Abstract Chicago Iii. :From Chicago to Gowanus

 

Has a comprehensive exhibition of Chicago abstract artists ever been mounted in Chicago?  None that I can recall, but now one is popping up in a gallery in Brooklyn. It's a not-for-profit,  artist-run affair and it’s running out of money.  This may be its final year.

Ortega y Gasset Projects came together as an artist-run space in April 2013 when a group of artists realized how much their practices were dictated by their circumstances. José Ortega y Gasset’s famous maxim “yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” (I’m myself and my circumstance) deeply resonated with the group, so they named the space as a nod to the philosopher’s pragmatism and realist phenomenology, that came to be known as the “philosophy of life.” Ortega y Gasset Projects celebrates 10 years in May, 2023.  

OyG is entirely run by working artists, who recognize that exploration is key to artistic vitality. We embrace an exploratory model where artists take the role of curator, critic and promoter. Working without concern for commercial profit or an explicit curatorial ideology, the goal of OyG is to mount exhibitions that support under-represented, marginalized artists and emerging artists, provoke dialogue and bolster artistic community . In doing so, we participate within a wider forum to disseminate aesthetic experience and expand our roles, priorities and scope of influence within art culture.

Not sure how artists who have nothing in common but exhibition space can be much of a community. And why would they want to "expand their influence within art culture", when they may, or may not, agree about anything at all.  Yet still we may note the use of the phrase "aesthetic experience" in their mission statement.  "Art culture" and aesthetics have long since parted company - so, like me, they are at the margins of the artworld.

This exhibition invites viewers to consider the evolution of abstraction through a distinctly Chicagoan lens, one infused with an irreverence toward tradition and a deep connection to place. It is an invitation to think about abstraction not just as a visual form, but as a metaphor for the ongoing exploration of our relationship to the world, to nature, and to each other. 

Metaphors be damned!  It is the undoing of contemporary art whenever formal expression is finished as soon as sufficient metaphor has been recognized   Or even worse - when visuality is intentionally kept from being the center of attention.  This is the curse of conceptualism - and more than half  of these artists suffer from it.  It’s not especially a Chicago thing - except within its university art departments.

Below, I’ve listed all 26 of the artists - but some are figurative, some are photography, a few are traditional crafts, and many are primarily conceptual.  Though, thankfully, none appear to be about gender/racial identity, or social justice. 

I’ve  only shown those that interest me as abstract art. Those pieces which appear in this show are marked as such.

 Lynn Basa, 

Leslie Baum, 

Phyllis Bramson, Figurative Imagist painter.  

Jason Branscum,  photographer 

Judith Brotman,     Conceptual 

Robert Burnier, 

Dee Clements,   Basketry

William Conger, 

Laura Davis figurative, conceptual 

David Ese Gagoh,   Photography

Diana Guerrero-Maciá, 

Steven Husby, 2021, 30 x 24 ( in this show)

Sam Jaffe

Kelly Kaczynski

Michael Kaysen,   Potter

Anna Kunz. (In this show)

Olivia Schreiner

Joe Scott

Edra Soto. Conceptual architecture 

Shonna Pryor,   Conceptualist

Tony Tasset,  ( in this show)

Ann Toebbe,    Representational

Selina Trepp,   Conceptual

Nathan Vernau, conceptual graphics

Christine Wallers,  conceotual

Justin Witte

Tribute to Robin Greenwood and friends

 

Robin Greenwood’s "Thuvia , Maid of Mars,"  210 x 120,  1990

A funky, dramatic interplay of solid colors for the sheer fun of it,

So appropriate for the absurd pulp fiction for which it was named.

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Robin Greenwood (1950 -- 2023)

To be ‘new’ a painting doesn’t have to have been painted in 2018, or even by a living painter. What this survey and the comments show is that time, discernment and taste has not yet caught up with many of the paintings on display. A painting is ‘new’ if it opens up untapped resources for others that have been lying fallow or unnoticed, or if it reasserts the fundamental eloquence of the means, the simple elements of colour, line, plane, area-shape, facture, in a surprising way — (confined surprise, as Greenberg called it, not literal theatrical surprise -Seminar 8).”   Comment by Alan Gouk on Key Paintings of the 20th Century, a ‘Musée Imaginaire’, Part 2, 11.3.18.

“For something to be “new” in this sense, not only does it not have to be painted in 2018 or by a living painter, but it doesn’t have to be either modernist or abstract. Just saying.”   Comment by RG in reply, 12.3.18.

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Above is a brief exchange between Robin Greenwood and one of the artist/writers who posted text on Abcrit,  an online forum he created to talk about art.  He also created the Branchester Chronicles to document and discuss the exhibitions he invited into the gallery he started.

As you may note, Greenwood does not connect judgment to a narrative of art history.  But his approach to art is so theoretical, I’d hesitate to call him an aesthete.  He wants sculpture that has no frontality  - so all figurative and much non-figurative is off the table.  His own work looks like fluff balls of tangled metal - and I doubt they would engage me in person. 

He wants painting that is free from all associations, striking out as its own new thing. energizing space with a swirling gyre of mark making.  He offers the abstract expressionism of Pollock and Krasner as examples:

Lee Krasner

Meanwhile, he despairs the. “drift” of the work by Frankenthaler and Olitski, two of Abstract Expressionism’s most dubious and indulgent painters …..in clear detriment to the “all-over energy” of Pollock; or, for that matter, the best of 

A work of art is the unavoidable result of countless feelings, memories, ideas, experiences etc.  But still, the greater prominence given to theory, the worse it’s going to look.  Analytical Cubism is a classic example.

Nevertheless - I really like almost all the painters in Greenwood’s circle.   Mostly, they’re old folks who picked up ABX at art school, loved it,  and never moved on.  That is not how to build a career - and like Greenwood, most of them needed another source of income.  Many don’t  have galleries or even websites. 

If I had a house in London, this is what I’d fill it with.

(No wall space left in Chicago)

Here’s a shot of Greenwood’s  last show.

His sculptures desperately curl away from surrounding space  as if it were toxic.

John Pollard,  Brutal World

These Brits are certainly not sentimental,

but still this is a world I’d like to live in. 

I feel joy, love, passion

whether intended or not.

Anne Smart, Broiderie Landings, 2013

Greenwood had this above his bed.

Less aggressive, still probably quite thrilling in person

where you can feel the surface.

John Bunker, detail

John Bunker. B. 1968

Fred Pollock, Clyde Magic,  2018, 30 x 39

The over stimulation of 

a hip urban scene 

Back in 2013, there was an interesting discussion of color in this artist’s work over on the Brancaster Chronicles .  

Ashley West: Fred, one thing for me that I find challenging looking at your paintings is the high key of the colour, the primary and secondary colours, and the fact that I’m used to looking at painting like this that’s primarily all about colour where the compositional structure is simplified to a degree, so that the colour can operate as free from that structure as possible. Do you see what I’m saying?

Fred Pollock: No, I’ve no idea what you are talking about.

Ashley West: Well, if you take geometric abstract painting, like Mondrian or Ellsworth Kelly…

Fred Pollock: Oh, OK.

I do wish Fred had stuck to his incomprehension because, like Fred, Mondrian’s colors occur within the context of an exciting graphic design.  The excitement in Kelly’s paintings, if any, is strictly intellectual.

But I am happy to report that at the end of this discussion, Robin Greenwood says in his typically self effacing way: 

 This is probably wrong – but I’m going to punt it out anyway. I think it might be worth considering Fred’s more recent paintings – i.e., all those here except for “Sunspots” – as being not about colour at all, which rather contradicts much of the above discussion 

 And so I’m missing Robin even more now.

He felt that the art theory he learned at school ( flatness, color, space) did not really identify what was special about the work of his friends - but he couldn’t come up with anything better.

I think we just have to switch focus from cause to effect - and talk about how the piece makes you feel - as ignorant as that that may appear.  Art is quite different from a baseball game. It cannot be tabulated on any kind of score card.

Patrick Jones, Picking up Sticks, 2022,   24 x 36

Cirque du Soleil ?

Want to see more.

Beautiful and thrilling

Nick Moore, Cryptic, 2017, 48 x 48

A classical feeing here.

The Fall of Troy?

Emyr Williams, Times Refresh,  50 x 30

Richard Ward, August 19,   27 x 27

Nice on-line discussion of  the “slap dash” used  in the above.

Richard Ward, 120 x 100”

Man  walking?

Noela James Berry

Henry Hay,  Word Go,  28 x 24”,   2019

Younger than most (b. 1990), now does figurative

#EC_ismyname

EC

This artist is coy about her name and every other detail of  her life.

But she is my favorite 

and still quite prolific on Instagram.

Always seems to be looking for whatever will surprise.

Alexandra Harley

The only sculpture shown that I liked.

 Definitely quite frontal, however.

Sadly, with Robin’s passing,

his gallery and both forum websites have passed away as well

Sic transit Gloria Mundi

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 “To be ‘new’ a painting doesn’t have to have been painted in 2018, or even by a living painter. “…a number of the Tintorettos were new to us, and what’s more, were exciting and up-to the-minute. The experience of such art is often not only a ‘new’ thing, but also a ‘now’ thing, a revelation of the moment, even if we have seen it before. With art as good as this it is never just a matter for art history. And there is more originality and immediacy in a few Tintorettos than in a dozen FIACs.” [FIAC is a Parisian Contemporary Art Fair]. From a Poussin Gallery catalogue essay, “New to Sight”, by RG, January 2010.

Portraits of the Tao

 

This is an ongoing post - a place where abstract paintings of a certain kind will be posted as I stumble across them and discussed - or discussed again - as the spirit moves me.

Readers are invited to add their own comments.

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Kandinsky, Campbell Panel #2, 1914

I have a much better idea of how this kind of painting looks than what I might call it. 

It’s a subset of Abstract Expressionism that is notably less personal and more spiritual.  Though marks may always suggest a language and shapes may always resemble something— all possible associations are irrelevant, even counter-productive, to what this kind of painting is doing.  It’s not about things, places, ideas, moods, memories, fears, desires, or even visions.  The apparent subject is “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” - whether intended  as such or not - and it lives entirely in the painted surface,  not in whatever associations may be made by the viewer.

Might we call them portraits of the Tao at both the macro and micro level ? 

The Tao is the  incomprehensible way things are - always changing, expanding in unexpected ways,  infinite in complexity, interconnected throughout every scale from quark to galaxy.  No familiarity with actual  Taoist literature or practice is implied. An exhibition of "Taoism and the Arts of China" came through the Art Institute of Chicago twenty five years ago - and believe me, nothing like this could be found. It was much more tame.

It’s not just the spirit of life - it’s the spirit of being.  No common phrase in European thinking comes to mind - though Federico Faggin’s quantum information panpsychism is a compatible  idea.

Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899-1953)

Each mark is added, not to clarify a feeling, but to amplify  power and strangeness.

A pioneer of ABX who died way too young, I sure enjoy him more than Pollock and DeKooning.

The above is my favorite piece, but dammit, can’t find a title or date.

Joan Mitchell, Evenings on 73rd st. (Detail), 1957

Funky, neurotic , and exciting

Richard Poisette-Dart, Meditation on Drifting Stars, 1962

As gentle as a bloom of bacteria in a petri dish.

which does not mean that it cannot be terribly destructive.

Scott Wolniak, Current, 2014

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

John Grillo, untitled,  1960

the shapes are larger so there's an evident sense of graphic design.

But still - each area seems to be erupting into its own direction.

Winnie Weiyun Szu

Monique Van Genderin

Alma Thomas untitled, 1962,  22 x 30, acrylic on paper

Esther Stocker

Alfonso Ossorio, Beachcombers (detail) 1953, 84 x 124

Alexander Rodchenko, Dance, 1915

Pavel Filonov, Victory over Eternity, 1920-21

Pavel Filonov, Composition, 1928

Mikhail Matiushkin,   Extended Space, 1922-23, 27 x 38"

Bill Jensen, Locus, 39 x 32, 2001-3, 

Mark Tobey, Written Over the Plains, 30 x 40, 1950

Samia Halaby, Prancing in the Vineyard, 1982, media on paper

Bruce Thorn,  Night Song (detail)

Arshile Gorky, One Year the Milkweed, 38 x 48, 1944

Arshile Gorky, Waterfall, 1943, 60 x 44

the pulsation of nature as it throbs'…. Gorky