Recap: Art Chicago in Review Art Chicago Merchandise Mart April 27-30 By Debra Brehmer Art Chicago or the International Art Expo or Navy Pier or, in its current incarnation, “Artropolis,” is a long-honored rite of spring that brings hundreds of art galleries to Chicago annually for four days of art/consumer madness. Last year the fair moved into its current Merchandise Mart location and this year it combined Art Chicago, Intuit’s Outsider Art Fair, the Bridge Show, The Artist Project and the Antique show into the same space. Needless to say, art was in abundance, sprawling over the 7th and 8th floors of the Merchandise Mart, with the Bridge Fair of smaller art galleries an elevator ride down and over and up to the 12th floor. The fair attracts both artists and collectors, and most everyone in the business seems to agree that the art market is very good right now. After its cataclysmic crash in 1989, it has slowly, but steadily, gained momentum. As you might imagine, art dealers tend to be a rather dapper group. Part of the fun of the fair is simply watching them in action as they pace their booths like lovely exotic creatures, often chirping on cell phones. Overhearing snippets of conversations is always amusing as they convince the potential client that the photograph priced at $47,000 is a rare deal. Yes, the art world is a topsy-turvy kind of place. Within minutes of immersion in this environment of 132 galleries representing some 2,000 artists, a small painting for $1,500 becomes ridiculously affordable, at least in comparison to the lovely Egon Schiele drawing sporting a $4.9 million price tag. Generally, a certain spirit rises to the surface of all this plurality and gives each year’s art fair at least a tinge of its own character. The word that kept coming to my mind this year to categorize the fair was “tame.” All of the art seemed to be on its best behavior and this was even true for the more vanguard Bridge Show. This was generally work that was trying to please a buyer. It wasn’t too conceptually difficult or purposefully obscure or remote. It seemed to harken back to a Modernist sensibility of objecthood and singularity. Interestingly, what seemed dazzling even five years ago, which were all the large scale C-prints – glossy, huge photographs that seemed to be able to address the interface of real life and artifice so perceptively – felt showy and tired at the Art Expo this year. They reminded me of the desperation of artists in the French salon shows of the 1800s, where artists would make larger and larger paintings in an attempt to be seen on walls covered from floor to ceiling with paintings. Milwaukee art connoisseur Jonas Karvelis, who attended the fair on three days, called it the “super-sized and shiny” year of the expo, or “a festival for raccoons.” This isn’t to say that Karvelis was disappointed with the fair. As someone who has attended it annually for fifteen years or more, he described it as “one of the best Art Chicagos in a long time. There was a new enthusiasm, new blood and more and better galleries.” Only two Milwaukee galleries participated in the fair: Dean Jensen and Tory Folliard. Former Milwaukee Art Museum director Russell Bowman who now lives in Chicago had booths in both Art Chicago and the Intuit show. Jensen and his assistant director John Sobczak seemed thrilled with the fair. Since its days at Navy Pier, the expo has changed management and locations several times. Jensen said that the Merchandise Mart did a spectacular job of organizing and hosting the event. “The fair had been languishing for years,” Jensen said. “But Art Chicago 2007 had brio. It was almost as thought the Merchandise Mart people engaged teams of the world’s best heart transplant and plastic surgeons to restore the fair to vigorous new health and sleekness.” Sobczyk added that with the Art Basel fair now located in Miami as well as Switzerland, much of the international market has been siphoned to the south. While Art Chicago showed encouraging signs of life, Sobczyk said it needs to gain an international market. It can’t only draw visitors from the tri-state area. Dean Jensen Gallery has committed to the fair next year and hopes that as the reputation spreads so will attendance and commerce. Milwaukee's Green Gallery was not at the fair but did participate in a show that also opened Friday in the Chicago area at the Surburban. Former Milwaukeean and current professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michelle Grabner, runs this gallery with her husband Brad Killam out of their garage in Oak Park. John Riepenhoff of Green Gallery presented his mini-gallery (the John Riepenhoff Experierence) with work by Paul Druecke. The mini-gallery was hung in a tree with access from a ladder. But back to Art Chicago: Each year, I end up wondering what can be gained by subjecting oneself to what is truly an obscene amount of art. Endless maze- like aisles of clean, white, makeshift booths sprawl indefinitely forward with thousands of individual manifestations of self or contemplations of culture and society competing for a moment of your gaze. It’s a visually challenging environment. Putting oneself in the epicenter of the art world often confirms the shadowy notion that art is indeed a commodity and it is sometimes not as far removed from fashion, fine wines or diamond rings as one might hope. Karvelis finds the art fairs very useful and interesting on several levels. He said that when he was younger, the art fairs helped him simply see and experience national or international trends. The fairs helped him learn to contextualize. In looking at so much art, he began to be able to sort out a good Matisse from a bad one. Karvelis made the point that unlike a museum, which presents carefully selected, ‘quality’ works of art, the art fairs offer the chance to see lesser works by important artists. For him, the fairs also afford the opportunity to look closely or even handle a work of art that would otherwise be off limits. He noted that Russell Bowman was showing a Jim Nutt drawing. “Ordinarily, when would I see a Jim Nutt drawing?” Karvelis asked. He said he could look at it long enough at the fair to observe its many erasures and learn something about Nutt’s working process. Something new to the fair this year was a juried selection of graduate students’ work called “New InSight.” Twenty-four students were picked from the top MFA programs in the country. On Friday, all of the students participated in a panel discussion. They explored the changing role of MFA programs as the art world’s hunger for new and ever younger “superstars” creates a feeding frenzy atmosphere at their final graduate shows. Too much, too soon can ruin a potential career faster than heroin. Most of the students said they simply ignore the gallerists knocking on their studio doors and stay focused on their own work. One of the moderators asked them about the underlying impulses or philosophies of their work. “What’s driving you?” Responses ranged from Queer history and culture to notions regarding time. Many mentioned distortions of time and history as ideas that permeate their work. When asked if war and politics are influences, most seemed to suggest that the act of art making or perception in general is inherently political in the choices and concerns of the practice. Although they weren’t dealing overtly with political subject matter, they felt that broader narratives, such as ‘what do people fear,’ surveillance, suspicion and notions of sociology and psychology are seeping into their work. On perhaps a slightly gloomy final note, the moderators and panelists acknowledged that there’s “still a prevailing patriarchy out there,” noting that of the twenty-four artists selected for the graduate show, only seven were women, which reflects percentages in the broader art world as well. One thing not lacking in the art world, as evidenced by Art Chicago, were bathrobe prints by Jim Dine. Perhaps the Jim Dine print is a rite of passage for all collectors, the ultimate recognizable icon of an aestheticized leisure class. Like any wilderness excursion, Art Chicago survival depends on pacing yourself, staying hydrated, resting frequently, being able to acclimate to the foreign environment, and perhaps, most importantly, wearing sensible shoes. Debra Brehmer is co-publisher of Susceptible to Images. Comments? Email dbrehmer@susceptibletoimages.com <<<<<Back to contents page Copyright 2007. Material may not be used or reproduced without the permission of the author. |
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| Tory Folliard Gallery and gallery director Richard Knight at Art Chicago. |
| Works by Jim Dine on display at Art Chicago. |
| Joel Peter Witkin, Raft of George Bush, modeled after Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, 1819. |