he continued to collect and sell throughout his life. Happily, in 1949, Georgia O’Keeffe donated 40 of those pieces to the Art Institute, and they are now on display with 16 other paintings (plus some etchings) from the museum’s collection. All 56 are were made by Marin, but the ones that Stieglitz himself collected are the most exciting, as Marin acrobatically triumphed over the daring risks he took with his unforgiving medium.

And what a wonderful variety there are, from the slow and massive to the quick and crackling; from a room full of vibrant New York cityscapes to the rooms of ships, seacoasts, landscapes, and even nude bathers (whose puffy pink shapes are such a contrast with his usual angularities). But is all this expression specific to the Modernism that Stieglitz promoted and the Art Institute enshrines ? Are John Marin’s watercolors a medium for Modernism – or are they a medium for the kind of aesthetic enjoyment of the world that European landscapes have been expressing for centuries, and Asian brush paintings for a millennium? Gallery signage quotes Marin’s nonchalance about subject matter (any boat will do), though elsewhere he pronounced its importance and distanced himself from inner self expression. If Marin was a pioneer in abstract art, so was Rembrandt when he made his landscape drawings.

This exhibit is a triumph of aesthetic practice – in both the painting, the collecting, the curation (Martha Tedeschi), and even the framing, which uses either original gallery frames or ones made to their specifications. Under its current director, several shows have been mounted, using only objects from the museum’s own off-view collection. And this show is no less spectacular than the exhibits of the museum's own European tapestries and Japanese screens that preceeded it.

But it’s also a tragedy. Because when this show comes down, all these paintings may well spend another 60 years in storage, accessible only to those who make appointments with the Goldman Study Center (now open 8 hours/week). Why can’t they be rotated through a gallery of 20th C. works on paper, the way that Ukiyo-e prints have been in the Buckingham Gallery? Why can’t high resolution images of them be posted on the Internet? Why are visitors not allowed to take pictures of these items which are from the museum’s own collection?


Perhaps because the musem is far more committed to the ideologies rather than the aesthetics of modern art, and supporting evidence for an ideology only needs to be comprehended once. It’s only an aesthetic achievement, like a recording of Uchida playing Mozart, that needs to be experienced again and again and again.








Note: the above images,
taken from the AIC website,
are so small
I'm almost too embarassed
to show them.


Cape Split, 1935

But here's how his paintings look
in nice, big images
(thanks to Colby College, Maine)





Brooklyn Bridge, 1912

Art Institute of Chicago : Ancient Chinese Bronzes from the Shouyang Studio

Ancient Chinese Bronzes from the Shouyang Studio:
The Katherine and George Fan Collection
at the Art Institute of Chicago
through Jan. 2

Chinese art history begins with the Tang Dynasty (618-907) – or, at least that’s what you might conclude after seeing the plethora of colorful ceramics and monumental Buddhist sculpture in American art museums. Or perhaps a few charming tomb figures would take you back to the Han (206 BCE – 220 CE ). But it was in the previous millennium that the language, customs, and ideals of Chinese civilization really came together, and the surviving visual art of that period mostly consists of the kind of ceremonial bronze vessels that a Hong Kong engineer, George Fan, has collected and is now showing at the Art Institute.


Mr. Fan says that his interests have been primarily historical, focused on the inscriptions that determine so much of what can be known about the political history of Central China. The aesthetic qualities of these objects were tangential, and only a few pieces are as thrilling as the best work in the A.I.C.’s permanent collection that was assembled in the early 20th C., back when China was in turmoil and so many national treasures came onto the international market. But still, his collection is large enough to assign separate areas to several historical periods (early Shang, late Shang, early Zhou, Warring States, Jin, Qin, Spring and Autumn, etc). And many of the pieces reward close examination of their intensely designed surfaces, which all seem to express the powerful yang hexagrams of the I-Ching (which was also developed throughout this era). Especially engaging are the tall Shang goblets that might well have served as weapons after some partying warlords had quaffed the contents.



The historical significance of many of these objects has led to their designation as gifts to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China’s current dynasty, the Peoples’ Republic. But Mr. Fan has been a collector, not an archeologist, and with no indication of provenance, the origins of these pieces is problematic. Even if un-altered and authentic, they still have been excavated by treasure hunters not scientists, so their relationship to specific sites, and the other objects found there, has been lost forever. Archeological looting remains a huge industry and international problem, and art museums only exacerbate it by singling out individual collectors like Mr. and Mrs. Fan for high praise and status.

Smart Museum : The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan

"Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan
Smart Museum thru January 16, 2011

Back in August of 1909, distinguished orientalist, Victor Segalen, author of “La Grande Statuaire chinoise” (translated and published by the University of Chicago,1972) found himself and a colleague alone with a remarkable statue of Buddha in a remote shrine in China. Despite some damage to the torso, “its profile had retained its nobility, its eyes their gaze, the smile of its mouth its generous sweetness and a kind of irony.” And immediately they knew what to do. “This statue, we must have it! We will not leave without it!.” Removing an ax from their luggage, Segalen began chopping at the neck, and when the clamor attracted the attention of two peasants who were passing by, the locals obligingly showed them how to apply wedges and wooden blocks to make the work so much easier.



Imagine that process repeated tens of thousands of times in grottos and temple shrines throughout China in the early 20th Century, where unable carry off entire tableaux, plunderers, servicing the world art market, chopped off heads, hands, whatever -- many of which fragments would eventually enter the collections of American museums




But times have changed, and one of the greatest changes is the focus of modern scholarship. The pioneering scholar of Japanese Buddhist art, Ernest Fenellosa (1853-1908), may have believed that : "We are approaching the time when the art work of all the world of man may be looked upon as one, as infinite variations in a single kind of mental and social effort" But modern scholars are more likely to agree with Sir Edmund Leach(1910-1989): "works of art are not just things in themselves, they are objects carrying moral implications. What the moral implication is depends upon where they are"


So now, a century later, the University of Chicago has begun a project to restore one of the original sites, the Buddhist cave temples of Xiangtangshan. No, museums will not be sending the loot back to China, but 3-D scanning techniques allow for fragments to be scanned and then assembled into a virtual reality, which has been projected onto a wrap-around screen in this exhibit, and supplemented with touch-screens that offer iconographic information.





But as another pioneer in world art, Andre Malraux, once asserted : “Art is not learned, it is encountered”, and happily (perhaps has an afterthought) curators have complemented this digital display with 13 actual sculptural fragments (mostly heads and hands, but also a few complete figures) which have traveled here from museums in New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and San Francisco.




But when these 13 original fragments (some which are monumental in size) have been encountered, at least one viewer is convinced that the moral context involved is not specific to Buddhist doctrine, and the place where they belong is anywhere on planet earth, rather than just some shallow mountain caves in southern Hubei Province.




What’s especially delightful and unique about this display is that all of the pieces come from one place, Xiangtangshan, and one time, the short lived Qi Dynasty of northern China (550-577), and they all have a kind of simple sweetness that feels less severe/dogmatic than the Wei dynasty statuary that preceded it, and more natural than the Tang dynasty Buddhas that followed.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see so many examples of this (or possibly any) site specific genre of Buddhist sculpture, unless you travel to Washington for it’s next installation, which will be augmented by even more pieces from the Freer Gallery (which are forbidden to travel)

It’s also a chance to compare original fragments with the computer mapped versions derived from them. However accurate those mappings may be in terms of size and iconographic detail, aesthetically, they’re as ruined as original statuary when badly weathered by wind, ice, and water. And what is so remarkable about the 13 originals is how good each and every one of them looks. They’re in great condition, and just as in the great French cathedrals, the standard of workmanship, and quality control, was very, very high.

Perhaps, some future generation of scholars will re-discover the technique of rubber-mold making and use it to re-create some these shrines exactly as would now appear if they had never been butchered.

But for our generation, the fascination with digital technology is still too compelling, and interest in historic context still trumps aesthetic quality.

Moissei Liangleben

Moissei Liangleben – at the Palette and Chisel, through Oct. 24





Born in 1925 and emigrating to Chicago in 1991, Moissei Liangleben’s life spanned almost the entire history of the Soviet Union, surviving famines in the 1930’s, conscription into the great war of the 1940’s, and finally winning admittance to the Surikov Art Institute in 1945 and membership in the artists’ union in 1952. American museums, like the Art Institute, have limited themselves to Russian avant garde artists like Malevich, Kandinsky, and Chagall .But Moissei lived in a whole other world of 19th and 20th C. Russian creativity. His family owned a landscape by Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898), and he studied with Sergei Gerasimov (1885-1964), knew Pyotr Konchalovsky (1876 - 1956), and many other leading Soviet painters and sculptors. When Americans think of this genre, we think of propaganda like the exhibition of war posters that will come to the A.I.C. next year. But Soviet painters, just like Soviet poets, musicians, and dancers, had aesthetic agendas as well. They were a privileged class, distinguished by the very high level of classical technique required for admittance, as well as by the melancholy moods appropriate for life everywhere on planet earth, but especially in the evil empire. This exhibit by Moissei Liangleben spans the 7 decades of his career (and yes, he’s still climbing the 50 steps up to the third floor of the Palette and Chisel to paint the model several times a week). Unfortunately, there’s not much in this exhibit from his middle years, when he specialized in portraits of the intellectual elite, like Veniamin Kaverin, Viktor Shklovsky, Vsevolod Ivanov, and Anna Akhmatova (who had first been painted by her lover, Modigliani). But there are some fascinating self portraits of the teenage art student, and 60 years later, many charming views of young Chicago women. Like contemporary American Impressionists, he is interested in beauty. But his nudes are not just about flesh. Like many Russian artists, he is mostly interested in describing a unique personality. As he puts it, he wants to “show my sense of brightness and beauty in the model’s appearance”. But relentlessly, though subtly, there is also a sense of impending grief and sadness.

Above all, he is proudest of how he integrates the figure with its background to create an atmosphere, but despite his extensive training, he does not practice the kind of academicism whose smooth finish approaches that of a photograph. The Soviet school is closer to the flat, rough, expressive angularity of Cezanne. Whether new generations of painters will continue to pursue this direction remains to be seen. It’s a style that may disappear along with the idealistic but tragically flawed mega-state that sponsored it.

Luc Tuymans at the Museum of Contemporary Art

Critical response to the paintings of Luc Tuymans has fallen into three areas of concern.

First, and often foremost, is the historical subject matter. Why have right-wing Europeans (and Americans) done such terrible things? (Holocaust, Imperialism, colonialism, racism), and what should we think about them? Second, are issues of image, perception, and memory. What are the limits of memory and image recognition? Third, come issues of contemporary art history. Can painting ever reclaim the high-ground of representational territory it seems to have lost to the digital camera. Regarding history, memory, image, and perception, Regina Hackett (Arts Journal) helpfully notes that the image of each Tuymans painting is “perfectly transportable. Seeing it reproduced online is not significantly different from seeing it in person” So there’s really no need to climb the endless granite steps up to the Museum of Contemporary Art. Tuymans hasn’t revealed anything more about his historical subjects than his original source material did (much of which is conveniently displayed in a gallery adjacent to his paintings) And if you’re really interested in perceptual psychology or 20th Century European history, your time might much better be spent elsewhere.

But regarding the visual quality of his paintings, yes, you do have to see the works in person, and yes, Tuymans actually is a good painter, with a sensitive feeling for space, texture, and drama.

Compared to many local painters, his drawing and compositional abilities are limited, but he has wisely limited his palette to muted colors and his procedure to whatever he can do in a single session, much as traditional ceramicists have done. The total effect is melancholy – bordering on depression, especially as the labels and commentary connect them to thoughts about mass murder, incurable disease, Disney hucksterism, or, worst of all, the George W. Bush administration. But if you savor contempt and the dark moods of despair that accompany it, you might find this an enjoyable exhibition. (and apparently, there are quite a few wealthy collectors around the world who share that highly educated taste)

Happily, the first week of this exhibit coincided with the last week of an ebulliently buoyant exhibition of Alexander Calder. But after all that colorful, playful eye-candy comes down this weekend, you should probably schedule a few stiff drinks after the show. (just like Tuymans himself probably does. As Dorothy Spears of the New York Timesc reported, he carries around his own flask).

Is it true that “Tuymans' work specifically addresses the challenge of the inadequacy and 'belatedness', as he puts it, of painting. (as promoters a the Tate museum have quoted him)? – i.e. “the fallen state of painting since the 1960’s” ?

Apparently, if a painting is depressing enough, and makes enough politically and theoretically correct references, the answer is resoundingly in the affirmative as Tuymans takes over the entire 4th floor of the M.C.A.

But when will European representational painting, like Odysseus back in Ithaca, finally be allowed to throw off its gray, threadbare, stinking rags and reveal all the beauty, power, and splendor of which it has been capable?

That might take a few more decades.











(BTW - a quite perceptive and breathlessly written commentary on Tuymans has been written here by that Tory gadfly, Bunny Smedley)

The Roger L. Weston Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago

Nishikawa Sukenobu





The Roger L. Weston Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago





The incredible collection of Roger L. Weston takes center stage in the premier exhibition of the newly remodeled Japanese galleries that bear his name. For the first time in recent memory, there’s a roomful of Japanese hanging scrolls and lacquer boxes, mostly made by the top names in 18th and 19th C. Japanese art: Shibata Zeshin, Ogata Korin, Chobunsai Eishi, Nishikawa Sukenobu, and even Utamaro. With 55% more floor space,









there’s also enough room now to show a large selection of tea ceremony ceramics











and ingenious bamboo baskets.

But where did this additional gallery space come from? Unfortunately, these are galleries that recently held Korean ceramics/calligraphy and Chinese painting, so unlike the South Asian, Pre-Columbian, and African displays, the far-eastern collection is not going to benefit from the all the gallery space freed up by the building of the Modern Wing. Most of the Korean ceramics (but none of the calligraphy) have been moved to the small gallery that flanks the entrance to Alsdorf Hall, but all of the Chinese paintings have been taken off view, and will not reappear until the Chinese galleries are remodeled at some unspecified date in the future. And, unhappily, certain questionable changes have been made to the older rooms of Japanese art. In order to make the Ando Gallery feel more accessible, the heavy glass entrance doors were removed, so now it also feels less intimate.
















But more dramatically, the new display of medieval Buddhist sculpture reminds us just how effective the 1992 design by Cleo Nichols used to be. Fierce guardian figures once flanked the small entrance room that opened up into a dark, quiet chamber, at the center of which a Bodhisattva sat upon a raised platform, protected by a railing instead of a glass box, free to measure and control the space of the entire room, while other Buddhist statuary were dramatically lit within boxes embedded into the surrounding walls. The effect of the whole was spiritual and meditative. Like a Buddhist shrine should be – and it was quite a feat to achieve that using the disparate artifacts at hand; each originating from a different temple, province, cult, and century. Now they feel jumbled together in their glass cases, like ethnographic artifacts on display at the Field Museum. What once felt sacred, now feels clinical. But, thankfully, every museum display is built to be demolished, and we can be sure that in twenty years these rooms will be changed yet again.

Masterpieces from Ancient Mexico at the Art Institute of Chicago

Ballplayers, Gods, and Rainmaker Kings:
Masterpieces from Ancient Mexico
Through January 21,2011

Much of this display repeats the survey of Pre-Columbian cultures that is done more extensively in the permanent “Ancient Americas” exhibit at the Field Museum. But the 13 spectacular pieces from the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia in Mexico City is what makes this show indispensable. There’s a life-size, stone version of the mysterious chac-mool reclining figures that seem to have been so important to Henry Moore. Also included is the waist-high greenstone head of the goddess Coyolxauhqui, whose decapitation by her brother was reprised by the ritual slaughter of captives on the steps of the great Aztec temples.









A few feet away, is the famous Aztec statue of Xochipilli, the god of art, games, beauty, and homosexuality, seated in a trance and moaning under the influence of the psychotropic flowers that ornament his body.
















But even more remarkable might be the over 40-inch high terracottas that represented various deities from the 7th through 15th Centuries. How did these enormous, intricate, fragile pieces manage to survive so many centuries of upheaval? Aesthetically, most of the work in this show is not far above the merely functional level of grabbing attention and telling a story.









But the late classic Mayan limestone ballcourt marker from La Esperanza Chiapas is a masterpiece of sacred world art. It’s only 22 inches in diameter, but its carving is monumental, and it’s ring of 12 glyphs is a festival of powerful, virtuosic visual expression that can scarcely be found in the American cultures that followed (including our own)